Fed up with fuzzy sound from your car radio? Tired of interruptions to the signal as you travel the country?
Well, a new era in radio, the digital era, may help to solve some of these problems. While not developed yet in Ireland, digital radio is already proving popular in Britain.
A range of factors can cause the inference: mountains, high-rise buildings and weather conditions. Digital radio manages to circumvent these problems and give you CD-quality sound wherever you are driving. Without going into the science too deeply, digital transmitter signals received at any location are combined to give the strongest overall signal. Wherever you are, you will be the focal point of incoming radio signals.
Currently many new radios feature RDS (Radio Data System) technology that allows your radio to automatically switch between FM frequencies to find the strongest signal. This is known as the AF (alternative frequencies) function. However, digital radio would allow more data to be transferred from digital transmitters to your car than is currently possible with analogue signals.
News, weather, song titles, artists' names and sports information could be available on your digital set as you drive along. We have a small example of this already with analogue where stations are identified by text on your radio display.
But the capacity of analogue is limited. With digital, for example, it should be possible to send motorists more detailed traffic announcements. There's also the possibility of motorists downloading information into their in-car navigation systems. MP3 players should also be compatible with the new digital sets. According to JP Coakley of RTÉ Radio: "The car radio of the future will have a huge variety of digital radio stations available. However, the most developed technology, DAB (FM digital), suffers from a lack of clear benefit for FM listeners. It is unlikely that the ordinary user would notice a great deal of difference in the audio." Perhaps the greatest benefit will come in the strong signal and more channels.