rashbre central: not feeling D Love from DAB

Tuesday 18 December 2012

not feeling D Love from DAB

penguin radio
The fancy radio in the kitchen is playing up again. It sounds like there's a very raucous chicken stuck inside it.

By comparison the £10 lo-tech shower radio that looks like a penguin works fine.

I thought the idea with DAB digital radio was that it was supposed to be 'better' but there still seem to be some problems.

The first DAB radio I used was several years ago. It was a bedside radio and looked neat in a sort of 1950s way but needed a 1 metre telescopic aerial in order to work.

It's controls were slightly obscure too and when it blew up after a couple of years I replaced it with a normal FM clock radio again.

The radio in the kitchen is part of a mini hi-fi system but is notoriously difficult to keep tuned. The scalded cat sounds on DAB mean there's a tendency to retune to FM and forgo some of the extra channels.

I can't understand why the reception is so bad. I've unplugged it and moved it around. I've moved the aerial. I've got a booster aerial. Nothing seems to work.

By comparison, my car has a DAB tuner and it seems to work well, even when parked right outside the house where the other radio doesn't work.

At the moment the BBC are evangelising DAB continuously. Someone should tell them it doesn't work properly.

4 comments:

RFM said...

We were sold a pup with DAB. All these years on, and where's the model that will run on a pair of AA batteries for months on end, like my bathroom FM radio does We've gone back to the 50s. They take as long to warm up as an old valve set.

RFM said...

Apologies for missing ? - iPad typing not working

Nikki - Notes of Life said...

DAB doesn't work in this house (I can only get digital radio via the digital TV feed). Analog radio doesn't work in this house (it's like we're in some kind of vacuum), hoever my car radio (analog) works perfectly just outside!

rashbre said...

RFM + Nikki-ann I spent another hour re-wiring the aerial to the kitchen radio and now have some kind of signal.

I'm pretty sure it's still a feeble strength and is falling short of the promises from the renewed advertising for digital radio.