DAB is supposed to give many more channels at a quality higher than FM Rado, at "near CD Quality".

If you have used MP3 players you know there is a tradeoff between quality and space. In Germany and other places the quality is said to be high.

We do not yet have DAB in Ireland. Perhaps is is lack of finance or because the independant Radio station do not want more competition (The DAB Mux would have many local radio stations as well as all the national stations).

The nearest DAB is in the UK (List of N.I. DAB transmitters by Northern Correspondent). Many critics say the U.K. has squeezed too many channels into to little space and quality has suffered.

DAB reception needs a DAB radio or DAB PC adaptor and often an external 175MHz aerial.

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It uses COFDM for the Transmission and MP2 for the Audio encoding, so is poor compared with MP3 at the same compression and much poorer compression at same quality than AAC used on Surround Sound (satellite, DVD, BluRay) and mono or stereo DRM transmission for LW, MW and SW.