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Author: Subject: Portable DAB Radios?
coozer

posted on 20/8/10 at 03:49 PM Reply With Quote
Portable DAB Radios?

The radio in my truck is pants, the offering on FM is crap during the night and I need to be able to listen to test match special when I'm not in the house.

Q? Are these portable Pure/Roberts/Whoever DAB radios any good inside a car/truck?

Was looking at that Highway thing but it still needs a permanent ariel attached to the vehicle. What's the point of that?

Any experiences/advise?

Steve





1972 V8 Jago

1980 Z750

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mrwibble

posted on 20/8/10 at 03:53 PM Reply With Quote
i bought a 20£ dab radio from currys the other day. was easy to tune. sounds a bit tinny, but med end dab radios are around 50£- 60£. thing with dab is you either have signal or not. i think 80% of the population has coverage now.
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v8kid

posted on 20/8/10 at 04:13 PM Reply With Quote
Don't think they work very well in a vehicle. I have both models you mention and the Roberts is streets ahead on sound quality.

I think the issue is locking on to the digital signal whilst on the move.

Arn't the manufacturers havind difficulty with specifying DAB radios in cars?





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coozer

posted on 20/8/10 at 04:18 PM Reply With Quote
Well I have a Sony Dab unit in the tintop and its fantastic. I haven't got round to mounting the aerial properly yet, its just jammed between the head rests in the back seats.

I'm just after a little set to use for 10 hours a day in the truck at work. I cant get any FM stations up the M6 and across the A66 at night apart from a very noisy 603 or 198 on medium wave.





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1980 Z750

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v8kid

posted on 20/8/10 at 04:21 PM Reply With Quote
Does it need a different aerial?





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stevebubs

posted on 20/8/10 at 04:28 PM Reply With Quote
quote:
Originally posted by v8kid
Don't think they work very well in a vehicle. I have both models you mention and the Roberts is streets ahead on sound quality.

I think the issue is locking on to the digital signal whilst on the move.

Arn't the manufacturers havind difficulty with specifying DAB radios in cars?


The one in my mundeo is fantastic...gets great signal most of the time and falls back to FM if it can't and an FM signal for that station is available....

(Yes, they require different aerials)

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v8kid

posted on 20/8/10 at 04:30 PM Reply With Quote
Yup I stand corrected apologies for misunderstanding.





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BigFaceDave

posted on 20/8/10 at 05:28 PM Reply With Quote
I have one fitted in my car and its virtually useless, I do live a bit rural but I have never seemed to get great coverage anywhere, I am using a aerial signal spitter/booster thingy which i supposed to give a DAB signal and FM through the original aerial but could never find a signal for DAB, but I made myself a slightly bigger/longer aerial and that seems to be better but still not really good enough to listen to while on the move. MAybe I just need to buy a proper DAB aerial but they seem to be alot of money and I wont really know if it works or not until I have forked out for one. Maybe I should'nt be such a tight arse!
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jlparsons

posted on 20/8/10 at 05:46 PM Reply With Quote
My mate's got a dab radio which he keeps in the cabin in his boat, think it's a relatively high end one. It's good quality but it's not going to win over the noise in the boat when motoring and I suspect it'd be the same in the car. You could buy a portable one, ie one for use with headphones only, and then pipe the output through the truck's speakers via an aux in? Only potential issue is these things tend to use the headphones as an antenna and I've no idea if the aux cable to your truck would serve the same function as well.





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hillbillyracer

posted on 20/8/10 at 08:09 PM Reply With Quote
I've got a Pure Highway:
http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-60905

It's a touch fiddly to set up but once sorted with what you want stored on presets it's fine.
It does struggle at times for reception but I think a proper roof mounted aerial rather than the glued to the screen effort it comes with would help a lot.
If you've got a line in on your truck radio it saves the bother of retransmitting on FM.

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Danozeman

posted on 20/8/10 at 08:51 PM Reply With Quote
quote:

I have one fitted in my car and its virtually useless



Thats because you live round here Dave.

I have a pure highway and its good when im not in suffolk. The signals not strong enough about here.

I have a pure marshall evoke in the house and its excellent the sound quality is superb for such a small thing. The new one does more and has mp3 player ports etc. The receptions much better than the highway.

http://www.pure.com/products/product.asp?Product=VL-61402&Category=





Dan

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