Technical & Engineering
DAB / DAB+ (Digital Audio Broadcasting)
The dominant European standard for the digital transmission of radio signals, utilizing advanced audio coding (HE-AAC v2) for superior quality.
What is DAB / DAB+ (Digital Audio Broadcasting)?
DAB is Europe's digital terrestrial radio standard, which transmits multiple stations simultaneously within a single multiplex using MPEG audio coding. The upgraded DAB+ variant replaced the original MP2 codec with more efficient HE-AAC v2, roughly doubling the number of stations that fit in a given spectrum allocation. DAB and DAB+ are now the default terrestrial-radio standard across most of Europe, with significant penetration in Asia-Pacific and gradual rollouts elsewhere.
For advertisers, DAB's strategic importance is the richer metadata it carries: station logos, real-time now-playing information, scrolling text, and Programme Type (PTY) identifiers all travel alongside the audio. That metadata fuels receiver-side experiences — automatic station seeking by genre, visual display of ad sponsors, dashboard integration in modern cars — that analog FM simply cannot support.
Why it matters
DAB+ allows for rich metadata transmission (radiotext) and vastly superior spectrum efficiency compared to traditional analog FM broadcasts.
Related terms
- HD Radio— The proprietary in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio standard utilized predominantly across North American markets.
- PTY (Programme Type)— An RDS and DAB alphanumeric code transmitted to categorize the overall format or content of the station (e.
- A-D Converter— Analog-to-Digital Converter; specialized hardware that translates continuous analog electrical signals into binary digital data (1s and 0s).
- Actuality (Sound Bite)— Unfiltered, raw audio recordings captured on location outside the controlled studio, featuring interviews or ambient background sound.