DAB Radio

houndour

Interesting post...I looked into DAB radios as I was buying my mum one for Christmas. After reading about problems on other sites about poor reception/quality I opted for a £25 Sony FM radio that sounds great in my opinion. Think I did the right thing. plus it meant I got to buy mum other pressies.

I'm sure DAB will improve. It's just one of those new things thats not really quite ready for the public but they decide to launch anyway.

Woby_Tide

houndour wrote:

Interesting post...I looked into DAB radios as I was buying my mum one for Christmas. After reading about problems on other sites about poor reception/quality I opted for a £25 Sony FM radio that sounds great in my opinion. Think I did the right thing. plus it meant I got to buy mum other pressies.

I'm sure DAB will improve. It's just one of those new things thats not really quite ready for the public but they decide to launch anyway.

Got to disagree insome ways, to some evidently the quality isn't to what people want or expect but I tend to use our DAb radio in a noisyish environment i.e. kitchen where the quality isn't that much of an issue whereas teh content is, with FM/MW radio I had less choice and in respect of MW much less quality. Now with DAB I have much better choice and quality i.e Radio 5/5 Extra/Talksport is much better. I'm glad they did a public launch before bothering to sort out the mor etechnical aspects which won't affect a fair majority of users

italiastar

Woby_Tide wrote:

Got to disagree insome ways, to some evidently the quality isn't to what people want or expect but I tend to use our DAb radio in a noisyish environment i.e. kitchen where the quality isn't that much of an issue whereas teh content is, with FM/MW radio I had less choice and in respect of MW much less quality. Now with DAB I have much better choice and quality i.e Radio 5/5 Extra/Talksport is much better. I'm glad they did a public launch before bothering to sort out the mor etechnical aspects which won't affect a fair majority of users

Apologies - I don't think I made my post clear as I am an FM listner - gave up AM years ago - in comparion to AM DAB is much much much better - if the station you want to listen to is on AM and available in your area on DAB then get one.

Unfortunately, in comparion to Digital TV - DAB is a poor relation, but as people have said it may improve. By the way, I've found the DAB stations on Digital satellite - worth knowing if you have this.

penrhyn

italiastar wrote:

Apologies - I don't think I made my post clear as I am an FM listner - gave up AM years ago - in comparion to AM DAB is much much much better - if the station you want to listen to is on AM and available in your area on DAB then get one.

Unfortunately, in comparion to Digital TV - DAB is a poor relation, but as people have said it may improve. By the way, I've found the DAB stations on Digital satellite - worth knowing if you have this.

........and also on Freeview (where available). You will not however get your local radio station on Satellite or Freeview.

Flimber

superscotsman wrote:

When they are flogging these DAB digital radios, they don't tell you the following, you take the set all round the room till you find a spot where it receives. It's like the indoor aerials with the old black and white tv sets all over again.

With an analogue radio you just turn the knob till you hit the station, with one of these digital b*****ds, the station you are tuning into comes up on a little screen, and if you wear glasses for reading, you have to be wearing your specs to see it. You can't get any foreign stations on these things either.
You can get extra stations on these things but most of these extra stations are not worth the carrier wave it comes in on. The one exception is the BBC World Service, which you can get without the waxing and waning that you get on analogue.
I wasn't born a cynic but I am wondering if they are pushing these things so that we all have them and can't tune into foreign stations to find out what is REALLY going on in Rip-off Britain.
You can't get your local FM stations on them either.

One word: Presets. Most have 'em, some have more than others but they do the trick for me. You don't try and retune your TV everytime you want to switch channel do you ?

And why would you want, or even expect, foreign stations from your local DAB transmitter ?

Mike.

Ash3G

italiastar wrote:

Unfortunately, in comparion to Digital TV - DAB is a poor relation, but as people have said it may improve. By the way, I've found the DAB stations on Digital satellite - worth knowing if you have this.

I'm not sure what makes you say that.

For example, more people in the UK get a DAB service than a Freeview service.
Digital TV is no use in your car, and that's where 40% of radio listening is done!
Freeview doesn't even have existing national stations like Classic FM or Virgin Radio on it.
A digital satellite set-up will cost you more than a DAB set-up.

May

I managed to get a radio station on my DAB. Radio 2 and Arrow Rock(?!?!)
However, it's only possible in the kitchen and if I open the kitchen window - I lose the station. Bizarre i know!

It's a sony clock alarm radio with presets - although the instructions are the most complicated ever read. It wasn't cheap - but the sound quality is!
Still debating whether to return it to the shop

penrhyn

Something is very wrong, you have extended the aerial?
Have you tried it upstairs?
Could be you are just in a dead area, does it receive fm staions OK?
I'd take it back if nothing works, you could try a friend's known good DAB radio if they have one.

If all fails try and get a refund.

Found Arrow Rock by the way.

PS What is the exact model number?

albertross_2

Ash3G wrote:

I'm not sure what makes you say that.

The choice of stations is better on DAB, but the quality of the broadcast is generally better on Digital TV, due to the bandwidth limitations of DAB, resulting in a lower bit rate.

It's still much better than AM though, if you can afford to change the batteries every month.

italiastar

Ash3G wrote:

I'm not sure what makes you say that.

For example, more people in the UK get a DAB service than a Freeview service.
Digital TV is no use in your car, and that's where 40% of radio listening is done!
Freeview doesn't even have existing national stations like Classic FM or Virgin Radio on it.
A digital satellite set-up will cost you more than a DAB set-up.

Sorry I didn't make my statement clear - what I meant was that whereas Digital TV was a vast improvement over analogue, DAB clearly isn't - the sound quality is worse and selection of stations is both better and worse - ie you can pick up ones that don't exist on analgue, but cannot pick up fringe stations.

I'm not sure what relevance your argument about car listening has as how many cars have DAB radios?

In fact a digital satellite set-up will cost less than a decent DAB tuner - mine cost £100 (infact in lidl you can pick them up cheaper) and it picks up about 500 radio stations and 2000 tv channels - before you point it out - i'm not interested in the vast majority, but with it I can watch the same TV and listen to the same radio as my relatives 1000 miles away.

I really didn't want to get into the "mine is better than yours" argument. Just to say that from my experience, DAB was a dissapointment due to limited station availability, low quality sound and appaling battery performance - 4 Hours for me!