new DAB pocket radio story

Surely all you need to do is take it outside so it captures all the available muxes?

I'm not surprised it wipes the store when you re-scan - you'd normally only need to do this if you move to a different part of the country.

Rescaning in the same locality is pointless. Take it to a local point of good reception, and scan there. For instance all BBC national radio stations operate on exactly the same frequency in the UK in what's called an SFN, so rescanning will bring back exactly the same transmission if receivable.

The only time you need to rescan a DAB receiver in the UK, is to receive new local stations when you enter a new area, or to receive a newly launched station.

Losing pre-sets on scanning may be a 'feature' of that particular model - which seems remarkably cheap for the features claimed.

It wouldn't have occurred to me to re-scan in an attempt to overcome poor reception; just go to a spot where the reception is as good as you can get in your area (a local park, perhaps?) and scan - thereafter, if you can't receive a particular station in a particular spot re-scanning isn't going to help. I've never found it necessary to re-scan even when going to a different part of the country, as far as national stations are concerned.

Pocket receivers often have rather poor aerials and don't work well indoors or where the signal is weak - which DAB is in some places.

Some DAB receivers offer two sorts of scan: one to re-create the entire station list, the other merely to add any new stations (and possibly remove any no longer found). The latter sort of scan shouldn't upset your pre-sets, but the former might well do so - although I agree that it would be better not to if the pre-set stations are found by the new scan.

My only experience of pocket DAB receivers is a Sony XDR-M1 I've had for a few years, which works well. I've also had good experience with Roberts portables, although I haven't tried their pocket model.

Comet

rear

pick

encountered

on

Thanks

No sense in getting the same radio again... time to look into something that does what you want

I think I know what's going on here.

Barring the (real) possibility that the set is incorrectly designed, or that the instructions are incorrect (also highly likely), you were _not_ scanning the stations. Rather, you were _reprogramming_ the unit.

There is no inherent law of nature that requires the scanned stations to overwrite the manually programmed settings. For example, when I press SEEK or SCAN on my car radio, it has no effect on the memory presets.

So...

Either the set has only an "auto program" function (which you are mistaking for a scan), or you are selecting the "auto program" function (rather than a simple scan).

It's not surprise that the salesperson was so ignorant of electronics that she swapped the unit rather than trying to resolve the problem.

Well Done again William....actually i pressed the option, wait for it...........*Local Scan*.

"Now I'm a dab at penny readings." "They are not remarkably entertaining."

Coruscating logic cannot retroactively override poor product design.

Spock said "'Fascinating' I reserved for the unexpected." This is indeed fascinating.

I found the owner's manual here...

"Batteries contain chemical substances, so they should be disposed of properly." So do chocolate cakes. There is only one way to dispose of chocolate cakes properly.

After wading through the warnings (see above) about how I might electrocute the dog if I pressed the wrong button, etc, I found that the only way one can store (or clear) a station is by pressing the Preset button. There's nothing in the instructions about any automatic storage. Nor does it seem possible to preset more than one station at time. Once you've

I'm stumped. Wish I could see the thing. Unless you're doing something Really Weird, it looks as if there's some Really Bad Code in the system controller. I would go to the Philips site and let them know you're mad as hell, and you're not going to this any more!

PS: "Local" Scan? How is it different from a "Full" scan? Do they mean scanning all the blocks? What makes any particular block "local"? Inquiring minds want to know!

Different transmitters can, and do, carry different 'local' stations as well as providing the same 'national' stations as each other. Like VHF/FM analogue stations, each transmitter has a very limited range - a few tens of miles at most, usually - so DAB stations can be very 'local', even if the transmitter shares the same radio frequency as other more powerful neighbours. DAB is very different from analogue. might help.

I've noticed that say, if you change areas you can lose presets on many dab radios. Its a difficult one, as they are not really lying about it, they are just not saying the software has a drawback if you rescan you have to re store the presets.

I was thinking when you first said it was a pocket model that there have been poor reception problems with dab. Most people are familiar with the boiling mud effect you can get if signal is low, but some sets do rescan if they get very low signals that this can confuse the heck out of users.

Dab is a bit of a flop for quality and coverage in my view.

Brian

Comet

rear

I'm not sure if the DA1103/05 has this feature but my Zenith DTT901 (American HDTV receiver) has both an "Auto Tune" and an "EZ add" scan function.

Auto Tune does what you described in wiping the presets clean and setting all channels receivable in that scan.

EZ add leaves the presets as they are and adds to them channels received in that scan.

For my unit I can scan channels with my aerial facing west (Baltimore) and add channels while its facing north (Philadelphia).

Not all receivers do this (my Sylvania doesn't) so there may be a DAB out there with this handy feature.

Good luck. ;-)

I read somewhere that some Scandinavian countries have scrapped DAB because reception is so unreliable.

Not what seem to think.

It's not been terribly popular anywhere as it offers little over FM for the majority of listeners. Indeed in the UK the bit rate is so low the quality can be poorer - on most stations. The other thing is battery life is poor on a portable receiver.

It does work pretty well for mobile reception, though, like in a car, in reasonable signal areas - but very few makers offered DAB as OEM. And aftermarket units are expensive - as are decent aerials.

Bad designs like this seem to be normal these days. If it works at all, they consider it finished and move on to the next product. I doubt Philips will care since they probably had nothing to do with the actual design of the radio. Andy Cuffe

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com

Not true. Old DAB is too inefficient. I think DAB+ will be the future here.

I wouldn't be too sure. DAB+ may have a more modern codec etc but isn't compatible with the present system. I think consumer resistance will make it a dead duck. There is little demand for high quality radio - and for those that really want it in the UK they already can get most of the same stations on FreeView or Satellite.

As I understand it, transmitters can carry both DAB and DAB+, and some receivers can cope with both. But there is now a significant number of receivers which can only manage 'original' DAB, and broadcasters are likely to be reluctant to broadcast their content using both standards at once, or to broadcast only in DAB+ while few people can listen to it. Listers would be pretty peeved if required to scrap all the new DAB receivers we've bought by the million over the last five years or so.

While 'audiophiles' might be prepared to buy new equipment to get 'better' sound reproduction, most people just want something 'good enough' - which DAB manifestly is. I'm listening to Radio 4 as I type: "Varied Speech" at "128kbps Stereo" which sounds fine to me (on a Roberts MP23). Radio 3 probably justifies the 192kbps Stereo it gets, but most stations are Mono and many only get 80kbps and don't seem any the worse for it. I just don't expect, or even want, a 'concert hall experience' in my kitchen or bedroom, or even the living-room, and certainly not in the car.

BBC podcasts and streams all seem to be at 64kbps.

In the US, digital radio is transmitted in-band, on both the FM (VHF) _and_ AM (MW) bands. I don't much care for the sound of it -- even at 96kbps, it sounds rather flat, squashed, and airless -- but it works without requiring a new band. And the sound quality of the BBC and other auxiliary "talk" channels is acceptable.

Sony has an HD digital tuner (XDR-F1HD) using Philips chips that has simply incredible performance. In terms of sensitivity, separation, and distortion, it blows away (by a wide margin) the best conventional tuners costing thousands of dollars -- and it retails for $100. (That's not a mistype.) I got mine for $50, using an iBiquity.rebate. (iBiquity is the company that developed this system. It's called "HD", which is supposed to mean "hybrid digital" (as the digital data are transmitted along with the analog), but the name conveniently suggests "high definition", which the sound most-definitely is not.)

You can see my review ("HD is lossy compression -- what did you expect?") -- and others -- here:

There has been talk about opening a VHF band with truly uncompromised digital transmission. But it's unlikely this will ever occur, as people will not be willing to replace existing tuners and receivers.

We would never start using the old DAB in Sweden and Finland, that's for sure. DAB+ or something more modern is the future.