Clock Radios

aren't they Far Eastern as well?

DAB is certainly inferior to FM (and also to the sound channel on any of TDTV, Freesat TV using either radio or TV channels on them).

It is interesting to do A B switching on the Proms since the satellite time delay allows you to listen to the same short chunk of music twice.

DAB was almost acceptable until they cut the bitrate down (and would have been acceptable if they had used the right ie newer codec).

There is nothing wrong with internet radio at all. My "DAB" tuner spends all its time streaming internet radio these days.

R3 at 320kbps is as near perfect as makes no difference.

I was replying to it being inferior in sound to AM. ;-)

AM is band limited to approx 4.5kHz and many receivers can't even manage that.

Which isn't a true AB test.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Internet radio in the car?

The question was about clock radios. On the tiny speaker(s) most of those have and the pretty basic electronics, the differences in audio quality between DAB an FM etc simply ain't going to be noticed. Poor reception on any of them might well be, though.

I have an audio analogue distribution system to every room in this house. One very real benefit of using the same source in every room is the same delay (or whatever) to all. Although I originally installed it due to very poor FM reception in this part of London making portable radios near useless.

It has 5 stereo circuits. Four radio tuners - all now FreeView - and the output of the main system in the living room. 4 radio channels covers pretty well all I ever want - although there are tuners in the main system.

In my bedroom, I have a pair of Chartwell LS 3/5s ceiling mounted over the end of the bed. Switched by an alarm.

Yes. They can buy in chassis for a fraction of what they could make them for themselves. So just concentrate on the cabinet and looks.

+1 DAB bitrate cut

Looking it up, I find they are now a subsidiary of Glen Dimplex - an Irish Company.

I've had various clock radios and just can't be bothered with them. A traditional alarm clock is so much easier & more reliable.

NT

I have started a new thread to avoid going too off-topic.

There are plenty of tiny tinny DAB radios about.

It is plenty good enough to spot what is missing from DAB audio.

ISTR Cutting the bitrate was done after introduction. Using the wrong codec was a poor engineering decision probably made by beancounters.

You could do it for about £1.44 @ 320kbps on Threes 123 PAYG tariff or for free if you have all you can eat mobile broadband. DAB is fine for in car use since engine noise disguises all its shortcomings. The only thing that DAB does better than FM is the dead air between programmes.

DAB invariably has poor reception except perhaps in central London.

The flanging effect of different DAB radios in different rooms is hilarious. Decoder delays vary by noticeable fractions of a second.

That is a fairly hefty alarm sound system with BBC monitor clones.

Returning to the original topic, it was only once DAB arrived could I get solid signal for my bedside clock radio.

I can sleep through an alarm going off - and music. But not talk as on R4.

True. And if you hear it from next door all radio transmission systems might sound the same too.

But assuming a competent radio, you'd need very degraded hearing for DAB to sound like AM.

What is that, as a matter of interest? Given you think it sounds like AM?

The CODEC was the best available at design time. To change it afterwards would have been very costly to those who'd bought receivers.

You'd get as good mobile reception as DAB? Just where?

Really? How would that be? I can certainly hear the difference between it an AM in my car. CD sounds a lot better than cassette there too.

Actually not with a decent aerial. My car radio will revert to FM if the DAB signal is poor - and that hardly ever happens.

Happens with all digital signals.

They're not clones. The BBC don't make their own speakers. Chartwell Rogers and Spendor all supplied 3/5a to the BBC.

I was delighted to get a decent signal for once in this part of S London where FM from Wrotham was terrible. Until they installed the fill in at Croyden.

I have an external DAB aerial here and get an excellent signal at home.

When I got DAB in the car there were a few obvious black spots that I drove through, over the years they got filled-in, and the only one I continued to notice was when passing a local DAB transmitter site on the A47 a few miles east of Leicester which only carried a local MUX but gave enough co-channel interference to knock the BBC MUX out over a few hundred yard stretch.

Unfortunately now they seem to have provided an extra DAB transmitter somewhere in the vicinity, which produces bubbling mud and dropouts on the BBC MUX anywhere within a 15 mile arc east of Leicester :-(

Try listening to R5L at times when they've stolen Capacity Units for e.g. additional R2 "pop-up" stations. When they put mobile callers on the air you can hear the codec "hunting" between fairlyshit and veryshit modes every few seconds to keep within available bandwidth.

Even if it's 64 kbps mono?

I would disagree with that. A 'traditional' alarm clock requires to be set each night and from the risk management perspective I cannot trust myself to do that. A clock radio defaulting to 'on' seems much safer.

I found that modern travel alarms work on a frequency I can't hear without my hearing aids. Being woken by the radio is possible.