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Bitrates

DAB provides a flexible platform that permits the capacity of a DAB ensemble to be allocated with very fine granularity to the services carried. The situation is different in different countries according to national regulation, commercial issues and a host of other factors, so there is no "typical" audio bitrate. 

In some ensembles, the total capacity is divided equally across a number of services and each service operates at the same bit rate, whilst in others, each service provider pays according to the capacity they use and in these ensembles a large range of bit rates may be present.

Bit rates for audio services (using DAB+ audio coding) are generally in the range from 40 kbps to 88 kbps, although lower and higher bitrates are also used by some services. In some cases, the "headline" bit rate may appear to be higher because additional visual content is provided using the SlideShow application - the capacity used for audio will be 8 to 16 kbps lower than the subchannel bit rate.