Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is a technology that allows high fidelity digital audio broadcasts to be made on regular analog radio frequencies. Mondiale is a French and Italian word meaning "worldwide." It requires a computer (or a computer chip inside the radio receiver) and a software program to decode the broadcast. In this case, I am using a computer with an external radio receiver on an outside antenna, a program to run the receiver, and a program to decode the DRM broadcast. 

Using an SDRPlay RSPdx with SDRUno software and Dream DMR decoder I was able to receive a very fine DRM broadcast from the BBC on 3955 KHz. The antenna is a 204 foot Inverted L about 50 feet above ground level with a 9:1 UNUN at the base fed with coax. This DRM signal was received on 01-05-2024 at 06-57 UTC in Dennis MA US.

BBC DRM 01 05 2024 06 57 utc S

BBC DreamListen to the recording using the player below.  

You can hear how clear the signal sounds. It is FM radio quality without any static. The occassional drop-outs were bursts of atmospheric noise. This appears as noise on the raw DRM broadcast signal. Because the broadcast is being decoded from digital to analog, the noise disrupts the decoding so the noise appears as a drop-out (silence) in the decoded audio. The recording was made directly from the Dream audio feed to the computer.


BBC QSL S

Here is the QSL Card received from the BBC acknowledging the reception report.