Advice: batteries for a digi-radio

[tony sayer]

What else does one expect from the British Bullshit Corporation?...

And the apologists at Ofcom for letting them do it..

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I have it in the car, and it sounds not bad there. So I'd be very surprised if it doesn't also sound ok on a portable radio.

Those who actually listen to it on a decent Hi-Fi where you really would hear its shortcomings must be a tiny proportion of the audience.

[Another John]

OP here - blimey, I opened my original post with "I'm irredeemably clueless about electrical things (amps/watts/volts 'n' all that) -- sorry."

... but the word "irredeemably" was brushed over with verve by many posters here :-) It's been a interesting discussion, although not as illuminating, for myself, as some would have liked! :-D

Thanks _so much_ for all the advice and opinions. I am going to buy some Poundland "rubbish" batteries, just out of curiosity; I'm also going to buy some Duracell non-rechargeable ("primary cells"???) AAs rated at

1.5V (if I can find 'em). And I'm going to take a look for new NiMH LSD cells as suggested by JBG.

I didn't emphasise enough that the radio does have its own mains supply, and is usually used plugged in. I've always been aware of DAB eating batteries, but my problem has been acute (on the occasions when we want to move the radio, due to a gripping programme, to another room).

My problem is acute partly due to the age of the rechargeables I'm using, which is what prompted the question: what should I be looking for when replacing them? Thanks to this discussion I now know that there is no silver-bullet answer, and I also know what to look for.

Thanks, one and all!

John

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If the DAB codec was changed, many existing DAB radios would no longer work. That would be very popular. ;-)

Quite. Very very few listen to radio on a decent sound system.

[bert]

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

It's called product improvement

[Martin Brown]

The car has a decent aerial somewhere whereas the portable radios have a piece of wet string that is usually not even the right length.

But it is coming to something when the best that can be said for DAB radios is that they don't sound too bad inside a (noisy) car. And you

*still* need to have an FM tuner as well to get local RDS traffic news!

Perhaps, but also the ones who paid good money as early adopters for something that once showed reasonable promise and then failed dismally.

They keep on pushing it as if it was actually a good thing. It isn't even remotely close to adequate MP2 at 128kbps to matching FM quality.

The only content it reproduces better than FM is total silence!

[Martin Brown]

The recent chipsets can decode DAB, DAB+ or DMB-R stereo upto 256kbps so it would only be early adopters and recent cheapskates that suffer.

But 3W at 6v is 500mA and your 2500mAh batteries last 5 hours even if the chipste doesn't decide to go low battery sooner.

Perhaps but that is no reason to degrade the quality of broadcast media down to the lowest common denominator which is what they have done!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sorry - I thought you were referring to audio quality, not reception? Any device no matter what that receives off air signals needs a suitable aerial to work at its best. And I had to change the car aerial to one specifically designed for DAB.

Your kitchen is totally quiet, then? ;-) And RDS is pointless in London for traffic news - it always gives details of something miles away, or far too late to be of use.

Bit like HD TV, then? ;-)

And you notice all this on a portable radio? ;-)

[Johny B Good]

And, you don't even need a battery for that! :-)

[Dave Plowman (News)]

DAB has been around for many years. And people tend to keep radios for much longer than TVs. Etc.

Data transmission costs money. If you are listening on a portable radio you are simply not making the most of the available transmission. Same as with FM. If you upped the data rate you'd reduce the number of channels possible. You may not care about that - but others might.

IMHO, it's a bit of a bandwagon. People who don't use DAB and never have complain about the poor sound quality. Those who do (on portable radios etc) seem happy enough.

Incidentally, there's nothing new about reducing broadcast quality to increase the number of channels - it was done with AM many years ago. And few complained because FM was available. It still is. And FreeView. And internet radio too. There are probably half a dozen ways of listening to the same thing.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Freeview or Internet radio is definitely better than DAB for fixed location listening.

In the car I tend to use FM because its available on my car and has traffic broadcasts.

DAB is simply something I do not need.

I've got TV points all over the house and if it came to that a DTV dongle and a raspberry PI or even a wifi dongle and a pi,. would be a suitable in room radio..and could be built into any flipping old radio set I could find at a car boot sale.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Why not just a simple FreeView tuner? They all have plain ol' analogue out.

Some people just make things complicated...

[Windmill]

How are those NiZn cells working out? I had heard of them but never used them.