Section 4 of 5
The Signal
Codecs, bitrates, transmission chains, loudness standards, and the physical infrastructure a broadcast depends on.
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2024
DAB, DAB+, and What the Codec Upgrade Actually Changed
More services, smaller signals — but the receivers you already owned could not follow.
The angle is the upgrade's cost: DAB+ is more efficient but early DAB receivers cannot decode it, which is why some markets ran both in parallel.
Photo: Karolina Grabowska www.kaboompics.com / PexelsThe rest of The Signal
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The Signal
Icecast, HLS, and the Buffer That Lives Between Studio and Listener
Explains the technical difference between Icecast push-streaming (low latency, single point of failure) and HLS adaptive streaming (higher latency, CDN-resilient), and why most large broadcasters moved from one to the other — drawing on published RFC and IETF documentation.
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2010The Signal
The Loudness War Reaches a Regulator: R 128 and How Normalisation Changed Radio
Covers the EBU R 128 loudness normalisation standard, its adoption by the EBU's member broadcasters, and how loudness-normalised playout changed the competitive dynamic that drove radio processing toward maximum loudness — drawing on EBU Tech 3341 documentation.
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The Signal
From Microphone to Mast: The Broadcast Chain in Its Current Form
Describes the signal path from a studio microphone through console, audio processing, STL link, transmission system, and antenna — naming the equipment categories and the signal standards (AES3, SMPTE 2022, SRT) at each stage.
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2017The Signal
The Masts That Did Not Come Down
Examines transmitter sites as physical infrastructure — Arqiva's UK network, the Norwegian sites retained by NRK for DAB+ and emergency broadcasting after FM shutdown — and the legal obligations that keep decommissioned FM masts standing.
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