Car DAB radio and AM?

chrisw

How about a DAB adaptor for your existing radio?

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/product-group-tests/88304/best-dab-car-radio-adaptors

Car_54

facade said:

Could be down to the trendy bee sting aerial I suppose, I've been looking out for a longer mast without success.

My physics classes were a long time ago, but I don't think a longer aerial will help. Indeed, it may be worse.

Username03725

The_stingemeister said:

It's hard to tell which bands they have, as they state AM, but it could mean it has AM but not on  a separate band. People will think I'm daft but was thinking of getting a DAB radio without the special aeriel. I wouldn't probably get their stations, but it would future proof me. Who knows, in the future, a tiny portable aerial may get invented? Don't really want the faff of another aerial fitting. I've seen two nice radios, one DAB and one non-DAB...for same price.

Can you clarify the sentence in bold please? AM is a waveband that sits between 531KHz &1602KHz. That's what MW or AM is (yes LW is also AM but it's not MW). What would 'has AM but not on a separate band' mean? On a car radio you select the band you want to listen to - FM, AM, or DAB. There might be automatic switching on some sets but it's still going to a different band.

And to clarify the aerial discussion, a car will usually have aerials suitable for AM & FM and also for DAB hidden in the car, usually along a window edge as part of the heater assembly (but electrically separate). They're not ideal but do a good enough job for most cases. DAB uses a different frequency band that requires a different length aerial for optimum reception. Some people report different reception - e.g. the guy who loses 5L past CMK railway station has a different experience to me; it never drops out for me anywhere round there. Nor should it - the nearest relay is on on top of Brickhill Woods a handful of miles away in line of sight. Maybe the aerial position is less than optimum in some vehicles.

For an aftermarket DAB installation the existing aerial may be suitable only for FM & AM and an additional aerial might be needed for DAB. That's what I've found with the one I fitted recently - the splitter that sends the aerial feed to the analogue and the DAB inputs gets a signal to the DAB tuner, but it's rubbish so DAB is fine in a strong signal area but quickly breaks up and disappears out of the service area. In my reasonably up-to-date car, reception is rock solid wherever we go and never misses a beat as the aerial is designed for the job.

You might find a dual-band aerial with dual connectors, but tbh if you want reception you need something to achieve it with so an additional aerial makes more sense than buying a DAB set and either not using most of its benefits, or buying then waiting for a dual aerial to come on the market. A tiny aerial isn't the solution; it's to do with the physics of a radio wave's wavelength relative to the receptor - its length needs to correspond with the wavelength.

BOWFER

My 2015 Leaf didn't have dab, which was weird when my 2014 Juke did and they were both Tekna spec.
Anyway, I look at aftermarket DAB and it was the aerial that put me off.
Things may have progressed in the interim years, but at that time an aftermarket DAB aerial was a horrible thing stuck to the inside of the windscreen....yuck

mobileron

Sorry its wolverton Station not CMK. My aerial is on the passenger sideabove there head,hense never put satnav cable there.
Aerial technology is a fascinating subject as i remember well from my Radio Ham days,

The_stingemeister

Username03725 said:

The_stingemeister said:

It's hard to tell which bands they have, as they state AM, but it could mean it has AM but not on  a separate band. People will think I'm daft but was thinking of getting a DAB radio without the special aeriel. I wouldn't probably get their stations, but it would future proof me. Who knows, in the future, a tiny portable aerial may get invented? Don't really want the faff of another aerial fitting. I've seen two nice radios, one DAB and one non-DAB...for same price.

Can you clarify the sentence in bold please? AM is a waveband that sits between 531KHz &1602KHz. That's what MW or AM is (yes LW is also AM but it's not MW). What would 'has AM but not on a separate band' mean? On a car radio you select the band you want to listen to - FM, AM, or DAB. There might be automatic switching on some sets but it's still going to a different band.

And to clarify the aerial discussion, a car will usually have aerials suitable for AM & FM and also for DAB hidden in the car, usually along a window edge as part of the heater assembly (but electrically separate). They're not ideal but do a good enough job for most cases. DAB uses a different frequency band that requires a different length aerial for optimum reception. Some people report different reception - e.g. the guy who loses 5L past CMK railway station has a different experience to me; it never drops out for me anywhere round there. Nor should it - the nearest relay is on on top of Brickhill Woods a handful of miles away in line of sight. Maybe the aerial position is less than optimum in some vehicles.

For an aftermarket DAB installation the existing aerial may be suitable only for FM & AM and an additional aerial might be needed for DAB. That's what I've found with the one I fitted recently - the splitter that sends the aerial feed to the analogue and the DAB inputs gets a signal to the DAB tuner, but it's rubbish so DAB is fine in a strong signal area but quickly breaks up and disappears out of the service area. In my reasonably up-to-date car, reception is rock solid wherever we go and never misses a beat as the aerial is designed for the job.

You might find a dual-band aerial with dual connectors, but tbh if you want reception you need something to achieve it with so an additional aerial makes more sense than buying a DAB set and either not using most of its benefits, or buying then waiting for a dual aerial to come on the market. A tiny aerial isn't the solution; it's to do with the physics of a radio wave's wavelength relative to the receptor - its length needs to correspond with the wavelength.

My kitchen DAB radio has DAB and FM. The MW stations are on the DAB band. There is no MW/AM band.

Username03725

Ah I see. It's not MW on DAB, it's that some stations that are traditionally found on the MW band are also broadcast on DAB - e.g. BBC 5Live. But it doesn't mean that anything you listen to on MW will be available on DAB. You can if the source broadcaster for the station you're interested in has opted to broadcast it on DAB too. 

Jenni_D

As intimated previously, and just to clarify for the OP: LW and MW represent frequency bands. Any radio station using such bands will be broadcasting using AM ... Amplitude Modulation. Therefore MW does not specifically mean AM. (FM means Frequency Modulation, and such radio stations are using a higher frequency band. And of course, DAB is Digital Audio Broadcast).

Username03725

And of course as DAB is being replaced with the more efficient DAB+ that can squeeze more stations into the same frequency [waveband], the corresponding AM broadcasts will cease eventually. Many already have - have a gawp at the AM Death Watch thread here: https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2120727/the-am-death-watch-thread Started in 2012, currently at 207 pages although a lot of that is DS chatter.

It's not reasonable to assume that AM (and FM) stations that currently broadcast on both AM (or FM) and DAB will continue to do so indefinitely.

The_stingemeister

What I'm unsuccessfully trying to find out is, is there a separate band for Radio 5 and Talksport? Call it MW, AM or whatever you want.
For an example, below is a description of a DAB radio specifications:

Product features:

• iPod compatible.
• Generates 220 watts RMS - the average measurement of a speakers output.
• DAB/FM/AM radio.
• 18 preset stations allow you to save your favourite radio stations in memory.
• MP3 playback

Does the DAB/FM/AM radio mean 3 Separate bands? Or is AM just part of DAB, and if no special aerial..... unusable! If AM is separate, like FM, then that's alright.