Daft question about DAB...

[Jonny_]

Can't find anything conclusive via Google so thought I'd best reveal my ignorance on here...

Does DAB radio support surround sound? And if so, does BBC Radio 6 Music broadcast in surround sound?

Reason I ask is I'm currently listening to 6 Music on my Yamaha RX-V500D surround receiver, which has inbuilt DAB radio, and having neglected to switch it from surround mode to stereo (as I usually do for music) I'm now finding that certain instrument sounds seem to come from the rear speakers, whilst lead vocals come from the fronts and centre, although some backing vocals come from the rears. DJ speech is focused at the front/centre with nothing audible from the rear speakers.

This has been the case on all manner of material, from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to some sort of drum 'n' bass/jungle tune, and even on the 6Music jingles.

Quite an unexpected effect, and one that is probably almost as offensive to hifi purists as DAB itself... but I quite like it. I'm just not sure if it's a case of the music being broadcast in some sort of surround format, or perhaps the receiver is doing some exceedingly clever signal processing to send different elements of the music to different speakers.

[Mr Pointy]

DAB broadcasts are in stereo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_National_DAB
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/help/questions/about-...

There's some discussions over on AVForums as well eg:
https://www.avforums.com/threads/whats-the-best-qu...

[595Heaven]

Quite possible that the AV Amp has some DSP switched on - Dolby ProLogic does a pretty amazing job of converting stereo into surround


Edit: Just checked the specs and it does support ProLogic II and IIx - I suspect that is your answer

[Lucid_AV]

Theres a surprising amount of DAB that isn't even stereo. It's mono. Things improve a bit with DAB+ stations. However, there's nothing better than stereo; there isn't the bandwidth for a Dolby surround encoded stream.

[Jonny_]

595Heaven said:

Quite possible that the AV Amp has some DSP switched on - Dolby ProLogic does a pretty amazing job of converting stereo into surround


Edit: Just checked the specs and it does support ProLogic II and IIx - I suspect that is your answer

Cheers! That explains it.

I'd always just assumed that the ProLogic system needed an encoded signal from which to extract the additional channels; I was completely unaware that it can somehow extrapolate those from an ordinary, non-encoded stereo signal as well.

[TonyRPH]

The amp will be in a pseudo multi channel mode.

It just takes a stereo signal and creates a multi channel mix out of it - it's not taking anything from the stereo transmission to do this - it's all done in the firmware.

Some do a better job than others.