DAB Radios now available at Argos (in store) for under £20, but be quick!

codger

martyw wrote: »

Yup, sadly things used to be built a bit more solidly than todays cheap stuff (not sure that Goodmans would have been considered cheap back then!). Brands have changed significantly - who actually owns them, their price points, where goods are manufactured and of course resultant quality.


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Spot on, marty. I can remember when the Bush brand stood for the highest quality, and if you shelled out a lot for a Grundig, then that was money well spent. Whereas now. . .

martyw

deeor wrote: »

From a "green" standpoint don't DAB radios consume more power than other types?

In terms of the actual decoding circuits, that certainly has been the case so far, although they are getting closer to FM all the time (but we're talking a couple of hundred milliWatts here - about 300 times less than a 60W lightbulb). Actual power consumption though will also depend on how you're listening - big hifi or portable set with small speakers, and volume levels, plus efficiency of the designs. So never quite as clear cut as the tabloid headline ;-)


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steve_green_3

Just to clear a few things up: DAB provides lower sound quality than FM if you have good reception on both DAB and FM. The reason why the sound quality is worse is that the broadcasters have squeezed too many stations onto DAB and this has resulted in them using bit rate levels (i.e. data rates) that are too low with an old audio format (DAB uses MP2) - if you use MP3, the quality is like if you encoded your audio at a bit rate of about 64 kbps or 80 kbps, whereas nobody ever uses a bit rate lower than 128 kbps for MP3, and most people use 192 kbps nowadays.

FM obviously suffers from hiss if you don't have good reception, but by the same token lots of people suffer from a burbling or bubbling mud sound on DAB - which is the DAB equivalent of poor reception quality. And only about 85% of the population have DAB coverage, compared to 98% being able to receive FM.

On the issue of DAB+, the broadcasters and receiver manufacturers have been desperately trying to mislead the public about DAB+ so that sales of non-upgradeable DAB radios are not affected in the period before all digital radios support DAB+.

It's not exactly the end of the world that these £20 DAB radios won't be able to receive DAB+, because they're so cheap, but DAB+ stations are likely to launch within the next 2-3 years, and the public should be provided with this information so that they can make their own minds up about whether to buy a DAB radio or whether to wait for one that can receive DAB+.

DAB+-upgradeable radios are beginning to appear, such as these:

http://www.pure-digital.com/Products/Product.asp?Product=VL-60909&PageType=Specs
http://www.pure-digital.com/Products/Product.asp?Product=VL-60907&PageType=Specs

and there will be a number of DAB+-upgradeable radios coming out prior to Christsmas. Pure Digital (the market leader) has also said that 80% of its radios will support DAB+ by the end of next year, and in 2009 they will switch to only selling ones that support DAB+. And once a few million DAB+ receivers have been sold - which will be within the next 2-3 years - DAB+ stations are bound to launch.

Anyway, the best bargain in terms of portable radios at the moment is this Wi-Fi Internet radio at £40:

http://www.currys.co.uk/product.php?sku=901880

There's over 7,600 Internet stations available on these Wi-Fi radios, and the audio quality of lots of Internet stations is already higher than on DAB. See:

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/broadband_internet_radio.htm

anafurn

I bought an Alba from Argos in Brighton this morning and it's working fine in my office right now. Not as good quality as my wood-case Roberts at home but for the price it's fine. Thanks for the tip.

steve_green_3

martyw wrote: »

Have you listened to other DAB models? Which DAB radio did you buy? What signal strength does it show?

Maybe your freeview receiver/hifi is better quality than your DAB radio..? There's no reason DAB should sound worse unless a) your equipment is poor, or b) your signal is poor.

The audio quality of a digital radio station is manly determined by the bit rate level it uses, and the bit rate levels of the BBC stations are higher on Freeview than they are on DAB, and the bit rates of the BBC stations and a lot of commercial stations are higher on satellite. See:

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/digital_radio_bit_rates.htm

L.S.D.

NMarshall wrote: »

the sound is like something coming out of a bucket, with the higher frequencies non existent.

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Here we go again. GET YOUR EARS TESTED. I'm sick of people running down DAB radio. I'd happily give them a blind test to compare FM with DAB etc & I know they would not be able to tell the difference.

codger

steve_green wrote: »

The audio quality of a digital radio station is manly determined by the bit rate level it uses, and the bit rate levels of the BBC stations are higher on Freeview than they are on DAB, and the bit rates of the BBC stations and a lot of commercial stations are higher on satellite. See:

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/dab/digital_radio_bit_rates.htm

steve -- what super posts, many thanks! (Now I'm going to have to spend a week, trying to figure out all the terminology :eek: )

Sherioushly though, it's good to hear from someone who knows about this particular issue: I've only been able to go on a subjective evaluation (DAB radio versus Freeview radio) until now.

Stuartli

If you want to find out the truth about DAB quality, go to:

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/digital_radio_samples.htm

Prepared to be surprised.

steve_green_3

L.S.D. wrote: »

Here we go again. GET YOUR EARS TESTED. I'm sick of people running down DAB radio. I'd happily give them a blind test to compare FM with DAB etc & I know they would not be able to tell the difference.

No, we don't need our ears testing, I'm afraid.

What kind of DAB receiver do you own? The vast majority of DAB receivers are small portable radios, so it's a good bet that that's what you own, but claiming that DAB sounds just as good as FM on a small portable radio is like saying that HDTV looks no better than standard-definition TV because you're watching it on a standard-definition 14" portable set!

DAB does sound worse than FM, it's a fact, so long as you get reasonable reception quality on FM. Sorry.

steve_green_3

codger wrote: »

steve -- what super posts, many thanks! (Now I'm going to have to spend a week, trying to figure out all the terminology :eek: )

It's pretty easy really. DAB and the radio stations on the digital TV platforms all use the MP2 audio codec, which is like an older version of MP3. So to compare the audio quality of the stations on DAB with those on Freeview just compare the bit rate levels they use - the BBC uses higher bit rates on the digital TV platforms, so the audio quality is higher.

Sherioushly though, it's good to hear from someone who knows about this particular issue: I've only been able to go on a subjective evaluation (DAB radio versus Freeview radio) until now.

And you're absolutely right. It's just a shame that the BBC withholds the fact that their stations have better audio quality on the digital TV platforms...