Digital radio's dab ?

[Stixy]

Are these digital / dab car radio's  any  good ?

 

I have a portable one but that only works when it feels like it with reception problems 

[Keymaster]

They're pretty good.

 

Got one of these in my camper:

 

 

It's DAB wire runs up the A-Pillar & the aerial is stuck to the windscreen:

 

 

Works well, doesn't tend to cut out or go garbled, which is more than can be said for the DAB system in the Gatekeeper's brand new Focus!

[Slartibartfast]

Yes. I have a factory one in my modern Ford, and I had an aftermarket one for a year or so in my older car. They were both great. Very occasional signal dropout but not enough to make me prefer FM ever. YMMV if you listen to anything not BBC (I don't).

[Supernaut]

The 316 has a DAB radio, and it picks up digital stations. I can't for the life of me find the extra aerial though! It's just got the standard radio at the trailing edge of the roof.

[Dave_Q]

I have an identical setup to Keymaster, works fine everywhere although I only really listen to the BBC stations. 

 

Mine was about 40 quid reduced at Halfords as it was missing a £4 adaptor, aerial was £20. 

 

Never tried a splitter but if people think they are good I'll give one a try if/when I get a DAB for my other car.

[SiC]

The 316 has a DAB radio, and it picks up digital stations. I can't for the life of me find the extra aerial though! It's just got the standard radio at the trailing edge of the roof.

Moderns tend to have their radio antennas as part of the heating wires on the rear glass. Often the roof antenna is either for GPS & mobile or just a fake.

[richardmorris]

I love mine. Not used fm since I fitted it. They're quite dependent on the quality of the aerial though.

 

I bought my pure radio 2nd hand and checked out dabonwheels.co.uk for the aerial.

[Pillock]

Don't get DAB, that's being phased out - get DAB+

Also probably do a bit of research first to see if you're going to listen to it. FM is around for a few years yet and sounds better than most DAB stations which tend to broadcast in 32, 48 or 64kbps mono. Yup, that's right - thirty years after mainstream cars had an FM Stereo radio, we're back to Mono. 

Essentially if you're listening to something available on FM, stick with that until you have to change.

 

The stations available on DAB are: The BBC range, twenty "pop music" stations which play the same 30 tunes all day every day, a handful of 70s/80s/90s specialist stations that play the same thirty tracks all day every day, just from decades ago, a HUGE amount of Christian radio stations (don't know if they get cheaper licences for being religious, or whether Christians are really generous with donations, but there's a lot of them), a handful of other religion stations, and one or two "alternative music" stations. Most of them are low budget, so adverts every other song plus really cheesy DJs and low bandwidth.

 

I'm just pissed off that the only station I could bear to listen to, Team Rock, was priced out of the market as the licence is hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they were trying to not have adverts. And the space got taken by another Christian radio station.

 

As for reception - my Astra rarely lost signal on the built in head unit, that had a aerial in the "shark fin". My BMW loses signal more often, often in weird places, I think that has a rear window aerial.

[beko1987]

I keep wanting a dab (or dab+) setup, must push the button next bonus month and treat myself to a setup I can fit car to car. Did find a nice JVC setup, along with a £40 dab/fm long roof aerial

 

One day! The FM in the xantia is shit, and it must be its aerial or radio or both as it was always bob on in the ZX with its million foot long aerial and lidl cheapy headunit

[Dave_Q]

I'm sure the main BBC channels are in 128kbps stereo.

 

Many of the commercial stations are gash, in both quality and content, I've mainly got one to listen to 1xtra.

[Richard]

I've been using my Blaupunkt DAB since 2005 until I got an OEM Premium Sound System for the 850 last October.

 

 

I soldered a wire between the two antenna plugs and have always run it off the car's FM aerial. It's always worked nearly everywhere that I get FM reception and some places you don't.

[Pillock]

I'm sure the main BBC channels are in 128kbps stereo.

 

Many of the commercial stations are gash, in both quality and content, I've mainly got one to listen to 1xtra.

 

Yeah, should probably not have tarred them all with the same brush - the BBC use a different transmission network which is higher quality, I think you're right. They're listenable, Absolute Radio rarely is. Sounds like me trying to get a whole album onto my 16MB MP3 player in 2001.

[richardmorris]

The pure 260 I have is dab+. I listen to classic fm, radio 3,4 and 5. 4 extra, 5extra. It's a lot better than fiddling with tuning in fm and MW while driving.

 

In fact driving home from work today I managed to drown out some beat box type stuff in the Saxo behind ( do I sound old?) with classic fm playing Mahler. I do like death in Venice and All windows down in the merc pillar less coupe!

[Richard]

 

 

One day! The FM in the xantia is shit, and it must be its aerial or radio or both as it was always bob on in the ZX with its million foot long aerial and lidl cheapy headunit

 

Does the Xantia have the short aerial? They don't work. I think I have a long version in the shed, I'll bring it to Cholmondeley if you're going.

[richardmorris]

Does the Xantia have the short aerial? They don't work. I think I have a long version in the shed, I'll bring it to Cholmondeley if you're going.

Unscrew the aerial and clean up the threads before copper slipping and refitting. It " may" help, but generally the longer ones do seem more reliable.

[beko1987]

Does the Xantia have the short aerial? They don't work. I think I have a long version in the shed, I'll bring it to Cholmondeley if you're going.

It's not as long as the ZX's one, but longer than the stupid bee sting one I bought the Puma once, that was fucking shit! 

 

I'm not going to chodmingerly sadly, but thank you for your kind offer. I may treat it to a new aerial one day, it has more important issues to contend with for now!

[Dave_Q]

Yeah, should probably not have tarred them all with the same brush - the BBC use a different transmission network which is higher quality, I think you're right. They're listenable, Absolute Radio rarely is. Sounds like me trying to get a whole album onto my 16MB MP3 player in 2001.

 

I think the system is the same, they just choose to use the space differently. For 1 x 128kbps stereo station I assume you can fit 4 x 64kbps mono or 8 x 32kbps mono.

 

This http://www.wohnort.org/DAB/uknat.html#D2 shows the quality* level of one of the big national commercial multiplexes, "Magic Chilled" for example is played by converting the songs to a Nokia 3210 compatible ringtone and broadcasting via morse code.

[chaseracer]

Richard, bring the aerial to Chumblebumley anyway.  One of us is bound to be heading Beko's way soon!

[Timewaster]

I have a Sony in the Sierra, (which I haven't actually driven for about 4 years) and it is utterly shit.

 

Of no use whatsoever.

 

I have tried a proper aerial which made it slightly less useless but not much.

 

Therefore for years I was of the opinion that in-car DAB simply doesn't work.

 

A colleague bought a Honda with a factory fit DAB and he says it's fine, I have since had a Instignia hire car with DAB and it was pretty good.

 

So in summary.... Sony stuff is crap.

[beko1987]

Richard, bring the aerial to Chumblebumley anyway. One of us is bound to be heading Beko's way soon!

Very kind!

[Kiltox]

Moderns tend to have their radio antennas as part of the heating wires on the rear glass. Often the roof antenna is either for GPS & mobile or just a fake.

Dat future yo

 

Honestly had no idea that was a thing but it sounds ace apart from the fact a broken window would take your radio out too for a double kick in the balls

[Richard]

That's been a thing for a long time, the Mk3 Granada had it.

[BorniteIdentity]

The FM glass aerials are far, far better than they have any right to be.  However, for DAB you really are better off with a proper body mounted antenna if you live anywhere that's not exactly metropolitan.

 

As for sound quality?  It's not just the fact that stations are 128kbps that cause the problem, but that the encoding is MP2 rather than MP3 that we are now used to.  In essence, the UK took so much time committing to the technology - the we ended up committing to one that was obsolete within 2 years of launch (when tuners were still £700).

 

DAB is not what it was first envisaged, but then what is?  If you want more choice - then get one.  If you want better quality - get a device with free data and use that 'in car'.

[Lacquer Peel]

I get 3G where FM drops out on the A9, streaming is the future.

Satellite radio, popular in the land of guns and Trump, seems like a better idea than DAB.

[Kiltox]

DAB is still an improvement on FM/AM in a lot of cases - how many people have cars where sound quality is that important and aren't just drowning out rattling trim/etc ?

[CortinaDave]

DAB is crap. Its marketed as crystal clear digital quality when as has been said its usually mono and low bitrate with horrible processing and not a patch on FM.even the 128k streams are a poor second. that said... that doesnt matter if youre listening through the single dash speaker in an S reg cortina.

 

A lot of the extra stations available are literally a playlist with occasional recorded jingles coming from a PC in a cupboard somewhere. Its never really taken off in the 15 years its been around and the tech is already outdated and likely to be superseded by DAB plus which will render a lot of recievers useless.

 

Check what is aailable in your area as it varies massively and not all stations on FM are also on DAB.

 

For me 3G streaming will take over long before FM dies and DaB will die off like minidiscs did when ipods arrived.

 

I work in radio and very few of us in the industry are at all keen on it.

[Disco Fever]

^^what CD said. I really like 6 music but current car has digital TV but not DAB which is just daft but there you go. I use one of those Sonichi devices which gets the signal from an aerial suctioned to the windscreen and then retransmits it to a bit of empty FM space that you tune the car radio to. Works better than you might imagine to be fair.

[Richard]

I was once bollocked by a friend just for having a DAB radio in my boot. I mostly listen to 4 Extra and 6 Music (which definitely broadcasts in stereo) on mine.

 

It's a bit like satellite/cable TV- dozens of channels of dross just to get two or three extra stations that you might want.

[Stixy]

Thanks for the opinions    

 

I havent bothered with the radio for years just had the ipod on shuffle  but but recently heard about a non bbc station that isnt avaiable on fm and bought a portable handheld set to listen to it on problem is if i move it while its on it looses reception so was looking for somthing for the car .

 

I live in Lincolnshire so there is very little choice on the radio  .

[Timewaster]

oh. I forgot to bleat on about battery life on portable DABs too.

 

I had a Sony (never learn) portable that I used to use for work. 4 AA batteries would last a whole week on FM and about 20 minutes on DAB.