Anyone know about DAB ..

[Steve Kish]

... car radios?

I quite fancy one but know sod-all about them.

Do they have the standard ISO-type fittings?

Do you need a special aerial?

Can I get one with a rear USB fitting to still play my music on my memory stick?

What's the best value out there?

Anyone got on that they can recommend?

TIA

 

[Harryburgundy]

:roll: Thought you meant the German beer

 

[Kestonian]

Legrandefromage is somewhat of an audiophile.

He'll be along here soon ....

 

[legrandefromage]

I know very little about current in-car DAB as theres so few head units around.

Type DAB into ebay and you get 89 results for in-car whereas you get over 4000 results for DVD...

http://motors-parts.shop.ebay.co.uk/In- ... 86.c0.m282

You do need a different aerial - from memory, FM is 75 Ohm, DAB requires 50 Ohm. Some manufacturers supply adaptors for existing aerials and you can buy separate and so on.

The headunits are all standard DIN/ ISO fitting both in size and connection. They look like normal stereos. They should all do MP3.

Blaupunkt and JVC seem to be the only manufacturers of DAB headunits, Pioneer and Kenwood used to require a separate box.

I had a pre-production Kenwood DAB head unit from 1997 (DAB was always intended for incar use) but I dont know where it went.

try the Pure Highway as these are a pretty cheap way into DAB but theres no such thing as best value any more. And, theres not even that many stations to choose from or any guarantee that you'll get reception...

 

[legrandefromage]

Legrandefromage is somewhat of an audiophile.

He'll be along here soon ....

Geek, nerd, but not audiophile, they are arrogant tossers...

 

[gump]

Legrandefromage is somewhat of an audiophile.

He'll be along here soon ....

Geek, nerd, but not audiophile, they are arrogant tossers...

who spend as much on a cable as they do on rest of system.. :roll:

 

[bojangle]

I was looking at getting a DAB system for my car and found that there was very very little choice. I had a standard fitted DAB in my Vectra and it was very good at recieving stations, i must admit that was around London and M4 corridor.

I now have a Pure Highway and it's really good. But be very aware of the area you live in. When i travel to the west country i get get less and less stations, but to be honest it's permantly tuned into Planet rock which seems to broadcast a very strong country wide signal.

The only down side is all the cables, but like i said because i only use it for one station i have it wired in the boot out of the way.

 

[rosstheboss]

We had a retrofit Pure DAB thingy for my pick up, as has been mentioned before - fine when you've got good signal, but not when you haven't! That sounds a bit obvious but we didn't seem to see any great improvement over having a normal am/fm in sound quality especially when you had a strong am/fm signal.

 

[Neil]

Legrandefromage is somewhat of an audiophile.

Let's be clear about this, DAB has precisely nothing to do with the concept of audiophile (not that I am, either...).

Some of the bitrates that some stations are broadcast with are atrocious. Even the main BBC stations don't trouble anything approaching high quality in terms of the audio.

 

[hamster]

Remember that the stations cannot choose their bitrates. It all has to fit in the transmission multiplex. The powers that be decided that we would rather have lots in poor quality rather than a few in decent quality. Ho hum.