DAB+ in Brussels ← great!

Just got a cheap dab+ radio from a shop that was liquidating. Bluetooth, stereo, USB, dab+, fm, aux.. The signal quality is perfect on 86 out of 87 Brussels stations that were auto-tuned. It sounds a bit low pitch & slightly muffled but I think that’s down to the cheap hardware.

• One station cuts out (update: couple more cut out at different times).
• 6 stations are redundant.
• One station seems to have no purpose other than to advertise www.dabplus.be.

So there are ~80 useful stations, which is much more than the number of FM stations it could tune (~24, varying quality). DAB+ seems to also include AM broadcasts but I doubt there would be 50+ AM stations, so apparently DAB+ is receiving stations that don’t exist on FM or AM. Notably, there is BBC World Service in English, which I don’t think is offered over FM. That channel alone makes buying a DAB+ radio worth it.

Still no jazz stations! …AFAICT… Unless one of the stations with chatter going on is normally jazz. Otherwise that’s surprising & disappointing. Maybe some of the stations have jazz programs at scheduled times.

(update) These are the genres stations are tagged with:

• news
• current affairs
• information
• factual
• arts
• leisure
• pop music
• oldies music
• classical music
• folk music
• rock music
• other music

Most are tagged as “pop music” (80s, EDM, rock, hip hop, etc). And news=current affairs=information=factual (redundant!) So the “program type” metadata is not as useful as it could be.

The “Business AM” station sounds like AM radio (slightly raspy). I wonder if it’s being received by an AM radio tranceiver and converted to DAB+.