General > General Technical Chat
Dab radio
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Hydrawerk:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/PANASONIC-RF-D10-HIGH-QUALITY-PORTABLE/dp/B00KVFMNKE/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
http://www.amazon.de/Panasonic-RF-D10EG-W-DAB-Digitalradio-wei%C3%9F/dp/B00IAV90NO
Some customers from Germany say that the sound is not good and it is disturbed by some hum and noise. Like some design fail. I wonder how bad it really is.
Fraser:
I bought a DAB radio purely out of curiosity and realised that in the UK it is compromised by the decision to use low bit rates on some channels. I believe BBC Radio 4 uses a better rate though as it was deemed appropriate to the music played.

The bad things that I have noticed with many DAB radios are:

1. They gobble batteries
2. They often do not have an external antenna port
3. The designs generally look like cheap 'trannies' from many years ago !
4. Sensitivity is often poor with the in-built antenna.
5. There are plenty of really cr*p DAB radios on the market that disappoint.

I own a very neat Sony DAB radio that actually works well but it eats batteries so they included a mains adapter for this compact PORTABLE radio  :palm:  I also bought a PURE ONE DAB radio in as new condition from a charity shop for GBP5. It works OK but the design looks really cheap and nasty.

It is as though DAB radio manufacturers employed AMSTRAD designers for all their radio cases and had little confidence in the technology. A very poor implementation of Digital Radio in the UK.

I often listen to British Forces Radio so DAB offers me something not available via FM. My general radio listening is still FM though. The British Government have placed any plans to decommission FM analogue transmissions on hold and no surprises there.

Anyone remember Worldspace digital radio ? It has died and the company went into liquidation. Hillarious stories of how to deal with the defunct satellites have followed. NASA threatening all manner of action and demanding de-orbiting for which there is no money available.

I believe the USA has XM satellite radio that is satellite direct to car/home and I think it is still operating. I bought some of the active antennas for XM and they are a VERY sophisticated design with high quality pre-amplification. They are designed for use on boats, cars and trucks so have an excellent polar plot.

I just checked and they are now called SiriusXM Satellite radio.

http://www.siriusxm.com/

Digital radio can be done well but UK deployed DAB falls short of the mark.



m100:
It's not hi-fi but then again FM in the UK is also knobbled by compression etc. Internet streams or a DVB-T / DVB-S feeds are just about the only way to get something approaching an acceptable bitrate.

For those that want a radio that is easy to setup and tune, is not susceptable to aerial location, automatically changes the time on a clock radio for daylight saving and is a bit of technology can be easily operated by a technophobe 80 year old then IMHO there is no equal.   (p.s. i'm not the 80 year old technophobe!)

AndyC_772:
I was pleasantly surprised by the DAB radio that came with my car. Quality seems pretty decent, coverage is much better than expected, and most importantly of all, there's a far wider choice of stations available.

For that reason alone, it's made the difference between listening to the radio and not listening to it.

I wouldn't buy one for home use, though. Not when I have broadband, several Logitech Squeezeboxes, and hundreds of streaming stations to choose from.
Hydrawerk:
Thanks. Any opinions on Panasonic RF-D10? I like it, because there are not many radios with 10 direct preset buttons. I like separate controls for volume and tuning. The volume knob is probably a rotary encoder. So no danger of noise from a damaged potentiometer as on my Olympia ATS-803A.
But I miss the audio input port on RF-D10.
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