DAB Radio

italiastar

My wife bought me one for christmas - first impressions are not good. My 30 year old Roberts sounds much much better and picks up FM stations that the new one won't touch. Yes there are a load of new stations, but nothing I want to listen to. Out of the two stations I want to listen to, it picks up one, but can't find the other. Battery life is appaling - it stopped working after 4 hours on a set of rechargables that last about 50 hours in my Roberts. It does come with a mains adaptor, but my main use is in the bathroom.

Does anyone have any recommendations / advice.

Norman-B

Take it back for a refund!
I was given a personal DAB radio (Pure) as a gift and I'm disappointed with the reception. My Grundig (DAB) picks up 50% more stations than the Pure.

penrhyn

DAB radios are power hungry, seems to be the current state of the technology. I run mine off the mains adaptor, unless I'm in the bath.
Which one were you given italiastar?
I've got an Evoke 1, and an Elan both by Pure.The Elan will run for about 8 hours on battery if the display backlight in turned off.
I do find that the number of stations they will pick up is position dependent, but I can always get 5 Live and BBC 7 so i'm happy.

esuhl

I bought a Hitachi DAB radio with nxt (flat) speakers for my mum. The sound was TERRIBLE!!! It sounded more muffled than my £5 pocket radio, yet cost £90! Thank goodness I kept the receipt!

wonderfullife_2

Hi
Bought this one for a colleague whose in hospital, he loves it. http://www.nevadaradio.co.uk/acatalog/Nevada.html winner of the prestigious "What Hi-Fi" best handheld radio award

albertross_2

The low quality sound is down to the bit rate. They have crammed too many stations into the available bandwidth, the consequence is that many have to be encoded with a low bit rate, and therefore sound like they are under water.. That's progress for you!

There are some more details here:

http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/freq_find/DAB_improve.html

May

Hi everyone - not sure if this relates to the threads as above but I got bought a DAB radio for christmas. I have tried relentlessly to tune it in. The FM radio works on it but when it comes to tuning in the DAB - it's just not happening. Is it something i'm doing wrong? I live on the outskirts of the M25 and signal can be poor which why I thought a DAB would have no problems at all.

penrhyn

DAB radios tune themselves in by scanning the available channels, you then select by station name.
Reception can be patchy have you checked you can receive in your area?
Of course it may just be faulty, which model is it?

May

i didn't realise that you had to check that you are in a compatible area as I'm all very new to it. My partners grandparents can't get Freeview and they live 10 mins down the road from us so maybe it's the same for us with the DAB.
I'll take it back to the shop - what a disappointment!!!!

penrhyn

http://www.bbc.co.uk/digitalradio/listen/postcode.shtml

There you go.

May

Thanks for that - Post code is not recognised so it looks like I can't receive DAB in my area