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odr-padenc

Encodes the text and images that ride alongside a DAB service

What it does

Produces Programme Associated Data for a DAB service: the dynamic label that scrolls the track name across a receiver, and the slideshow images that accompany it, encoded and paced to fit the bit rate reserved for them.

Why you would want it

PAD is what makes a DAB service look finished on a receiver. A station with no dynamic label and no slides is technically correct and visibly amateur, and this is the piece that fixes that.

Before it will work

odr-audioenc to carry the encoded PAD alongside the audio, and a source for the text and images -- typically a playout system writing a file this watches.

How it installs

  • apt: odr-padenc

Known problems

PAD shares the service's bit rate, so generous slideshow settings cost audio quality; this trade is not automatic and is the usual thing to get wrong. Receivers vary in how much of the standard they implement and a slide that looks right in one may not appear in another.

Keeping it current

  • probe: apt policy
  • strategy: apt_upgrade

Where to get help with the software itself

The Open Digital Radio project. Debian declares opendigitalradio.org as the Homepage and that host answered nothing on http or https when checked on 2026-08-28 -- the same finding as the dablin manifest -- so the repository is cited. It is live: head of the default branch is ad48e104e654, 2025-09-10, read from the branch rather than from GitHub's updated_at (D-032).

Source: catalog/packages/odr-padenc.yaml