DAB digital radio

[steve threlfall]

Anyone here have one of these new fangled wireless's yet

My parents want one and i just wanted to see some first hand expeiences

Thinking of the popular evoke 1 model http://www.videologic.com/Releases/Release.asp?ID=173

but anyone with any expericence of digital radio- would you say it worth bothering with?



cheers

Ste

[Jonny M]

That's a pretty old model now, but still sells well. Don't bother with the second speaker you can get for it though.

A newer model, and currently shifing more than the Evoke is the intempo PG-01:

http://www.intempo-digital.co.uk/products/product.htm

[5lab]

where do you live? coverage is very poor in some areas of the country - might be worth getting one from argos so you can take it back if it dont work (or even if it does - you can then buy a good one)

[Theo]

We have the Evoke sitting here in our office. The missus was practically biting my ears off about not having XFM anymore (since she moved here, away from just outside London, last year), so she can listen to it now whenever she likes.

We don't really take advantage of all the additional radio channels, just XFM and Planet Rock, really.. but it's nice to have I guess. Wasn't my money that got spent, anyway

[Howard]

All the stations we listen to are on NTL and Freeview, so no need for a DAB box. If I was buying one, I'd get a proper hifi tuner, but I'm not really into radio so there's no point.

[5lab]

XFM is what i always used to listen to on DAB too.. back in the day of the wavefinder.. lol..

i really want denon to release a dab separate for their mini systems.. would be really nice.. til then im not upgrading my old (battered and broken) DM30 to a F101

[unrealrocks]

Yeah - DAB is good, although quite a few of the stations (like 1Xtra) have really low bitrates and sound worse than normal FM although the main ones R1-5 etc. are great, full 320Kbps and sounds brill. I'm not too sure about coverage although we're in a town and get all the channels we should in our area.

We've got this one sitting downstairs: http://www.arcam.co.uk/diva/hifi/DT81.html I wouldn't advise spending that much on it as its just not worth it, I went to hear the Acoustic Solutions box (around £100 I think) and although it was a little basic it sounded great for £100.

[unrealrocks]

http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/st...&storeId=10001 was that guy I think.

[5lab]

incidentally, for quite a lot of radio stations 320k is a bit pointless, as quite a few run off minidiscs anyways (ie radio 1) - it is however handy for classical etc radio, where you can hear the difference.

[Butuz]

Only problems with DAB are dodgy coverage in some areas, and poor sound quality due to all channels using low bit rate's - only Radio 3 and Classic FM broadcast at approaching hifi quality bit rate (192kb/s) the other stations mostly use 96-160KB/s in order to cram as much data into their bandwidth as they can, and hence cut costs.

This is unfortunate (as 90% of people who listen to DAB have no actual idea that theyre listening to low-mid quality MP3 streams, the situation wont change until people realise theyre being short changed and pipe up about it. This results in Analogue radio with decent reception being far better quality than DAB as long as you have a good enough tuner to make the most of the quality on tap.

But as most poeple are happy listening to the radio on crap quality raidios like those linked above, the situation probably wont change in the near future. At least DAB has a future, and will improve as technology moves on, wheras analogue can only fade out of existance, the underlying technology being un-improvable.

Butuz

[Butuz]

But as most poeple are happy listening to the radio on crap quality raidios like those linked above, the situation probably wont change in the near future.

oops - that sweeping statement does not include unrealrocks loverly Arcam tuner, that being far from crap quality

Butuz