DAB Performance of different makes?

Hi,

I would like to try DAB, just to get some experience of this new
technology. I'm thinking about a clock radio or a mini music centre.

Is there much difference in the radio performance between the more
expensive brands, such as Sony & Panasonic, and the cheaper ones, such
as Goodmans, Alba & Bush?

Any pointers to suitable web sites, with reviews, would be much appreciated.

TIA

Clive G3CWV

Hitchin, North Hertfordshire, UK.

"Clive Wallis" wrote in message
...
Hi,

I would like to try DAB, just to get some experience of this new
technology. I'm thinking about a clock radio or a mini music centre.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !

DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.


Is there much difference in the radio performance between the more
expensive brands, such as Sony & Panasonic, and the cheaper ones, such
as Goodmans, Alba & Bush?

Performance. LOL The bit rate is so low that the sound coming out of a cheep
hand held transistor radio with a 2 inch loud speaker back in the 1970's is
better than ANY DAB radio today.


Any pointers to suitable web sites, with reviews, would be much
appreciated.

Boycott DAB if you want real digital radio. The sooner DAB is scraped and
replaced with a system using AAC+ or OGG Vorbis with a minimum bit rate set
above 64 kbps which is equivalent to mp2 at 256 kbps the better.

DAB at the present moment in time is equivalent to WMA or Real Audio at 32
kbps.


TIA

Clive G3CWV

Hitchin, North Hertfordshire, UK.

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !

DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

--
*Husband and cat lost -- reward for cat

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !

DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

You obviously have some sort of hearing loss if you cant perceive the severe
distortion on DAB at 128Kbps which make it unbearable to listen to.

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !

DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.


That's rich coming from someone that actually says they like DAB......


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Please sign the petition asking the BBC to provide better audio quality
on its radio stations on DAB, Freeview, satellite and cable:
http://tinyurl.com/a68e4

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

You obviously have some sort of hearing loss if you cant perceive the
severe distortion on DAB at 128Kbps which make it unbearable to listen
to.

And AM has no distortions?

Point is it may well be 'unbearable' for you to listen to but this can't
be the case with everyone, obviously.

--
*When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall.*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

That's rich coming from someone that actually says they like DAB......

So you agree with the statement that all DAB sounds worse than Medium Wave?

--
*All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Agamemnon" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY !

DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium
Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

You obviously have some sort of hearing loss if you cant perceive
the severe
distortion on DAB at 128Kbps which make it unbearable to listen to.


There might well be distortion, but at least you can hear the
distortion...

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
DAB sounds worse than FM wrote:
DAB is utter CRAP and the sound quality is worse than Medium Wave.

You must have ears of cloth.

That's rich coming from someone that actually says they like
DAB......

So you agree with the statement that all DAB sounds worse than Medium
Wave?


No. But DAB does sound worse than FM.


--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

Please sign the petition asking the BBC to provide better audio quality
on its radio stations on DAB, Freeview, satellite and cable:
http://tinyurl.com/a68e4

In article , Clive Wallis
wrote:

Is there much difference in the radio performance between the more
expensive brands, such as Sony & Panasonic, and the cheaper ones, such
as Goodmans, Alba & Bush?

I'd welcome it if anyone is able to give any answer to the above question.
I have been wondering about various 'issues' (as modern-speak uses the
term).

1) If - given a decent RF signal - all the RX's recover exactly the same
digital results. (i.e. if all those fitted with SPDIF or equivalent would
feed the same series of values to an external DAC).

2) To what extent they vary in terms of RX noise level, ability to deal
with RF problems, etc, etc.

3) Decent quality of DAC's, audio output stages, etc, comparing on RX with
another.

4) When switched on, is there an appreciable delay whilst the tuner sorts
out demodulation, etc?

As explained in another posting I bought a cheap DAB 'adaptor' as an
experiment, not expecting much. However the results are better than I
feared with R3. It prompts me to ask (4), though, as when powered up it
takes a while to start providing an audio output. Bit like going back to
'valve radio' and waiting for the valves to warm up.... :-)

I'm not really interested in another round of:

A) But DAB would sound a lot better if they didn't use low bitrates.

B) FM sounds better anyway, so there.

Seen that rehearsed more than once. :-)

I'm curious to know if anyone has done some comparison tests in the above
terms. i.e. interested in the recievers on sale, not the arguments re DAB
itself.

Any pointers to suitable web sites, with reviews, would be much
appreciated.

Ditto.

FWIW The BBC RD have published some documents on how to test DAB RXs,
etc. However for obvious reasons they have not got into doing 'reviews' of
radios and tuners for commercial purposes...

"Which?" have published some comparisons, but how reliable they may be is
hard to decide...

Slainte,

Jim

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