DAB radio

[dragon]

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...text%3EDAB.htm

Got one of these earlier.... they were showing as £20 on there yesterday, went in the store and they were still £20 in there so bought one

Unfortunately was in a building thats bad for reception so it only found 2 muxes of those only 1 was of u suitable signal strength although that just happened to be the digital1 mux which had the station i wanted on it

Fm tuner works, inbuilt speaker seems a bit tinny but not bad I spose given the size of the thing sounds much better if you plug in some other speakers tho

Certainly worth £20 although I'm not sure i'd pay £40 (what it was orginally supposed to be) for a little portable radio though...

Have you compared the sound quality of the equivelent DAB and FM stations?
DAB should have been brilliant, instead its over compressed. Too many channels per mux.

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

Have you compared the sound quality of the equivelent DAB and FM stations?
DAB should have been brilliant, instead its over compressed. Too many channels per mux.

Not in depth.... but then like i said its a little portable radio anyway...
least with digital its either all or nothing if theres one thing I can't stand its hearing static on the radio....

Wander what Bitrate and compression codec they use for DAB.

Its the same with digital tv To many channels squeezed in and the bitrate suffers.

Originally Posted by dragon

Not in depth.... but then like i said its a little portable radio anyway...
least with digital its either all or nothing if theres one thing I can't stand its hearing static on the radio....

Wander what Bitrate and compression codec they use for DAB.

Its the same with digital tv To many channels squeezed in and the bitrate suffers.

My ears seem to be particularly irritated by compression. DAB also uses Musicam same as cable etc. However the bitrates used for DAB are lower than used for cable/satellite. 192kb/s typical for cable/sat, 128kb/s typical for DAB.

[dragon]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

My ears seem to be particularly irritated by compression. DAB also uses Musicam same as cable etc. However the bitrates used for DAB are lower than used for cable/satellite. 192kb/s typical for cable/sat, 128kb/s typical for DAB.

I have some mp3's encoded at 128kb/s depending on the music I can sometimes hear the compression...

Anything lower though sounds awful...

I prefer 192kps minimum although lately ive been encoding at 392kps VBR if MP3 or FLAC

[Matth]

DAB V1 uses MP2, not even MP3.
DAB V2 uses AAC+, but since the UK has about the largest investment in old style DAB, it will be a long time coming.

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ - The truth about DAB

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da..._bit_rates.htm Bitrates - and remember this is MP2, inferior to MP3, which has also been surpassed by AAC+ and most other more recent codecs

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/ar...xt-3-years.php Or launching (podcast services) from next year

[Xaccers]

I was looking at a DAB radio for my car, after doing some research I concluded there was absolutely no point.
Most countries that were pushing DAB stopped quite quicky, and apart from in the UK there's very little coverage around the world simply because other nations that dabbled with digital radio realised that a technology developed in the 80's is just too outdated.
There are much better systems out there, but at the moment there are too many so there's no point in countries pushing any particular one or else they'll be stuck (like the UK is) with antiquated systems which cost too much to update.
DAB is an excellent argument against the "choice is everything" argument.
I don't want 100 radio stations causing each one to have to sound worse than analogue, I want just a couple of stations that cater for people's tastes and have great sound quality.

[MovedGoalPosts]

DAB in my experience has offered no better a quality than that previously available on FM wavelengths. Indeed unless you have a good aerial I find that frequently I get poor reception and break up of the sound, something only rarely experienced over FM. On that basis I'd hate to have to use DAB in a car.

The other question that I don't think is really getting addressed is how do you make non DAB equipment DAB reception capable? With TV you can add a separate STB, so the older kit that is around can still be used. Many radios only have built in aerials and the like. Adding an equivalent of a STB to decode the DAB signal and pump that to the standard radio would be costly, in proportion to a replacement radio, and technically it would confuse many. What about all the built in car radios, many of which are specific (due to antitheft) to the vehicle. Costs would really add up. I just don't see how there could be an analogue radio switch off.

Originally Posted by Rob

DAB in my experience has offered no better a quality than that previously available on FM wavelengths. Indeed unless you have a good aerial I find that frequently I get poor reception and break up of the sound, something only rarely experienced over FM. On that basis I'd hate to have to use DAB in a car.

The other question that I don't think is really getting addressed is how do you make non DAB equipment DAB reception capable? With TV you can add a separate STB, so the older kit that is around can still be used. Many radios only have built in aerials and the like. Adding an equivalent of a STB to decode the DAB signal and pump that to the standard radio would be costly, in proportion to a replacement radio, and technically it would confuse many. What about all the built in car radios, many of which are specific (due to antitheft) to the vehicle. Costs would really add up. I just don't see how there could be an analogue radio switch off.

Theres no point in making a device to allow you to listen to DAB on an old analogue radio when it will cost as much as a standalone DAB radio.
The only reason that its been done to allow existing TV's to be used is because the expense is in the display. The tuner is cheap to make relatively.

Only the tuner in old TV's becomes obselete, for digital radio its a like for like complete replacement of equipment. DAB doesn't even use the old analogue frequencies.

[dragon]

Fortuneantly the radio I bought has FM as well so even if Dab does go down the Toilet Its not useless until they Turn off FM (which if that site is to be believed will last longer than DAB)

The DAB is nice to have since it sometimes means I can pickup a station that I couldn't get decent reception on in FM and as a portable radio to listen to in the background it sounds ok

If I was buying a radio to listen to at home I'd probably only buy a DAB one if it also worked for FM and was about the same price as a standard radio.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

Theres no point in making a device to allow you to listen to DAB on an old analogue radio when it will cost as much as a standalone DAB radio.
The only reason that its been done to allow existing TV's to be used is because the expense is in the display. The tuner is cheap to make relatively.

Only the tuner in old TV's becomes obselete, for digital radio its a like for like complete replacement of equipment. DAB doesn't even use the old analogue frequencies.

DAB recievers for non-DAB devices are available.

If you've got a decent hi-fi system that's cost you a pretty packet, it's cheaper to get just a reciever and connect it to one of the inputs than replace the whole system with a new one which can do DAB.

Originally Posted by Xaccers

DAB recievers for non-DAB devices are available.

If you've got a decent hi-fi system that's cost you a pretty packet, it's cheaper to get just a reciever and connect it to one of the inputs than replace the whole system with a new one which can do DAB.

If your HiFi is line in (or even SPDIF) then yes an add on DAB tuner is the way to go. My SPDIF output DAB tuner is in the garage, where its been for the last three years, unused.

[Stuart]

I've had two DAB pocket radios. One goodmans one that worked well (ish) but frequently lost reception and/or crashed.

Eventually, I got sick of this, and replaced it with a Sony combi FM/DAB pocket radio that, if anything, has worse problems with reception (when it's working, it gives a brilliant sound though, although I had to buy a set of decent headphones), and is so badly made that I am on my second after two years, and it's already on it's way out. The first one died when it crashed, and in an attempt to get it working again, I had to pull the battery which they advise you not to do. This was obviously a known fault because the second had a reset button that meant you don't have to pull the battery. However, most of the controls on the front of no.2 have failed, so I have to use the remote.

Looks sexy though.

---------- Post added at 10:56 ---------- Previous post was at 10:53 ----------

In fact, here is a uneccesarily favourable review of it: http://www.trustedreviews.com/multim...t-DAB-Tuner/p1