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Investing in a DAB radio company
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coppice:

--- Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 am ---Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

--- End quote ---
Like most UK electronics these days I expect:

* Design means they pick among several finishes the actual maker offers, and specify how to add their logo.
* Build means the do final assembly of a kit from the actual maker.
* If they can't even spell warranty, they'll probably just pass on the actual maker's manual with its poor English, unable to polish it.
MK14:

--- Quote from: themadhippy on May 09, 2020, 02:41:54 pm ---must be in the minority here,had a dab receiver since the first time dixons closed there stores and they were selling stock off at  ridiculously cheap prices.With a small external aerial the sound quality is fine for my deaf ears.

--- End quote ---

Unfortunately, I do tend to be somewhat of a hi-fi buff (like). So, to me, it sounds somewhat terrible (sorry).
But, it was a rather cheap and nasty dab radio, I tried. That could have been a factor as well.

But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.
SiliconWizard:
DAB has never really taken off over here, and in many other countries in Europe. Interesting to see there are still a lot of people using that in the UK, but I would still see this as a pretty small market overall, and likely to disappear as internet connections will become increasingly available inside cars. Just MHO though.
coppice:

--- Quote from: MK14 on May 09, 2020, 02:52:42 pm ---But, I think I have heard reviews and things say, the dab radio sound quality is not very good. Especially not compared to the much later, and better standards, which emerged, in Europe.

--- End quote ---
There are two huge weaknesses in the original DAB spec. They rushed the spec out, even though it was obviously going to take quite a long time to move in the market. This meant they had to use a crappy codec. because the first of the decent ones, like MP3, were still in development. By the time DAB product development had really got anywhere, MP3 was available. They made some funky choices in the coding, so there are situations where a weak signal causes a modest bit error rate, but this results in some very unpleasant noises.

I think most of the DAB radios in the UK are DAB+ designs, which fix these problems. However, because some early DAB only radios are still around, the transmission side has not been changed.
Bicurico:

--- Quote from: treez on May 09, 2020, 09:14:16 am ---Hi,
I have been offered the chance to invest in a company making reliable, small  DAB radios in UK…”British designed and built, with full warrantee”
How can I find out whether or not the company is simply middle-manning  them in from China?

--- End quote ---

This raises the following questions:

1) Why have YOU been offered this chance? If it is such a good deal, why has the person offering it to you not taken up the chance himself?
2) DAB has been replaced, technology-wise, by DAB+ in most parts of the world. You better make sure the company is developing DAB+ radios!
3) What does "British designed and built" mean? Do you mean the "product" design, the chip design, the software design (again: are we talking about the full system or just the GUI implementation), etc.
4) How big is the market?
5) Why does the company need YOUR investment? If the company needs your investment, you are either incredibly rich and can put a lot of money in this company at an interest rate beneficial for both parties or we are talking of a small start-up company that will probably buy a SoC with SDK to "design" the radio around it: good luck with that.

Note that so far DAB and DAB+ has been a major flop. For everyone involved.

Radio stations cannot afford their stream to be included by in the transmitters, reagional broadcasters have no benefits of the nation-wide broadcast, since they make money from local advertising. Users prefer FM broadcast due to its better reception, especially when moving in a car or in less than optimal reception areas.

Finally, the sound quality of DAB/DAB+ is far from the promised CD quality. It is actually worse than FM, due to the compression level imposed by adding too many radio stations in one single transponder.

DAB/DAB+ will only start to become relevant when the analog FM shutdown comes. This has been delayed a few times and the truth is that when it finally happens, people will be streaming internet radios rather than listining to DAB/DAB+.

Conclusion: I would definitly not invest my money in this technology.

Regards,
Vitor
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