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[UncleUB]

Hi all,I,m looking to buy a DAB radio but don,t know much about them.My main consideration is sound quality as I am very hard of hearing.Can anyone give me some ideas.

[jazz]

I think you should find very good sound clarity on most DAB radios.  I have a small "Pure" DAB radio (actually a rechargeable battery portable) that I got for about £80 at John Lewis.  I got it for using in the garden and to test how good DAB reception was around our house before spending any more on another radio. 

I have found the sound quality to be very good but even better is when I use the Headphones output socket on the radio to link it to my stereo speakers - that is really first class. 

The other BIG advantage of a DAB radio (IMO) is that you can listen to "The Jazz" which is a brilliant station.

[roseway]

If it's for use in a fixed position you can get a perfectly decent stereo with DAB radio for less than £100. I got a Sony one from Comet and I'm very pleased with it.

[guest]

Can I suggest that anyone wanting DAB radio goes to :

http://www.ukdigitalradio.com/coverage/search/default.asp

then put your postcode in.

While DAB coverage is great in most urban areas it can be non-existant in some rural areas. It is very much like the comparison between analogue TV and digital TV - in fact its identical. You will get better sound quality as FM stereo only has an audio bandwidth of 15kHz whereas 128kbps MP3 (common DAB radio quality) will have an audio bandwidth of about 18kHz. In short it'll sound almost as good as a CD. For me (I'm nearly 40) I couldn't tell the difference between 128kbps DAB and a CD - I've tried and I can't tell the difference except on some very quiet classical pieces. You can tell the difference there as background noise (nearly silence in the studio) sounds artificial on an MP3. In my humble opinion of course - I am no audiophile

The way it is identical to digital TV is that it has roughly the same coverage as TV (DAB is broadcast at about 240MHz) and that if you get a signal which is bad enough then you will simply get a load of whistles and pops rather than intelligible audio. That's the way "digital" audio/TV in the UK works, so no hearing static on DAB - you get perfect audio or nothing. Well you can have a channel that comes and goes as with AM/FM but it won't be something you would listen to.

In my opinion you WILL get what you pay for with a DAB receiver. We have two - a no-name portable and the Pure DBX-25 I mentioned in another thread. The portable gets 17 stations and takes perhaps 2 to 5 seconds to tune to another station. The DBX-25 gets 31 stations and on 20 of those (or so) it takes under a second to tune to another station. You also need to look at the maximum bitrate the DAB radio can manage - for new (decent) radios it should be 192kbps. I suspect that the portable we have only "receives" 17 stations as some of the stations are at bitrates it can't handle.

Oh there are also things called "subchannels" - like for example Radio4 LW gets transmitted as a subchannel on the Radio4 DAB multiplex. Basically its possible to add another channel temporarily for an event (eg cricket on R4 LW). This normally results in (for example) R4 DAB and R4 LW sharing the bitrate R4 DAB normally gets - practical effect might be that R4 DAB would go mono during the R4 LW cricket broadcast.

If you are asking "Will this be better than AM/FM?" then the answer is oh yes, there is no comparison Check your coverage first though.

Hope this helps.

Edit - R4 LW = Radio 4 longwave.

[Floydoid]

Edit - R4 LW = Radio 4 longwave.

Us oldies are familiar with terms such as LW (and MW).

[Achilles Last Stand]

I'm desperately hanging onto my MW radio alarm as I can't get Arrow on FM and it's a cracking station to wake up with.

[guest]

I take it you don't live in the following areas then Steph :

"London, South Wales & the West Country, the West Midlands, the North West, Yorkshire, the North East or Central Scotland."

Their website (www.thearrow.co.uk) claims you can get the station on DAB in those areas.

Edit - then again I could just have looked at your profile 

[Achilles Last Stand]

then again I could just have looked at your profile

   


And I meant the Dutch station http://www.arrow.nl/rock/ anyways  wall-to-wall rock (or jazz) with just a couple of minutes talk at the top of the hour.  Perfect for waking up 

[kitz]

Aldi have a DAB radio on one of their "specials" this sunday.

http://uk.aldi.com/sunday_special_buys/productnl_466.html

Dont know if its any good or not though Im afraid... 
but I have had made several other Tevion purchases over the past few years which have been pretty good.

[exo]

Hi, due to the already congested bandwidth with DAB, at some point in the future, we will use/convert to DAB+ which the rest of the world already use. Don't ask me why we did not use that in the first place, guess the BBC wanted to use their own technology.
More information here if interested.

http://tinyurl.com/2fnjgp

http://tinyurl.com/2nne6u

http://tinyurl.com/ywdqsy

exo

[jabns]

I wack a 3g card in my laptop and listen to the hardcore(i don't think Scott Brown is to everyones taste LOL) station at di.fm but i surpose thats cheating  .

James

[jack8]

I think the Jazz and Planet Rock are both under pressure to close. I hope they survive

[jazz]

Arfraid The Jazz closed on 31 March last - dreadful shame

[Ezzer]

I got a phillips pocket DAB radio which cost me £100. The volume heard depends on the headphones, it can be drowned out by heavy traffic

When I first got it about 2 years ago the signal would constantly break up as I walked around norwich. It's FM as a back up which wasn't much help if i want to listen to the footy on radio 5 am, but after a few months there was a definate improvement and now i can pick a signal up almost anywhere, so there must have been an upgrade to the transmitters.

I would recomend you borrow a friends dab and try it in the areas your thinking of using it before buying one. I tried mine at my parents house in Luton before getting them one. can't remember the make but its one of those with a beech wood casing and a brushed aluminium finish on the front, batteries last quite some time and it has a mains adaptor, the sound is excelent.

Otherwise for work I have a Morphy Richards wind up radio, not dab as I use it for locating REIN faults, other wise its ruggadised and rain proof, Picks up MW,FM,LW,SW. I think it's designed with hikers in mind (even has a chirpping alarm, incase of being buired by snow ?) Runs of AA batteries which last ages, 2 mins of winding will give 30 mins of use and it has a 3v socket for a mains adaptor. Its a good little radio and cost £24 from comet (havn't seen it in any other store so far)