Last week I noticed my Pure HIghway DAB radio which usually gives coverage across the south east except for a couple of odd spots started getting patchy. Initially I thought it may have been odd weather causing it, but today left Chelmsford where it was fine, down the A12 and it started getting patchy and it was rubbish all way to Bow, Barking and outskirts of Watford where it was not too bad. Rest of day back to Essex and up to Stowmarket and it pretty unusable.
Have they reduced their coverage noticably? Or is my old radio on it’s way out? I don’t want to buy another if I can’t use it anyway.
DAB is rubbish the reception is ( a lot ) worse than the old AM was for mobile use.
Everything these days is retrograde zb technology that’s all about robbing money from people by encouraging them to use ‘data’ on a mobile phone to make a car radio work.
FM was as good as it gets for mobile radio use combined with good old fashioned recordable Cassettes or later CD’s to record what you want for personal use under fair use regs.
Not just Planet Rock. Talksport, LBC and others all are notoriously bad for dropping off…only the BBC stations (5Live, Radio 4 and 4Extra for me) seem to have a strong signal virtually everywhere.
As an aside, Planet Rock drives me bonkers with the amount of songs by the same band that they repeatedly play. One of the daytime djs (I forget which one) had a thing a couple of years ago where a listener could submit their “Rockblock”, and you would get an hour of their choices. I heard the same song by certain bands over and over again…What are the chances that everybody who nominated an AC/DC song wanted either Highway To Hell or High Voltage? Those are the two songs that I began to realise that they played over & over again.
The irony is that DAB coverage could be much better if they were allowed to turn off the analogue FM transmitters as they’re having to run at reduced output. Digital Freeview TV had the same problem, it had to run at reduced power at the transmitters until the analogue was turned off and then they were able to bump up the power in some cases ten times more.
Government needs to do what it did with digital TV and say that from X date FM is no more.
Seems inconclusive so far, I’ve been using DAB in the south east for 10 years and it has noticeably dropped in last 10 days.
They moved multiplex a few years ago and you had to retune which caused a lot of dead areas but since they’ve been coming back, they were quite upfront about it back then but heard nothing this time or seen nothing online. Maybe I’ll have to buy a new radio.
Conor:
The irony is that DAB coverage could be much better if they were allowed to turn off the analogue FM transmitters as they’re having to run at reduced output. Digital Freeview TV had the same problem, it had to run at reduced power at the transmitters until the analogue was turned off and then they were able to bump up the power in some cases ten times more.
Government needs to do what it did with digital TV and say that from X date FM is no more.
How does something that operates at 174-240 mhz supposedly interfere with the 88-108 band of FM ?.
DAB is crap it needs more power than FM for the equivalent coverage and the compressed sound quality is inferior to analogue FM.What’s needed is the recognition that retrograde isn’t progress.
I changed the radio in my old 59 Scania to one with a line in to update it. I’ve been the only driver of it for last 10 years so wasn’t a hardship to do it with a radio I had anyway.
I’ve signed up to Planet Rock ‘Premium’ which does away with the interminable ads, though it’s not DAB, it’s using bluetooth from my phone. Makes me realise how much stuff they do repeat, their playlist is fairly limited but the ‘extra’ tracks are often the less obvious. There’s also a load of additional stations included that just play music - Prog Lab, 70’s, 80’s etc. Only other thing I’ve found with it is that as well as the ads the traffic reports, for what they are worth, have gone as well. Works out at £1 a week after the initial 7 days free.
I don’t have that problem, I don’t listen to any radio station, I have my own music on the phone put it on shuffle play and listen to that all day, with over 1000 tracks I don’t tend to hear the same track twice… unless I really like it!!!
The Radio X app is terrible for keep fading out.
I listen to Chris Moyles on it via bluetooth on the phone played through the speakers (sorry if that description makes me sound old ) whilst dipping in to Talk Sport and 5live on MW, sometimes even the MW coverage is better than it.
I get the predictable replies on listening to Moyles, so don’t bother.
robroy:
The Radio X app is terrible for keep fading out.
I listen to Chris Moyles on it via bluetooth on the phone played through the speakers (sorry if that description makes me sound old ) whilst dipping in to Talk Sport and 5live on MW, sometimes even the MW coverage is better than it.
I get the predictable replies on listening to Moyles, so don’t bother.
I load BBC sounds app on the company phone and use their data to listen to drama all day.
Then in the evenings I use my company phone data to listen to Dozy’s drama on trucknet!
) whilst dipping in to Talk Sport and 5live on MW, sometimes even the MW coverage is better than it. 
