I think this is my first comment to your channel. Your love for your parents shines through in this video. My father had a medical emergency this week and we were very nervous for a couple days. Your video reminds us of what is important in life. So glad that your parents' home is now filled with music and sounds that bring them enjoyment.
kcarlson2006 Wow. Just last night had a passing in our family, absolutely terrible. What did I watch [first] to help? THIS GUY. I'm with you- the important things in life, and all. Thanks for that- spot on. Justin R. Romanowich
You should leave the clock flashing 12o'clock like on old VCRs our grandparents used to have. It's tradition. Best wishes for your dad's speedy recovery!
I swear this reminds me of the "radio" in the kitchen in my ex-GF's apartment, it was actually an old National clock radio, they then tuned it into the station and at the volume level they wanted, then set it on top of the fridge, way out of reach, and when I turned on a mystery plug out of curiousity, I heard it playing, and could somewhat make out a flashing 12:00 from atop that fridge.
because that is the truth. the time being a set thing that continues to pass linearly is only an illusion we choose to believe for sake of practicality
@@SlavomirG "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey - wimey ... stuff!"
This is a year old, published the day my father turned 85. He loved to hear his music (ranging from Helene Fisher... over Pink Floyd to Beethoven, in fact: anything) on his Pioneer tower. Since cable switched from analog to digital a while ago, an Alexa accompanied the Pioneer to listen to radio stations again. He died mid december, and I'm touched by seeing you taking care of your fathers audio equipment like I did for decades :-) Hope he's well and enjoys it :)
UIs on consumer electronics are mostly terrible for old people, who typically don't understand modes, and get confused by too many buttons. Symbols are also a problem, but text would probably end up too small. I think there is an untapped market - perhaps "My Last Sony"...?
UIs on modern equipment are mostly terrible for all people. I'm not sure what's happened but in the last 15years we have gone backwards in a huge way. You look at equipment from the past and the vast majority of it just intuitively make sense. All too often its the exact opposite today.
Hard buttons are the best shortcuts. It would be nice if the designer's would let us assign each hard button. As for labeling each button a wide LCD right above or below each button could be customized.
@@chaos.corner Totally agree - I am also a software developer, and I cringe at so many user interfaces these days. My DAB alarm clock has "snooze" has tiny buttons, a tiny display, and being a right Mr Magoo, I have to squint at it from about 6" away at 6am to hit the right button...
80kbps? 128kbps? DAB shame on you. This is pretty much the opposite of Hi-Fi. It should be called Lo-Fi radio. Totally unacceptable. Thanks, Techmoan for another great lesson in audio.
Sadly satellite/XM radio here in the US isn't any better. They spend all their money on sending me mail to join their terrible service instead of putting out higher quality music. Even the talk radio stations are so low quality that I get headaches from them.
Though I always enjoy this channel, this video was especially relatable. Being the tech-minded son of aging parents myself, it's a bit gratifying to know things are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
Canada flirted with DAB... test trials, etc. But we live beside an 800 lb gorilla that chose a different system, so DAB died a quick death here. Which is apparently fine, because a really great FM tuner sounds amazing.
@@randomguydoes2901 Yup. They said it would give us more diversity and channels. The result was more channels that more or less have the same content, and a system that is dated and erratic...horray :(
@@secularnevrosis In Germany the DAB+ is superior. We don't have good LTE coverage, we don't have the best internet connections in our homes, but our DAB+ is the finest sh*t out there. Seriously, we have a wide variety of stations, only the big ones are the usual "5 minutes music, 10 minutes spoken nonsense and 15minutes ads". The smaller ones, damn, only music, short news every hour and here and then 1 max. 2 spots of ads. Also none of the DAB+ stations with music go under 70/80kbit/s, the biggest ones using 128kbit/s. And damn, they sound so much better than FM. At least smaller local Stations now can be recieved without permanent cutouts or weak signal, or shared signals (one half of the day station 1, the other station 2). I like DAB+, it's nice and at least in Germany it is very usable. The older flintstone-type DAB was killed fast, then DAB+ came and more and more people trying it out. Also better Tuner IC's come to market, which means smaller radios, more battery life and the reception of signals are much better. I don't know the situation in other countrys, but in Germany it is a very good system nowadays.
@@jensharbers6702 The main problem with DAB here in Norway is how the politicians have handled the matter. Years ago, it was decided that the national broadcasters, both public and commercial, would switch to DAB-only transmission by the end of 2017. Many people, myself included, listen to the radio mostly/only when driving, and by 2016 there were still new cars being delivered without DAB reception, and by far most cars on the road didn't (and still don't) have DAB reception. Because of this, we urged the government to reconsider or delay the transition to DAB, but they refused. The result: a 20% (400 000) drop in the number of listeners by July 2018, and I'm one of them. I refuse to spend time and money on retrofitting my car just because the politicians are technologically incompetent.
@Jens Hardbers - i have a completely different experience about the DAB situation in germany. it's about as bad as LTE - great where it works but the coverage outside of cities is terrible. we have a DAB(+) radio at work - nothing fancy - just a plastic boombox with small mono speaker and telescope antenna but it works quite nice for being used in a basement - that basement is in a city tho. i borrowed that radio one day, turned it on and put it on the passenger seat of my car when i drove home - the DAB signal dropped out right after i left the city limits and it never came back. i could not recieve any station at home either even though i tried a few spots throughout the house that usually work for FM and cellphones. i brought the radio back the next day, knowing that it is NOT worth buying any DAB equippment. not where i live at least. FM is not an option for me either because i can get 4-5 stations at best and none of them fits my taste
I actually have the John Lewis unit you mentioned and have been using it daily for the past year. It's brilliant! I remember comparing it to the Ruark in store and it actually sounded better and also had more volume. Handy when you have a kitchen party! Anyway, my wife is Polish and regularly listens to Polish radio stations via its WiFi internet tuner. It just works, sounds great and is a genuine bargain.
I'll second that, Iv'e had some rather crap DAB and internet radios before this but this one is an all-in-one beauty with across the board functionality and ability to add extra speakers, it's a real heavy thing due to it's inbuilt amp and woofer. Lovely wood finish, no regrets buying this after 3 months of use.
In Australia, we've had DAB+ since 2009, but it's only broadcast in the capital cities - which are hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers away from each other. In other words, coverage for regional areas is pretty much non-existent. People seem to be moving from FM directly to Spotify (or internet radio), and forgetting about digital radio.
That's about right. DAB is a waste of time. FM is Fine Music and Internet Radio .. Thousands of Channels. Now explain the meaning of the word Radio. and what comes out of it, explain that also. Again a five letter word ending in DIO I will give you a clue .. The English pronunciation is made deliberately corrupt to hide the meaning of the word.
@@antimattercarp2720 Incorrect. Sorry. However AUDIO is what emanates from the RADIO, and that brings me to the second question. Explain the meaning of AUDIO. [The words Sound / Noise have nothing to do with it] Firstly one has to comprehend that RADIO is NOT an English language word, and English speakers pronounce it incorrectly as RAY-DEE-OW. That is totally wrong. 1. Who invented the RADIO? 2. What Country did he come from? and; 3. What language did he speak? When you know the answer to those questions, and should you be bright and alert enough, you will immediately know the correct and proper pronunciation. And ONLY when you pronounce it correctly in the correct language you will know what RADIO means. English is a deliberately corrupted language that obfuscates the TRUE meaning of words. Anyway, you made a good attempt, but unfortunately approached it from a incorrect perspective. I do the same with my students ... teach them to be analytical. One does not immediately get it right, but with focus and deep analysis eventually one will arrive at the answer. It keeps the mind in tune, and when one approaches problems from different angles often it becomes so obvious, that often we wonder how er missed the obvious. As when my mentor and master said when I was studying for Electronics and Electro-Mechanical degrees "There are NO problems ... Only solutions" I graduated with those two degrees in 1969. My mentor came from the same country as the inventor of the RADIO, as did my fathers parents. My mentor was a very tough task-master who would make my head hurt and often bring me close to tears -- But years later I realized that he did me a great favor, What he 'hammered' into my head I never forgot.
"TIME IS NOT SET" is most definitely the lost Pink Floyd album. If indeed they ever find it. I'm with you Mat, my folks are nearing 80 and my mom has had bad MS for 40+ years, so it falls to us. Excellent job there. Also, thanks a bunch for the shoutout and for showing the BS de Resistance CD, hope you get a yuk or 2 out of it.
DAB is useless. Where I lived previously and where I live now, DAB receivers can't receive a single station reliably, whereas FM stations are received perfectly. I don't live out in the sticks either. And even if DAB did work the quality is appalling. Mono! What the hell!?! The 1950's called and they want their radio broadcasting quality back...
DAB is not useless if the transmitters are put out everywhere and cover the same as existing FM transmitters.. And what do you mean mono!? It's not just mono. That's just the bad channels. I get stereo DAB... And with high enough bitrate it sounds better than FM. But not all channels send high enough bitrate
I agree and you could include all these way over rated and pointless so called smart speakers as well. Things like flipping Alexas. They play in glorious 1950's mono sound too! and some are very expensive. I guess for todays mobile phone obsessed youth things like stereo sound is kind of wasted on them!
To be fair DAB can be useful, depending on where you live. I live in Wales, in a valley, surrounded by hills. As a result I have trouble receiving some of the stations I like, Classic FM for example, on my portable FM radio. In my case, something that could receive DAB signals would be useful. However my nan, who has the same radio, who lives in Bedfordshire where it's quite flat, who's nigh on blind, but still has very good ears, appreciates the better sound quality, and the manual tuning knob. For her an FM radio, particularly one with simple controls, is ideal.
The entire Island will eventually sink. Economically it started sinking around 1912 By 1935 it was bankrupt, where it remains to this day, and Mrs. Queen is thumb sucking thinking of a new message fro Christmas, Fat lot of good that will do anyone whilst the people are being harassed for ridiculous TV licenses. Televisions are receivers To receive ( by definition) means something that someone gives you and you accept it. One receives mail . messages. gifts, greeting cards etc. None of which the recipient pays for. That is why it is called receive... Same as a receipt -- Which is GIVEN -- only the Goods are paid for . GOT Got means something acquired by TOIL.... HAVE is possession of something "I've got" is a bastardization of the English language by illiterate people. It is I HAVE ..... NOT Iv'e got Some of you people are as thick as two bricks.
@@ColasTeam The word to describe Andrew's comment is "trolling". In internet terms trolling is posting random comments on a message board completely unrelated to the topic that is being discussed.
Satellite radio in the US (Sirius XM radio) has absolutely terrible sound quality, almost as bad as AM. I have an HD radio in my car, it's better than decent FM but not great.
We are glad DAB has not taken off in the US. Analog is better quality IMO. The only problem is that many stations seem to be reducing their signal strength. And then there's station consolidation by big companies that play mostly top 40 junk.
@@rasoirwolfHD Radio preferred? By who? It's been available since 2005 but few people even know what it is... "According to 2020’s Public Radio Techsurvey, 14% of respondents said they use HD Radio. That’s up from 6% in 2012. By comparison, the survey showed that 67% of respondents use streaming audio or connect via Bluetooth in their cars. Only 52% of new cars support HD Radio." (conducted by Jacobs Media in partnership with Public Radio Program Directors Association) A few years ago Wisconsin Public Radio turned off HD Radio on seven of their stations to cut costs, they estimated fewer than 500 people at a time were listening to the digital broadcasts.
DAB in the UK sounds like everyone's dial up era MP3 collection. FM, although a little rough around the edges is still miles better sound quality wise, especially with the processing done on modern sound systems.
Our local Mainstream Jazz station is a bit hissy and crackly - but at least it's in Stereo and sounds about as good as FM ever would - our local Smooth Jazz station is on a digital sub-channel in our system though, sounds a bit tinny actually. The HD system gives us 96 kbps to play with, which can be split in various ways (stereo for a music channel, mono for talk or bitrates etc.) - but by the time you end up with the Main Program and another signal, that's about the best it can do before descending into a low-quality stream type-sound, which might not matter for a rebroadcast of an AM talk station or such, but for Smooth Jazz (since there are a lot of Jazz lovers on here apparently), it sounds pretty awful.
@@dopiaza2006 Maybe it's time for me to get out my old 512MB MP3 player from the mid-late 2000s, decode everything down to the lowest quality mono MP3s I can get away with, then load the MP3 player full of these low quality mono tracks... It's basically the same as what DAB was/is doing!
Here in Norway they forced us over to DAB even no-one wanted to, even radio experts. They were quick to ship of the fully functioning FM transmitters to Malawi so there would be no turning back and we would all have to buy new DAB radios. And it is rubbish with 75 kbps. Now they are talking about bringing back FM as listener numbers have dropped drastically...
Sunnmöre Hinterland That is interesting to hear. I think, to date, Norway is the only country to have fully switched off FM? I may be wrong. In the UK the full switch off keeps getting delayed (hopefully indefinitely at some stage).
Why is it only the reactionaries that tends to spew out their opinions everytime there's something new arriving. The DAB+ net in Norway works really well, and there's no talk about bringing back FM, it's just people like you whining in the papers. Noone in their right mind would ever consider that bringing back FM as a good idea, just bother to update your god damn stereo. It costs next to nothing.
h017ah some vintage FM tuners and Receivers aren’t replaceable either costing a lot. Getting rid of DAB is going to really hurt the value of them. My vintage Marantz Receiver is worth about £600, but thankfully does more than just radio. I have a Google Chromecast Audio hooked into it so I can listen to either FM or internet radio on it as well. I never got a good signal with DAB radio really so sold my Bose Wave IV. It ended up with a lot of interference and constant clicking and popping.
Don't worry, the US tech blogs made a big fuss about how Norway was far superior to us because they were all digital, never mind we have the HD Radio IBOC system widely deployed plus satellite radio.
Sunnmöre Hinterland In Denmark, idiot politicians are trying to justify an FM turnoff, right after they did a hard standards switch rendering my existing DAB receivers worthless. Adding insult to injury, they ruled that if enough people listen "digitally", they'll execute the kill order. So now, instead of buying new DAB units, anyone who cares about quality has to avoid all forms of digital radio (including internet radio) as long as possible, just to protect all our other equipment from wanton destruction. They also passed more laws to starve our public broadcaster, including replacing the licensing fee by a line item on the national budget, subject to constant future interference.
Oh man, I can relate having to buy or recommend something for parents. I'm the tech guru in the family, so whenever I'm asked to recommend a tech product for either my mom or dad (and previously, my grandparents some years ago), I'm fully aware of the pressure that goes along with the job of finding just that one thing that's going to satisfy their needs and be easy and intuitive to use. Recently my dad asked me to make an engine start console as he's getting into tinkering with VW engines on a test stand. It's basically some switches and gauges mounted in a little wooden enclosure, wired to connect to the engine to turn it on and monitor its vitals. I went back and forth over the best layout and finally settled on a design I hoped he would like. It's so gratifying when this person, this parent who you've always strived to impress your entire life, really appreciates what you've done. Of course my dad was happy with the result, but it didn't really hit home until I got a text from my mom the day after saying how much he really liked what I had done and that he couldn't wait for the weather to improve so he could start working in his shop again in the spring (it's unheated). I was so happy to hear that your parents reported that they'd been happily listening to your radio selection every day since you'd visited. The cost doesn't matter. Making happiness does. Well done, and thanks as always for the video.
Had a bit of an emotional day about folk at work, not to mention personal issues with my Mum and your video brought it home to me very quickly. Hope he gets better soon.
Too true, I lost my dad way too early in his life and will never really be able to get over it. He had a great collection of Roberts radios and loved his music and stuff. Even though my mum is still around I still think about how I used to show him my new gadgets etc... He missed out on Dab but my mum listens. The interface on that Ruark looks very similar to a Roberts bedside unit I have.
Perhaps something like "If we set the bitrate too high, people can just record high-quality digital music off the air. Then the music studios will sue us!"
Our heritage Clear Channel is the 7th Most Popular Station around here, I think it's kind of a fixture of the dial here - whether it's on 830 or 102.9-HD2, it's just THERE and was there when our parents and grandparents were younger as well.
Primitive? Primitive? Ill actually tell you why for the most part am audio sucks. Standard am modulation used to be 10 khz. The fcc changed it to 7 khz to help alleviate adjacent channel interference. And many radio stations are only transmitting at 4 khz to eek out slightly more range. And most car radios have 4 khz filters as well. Then theres interference made by leds, phone chargers and all sorts of crap we are using. The actual benefits of am radio are awesome to the techie. You can get really good range (80 mile radius for a 1kw station) but that depends on the setup and condition of transmitter and antenna system as well as the receiver and location in relation to interference.
what i dont get is that they used a OLED screen (those are prone to burning in) to show such basic information without any graphics whatsoever. any old lcd or whatever would have worked to
Would you rather buy: *1.* A cellular telephone with an program that controls the computer chip to process incoming radio waves and display it on an LCD screen *2.* A smart phone with Artificial Intelligence that streams photons onto your retina with OLED technology Some of it is buzz and some of it is new and exciting technology. Most people want the new and the buzz.
OLED require no backlight, thus making construction simpler. Also lower power requirements means simpler circuits and display driver. LCD requires backlighting to make the display visible, while vacuum fluorescent require lots more power.
How right you are sir! All the promises of CD quality radio. And we instead get massively compressed, both in bitrate and in dynamic range, second rate audio. It’s sad when an actual FM Stereo station sound better than most DAB stations. And don’t get me started on the shitty low signal level that we were promised would be turned up, nah, never happened, so DAB is basically useless in your car over long distances.
Yeah, the main issue in the UK is some companies (global) try to cram all the stations into one range so sacrifice bit rate even on classical FM The BBC is hit and miss talk tends to be low bit rate, music is OK bit rate and radio 3 has the max
Wow, I bought a $30 bluetooth speaker and play things from my phone. I can't fathom spending that much on a radio. Heck, I'll take a regular radio and glue Walnut to the outside!
Fun fact: In the beginning of the 2000s long range digital radio for the shortwave band was launched in Europe as Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM). Never really took off but they are still broadcasting.
Very kind of you to give your parents a gift like this. I remember my grandmother always having trouble with her old AM/FM radio and my father had to explain to her how it worked. She was very old and lived on the other side of the country as well, so my father couldn't just come over and fix it within a minute.
Matt, another fantastic video! I don't normally comment here, but wanted to offer my best wishes to you & your father. My uncle suffered a stroke a few years ago -- I empathize with your situation. I provided some training on things he had been using for years. All the best - love your videos, channel and the cool / amazing people who contribute in the comments.
We have "switched" to DAB+ from FM in Norway for national radio. It is horribly unpopular. Listenership is overall down. In many places there are next to no local radios left due to a ban on commercial FM broadcasts in the big cities. Local DAB only stations have mostly stopped broadcasting. Theres is no market. DAB+ was outdated in the mid 2000s. Internet radio is so much better it's ridiculous. The majority of radio listeners are now in the 50+ bracket. Young people have pretty much stopped listening to radio. Switching to DAB+ has killed off radio in Norway. People instead use spotify and other streaming services. Most likely we'll have local radio stations on FM for many more years. If they are forced over to DAB only, we'll most likely lose the majority of our local radio stations. The politicians will never do this, a lot of them are already regretting the national radio switchover.
@Gareth Hart Easily, most pensioners have a smartphone so you can just use that for internet radio... If they kill off analogue radio that will be the end of me tuning in, new sets are just expensive and unappealing...
That's beautiful,Matt....i did everything to keep my Dad happy with the things he loved (i even got him a Freesat recorder that he loved to record his films on an watch back) he passed on in 2016. My mum passed on today after living with Althzeimers for 12 years,again always music playing for her on DAB radio.im pretty sure your taking care of them really well....Such a comforting Techmoan to watch today.Love to you all xxx
My Denon piccolo went for repair with failed firmware upgrade. It came back with no preset channels but won't let me tune any. Denon don't maintain the station list. Vtuner now own it and want yearly payments. My Denon is a brick which was meant to see me through retirement. DONT BUY DENON if you want it to work in future.
Mate I have been watching Your channel for over two years just watched this again and feel compelled to just say this one stands out for one simple reason..the way you speak about your parents.... You emanate sincerity in all of your videos, which is why your content,aside from being incredibly interesting and informative, is so appealing, and this video shows it in its poetic union , -two things you love dearly.. Tech And Your parents .... With respect mate
God bless mate. Warms the heart . My dads 90 and going through a rough time. He used to love the Yorkshire Brass Bands. But now is totally deaf. Getting old is a really bad deal!.
In Norway they have replaced FM radio with DAB, the sound quality is terrible even as they are using DAB+ and a variable bit rate depending on the content they are broadcasting. Music is usually above 100 kilobits and talk is usually a bit below that. I've gone from listening to broadcast radio to listening to internet radio in my car as the quality is a lot better there and less interrupts because of bad coverage. DAB was never a good replacement for FM radio, they should really really try to find a better solution if they want to go digital!
They want to kill off FM in Denmark as well. The politicians and civil service must be really friendly with the people selling DAB-radios. Or they are just complete idiots..... (propably a bit of both)
Nothing is currently above 100kbs. It is dreadful, and the math shows they could have kept FM running for 500(!) years for what they used to build the DAB-network.
As a fellow Northerner (near Crewe, if that counts haha!), it’s always nice to hear your familiar delivery (‘it’s a load of crap’ really made me smile haha) amongst all the American UA-camrs. Great, fascinating video as always, and wishing your dad a much healthier time ahead.
I had a Psion Waverider (DAB receiver) in the early 2000's - got it when it was reduced from the initial price of about £300. I was shocked to learn the low bit rate of most stations and it wasn't long before I abandoned it and went over to using a Freeview digital TV receiver which gave many of the popular radio stations at a higher bit rate.
From my experiments with libfdk-aac and the Quicktime AAC encoder music sounds decent at 64k and is still passable at 32k with HE-AACv2 (especially if you're listening in a car). MPEG-1 falls apart below 100k for music. It's the same with digital cable in North America, lots of channels are low bitrate MPEG-2 video that looks shockingly bad but lets the cable companies multiplex lots of channels. At least DAB is free. The truth is that most consumers don't care about sound or video quality, I knew many people who bought expensive HDTVs in the mid 2000s and watched SD analog cable on them (complete with the 4:3 picture stretched out).
Yeah, reminds me of my Sangean that I can't remember the model of because I don't have it with me right now (I leave it in my second home in Australia because there's no DAB in Singapore), and that too has a mono speaker, but it also has an earphone jack.
I always wanted to get a digital radio when they popped up here in the mid00s, but they were always those crappy single speaker little portable things, at a high price. Now we know why that is!
I reckon the Amazon Echo smart speakers would be ideal for them. Just link to the router and load their music onto Amazon Prime Music. I have no Elvis music bought, but I just say "play something by Elvis" and it will shuffle through his music for hours. Also it plays all the normal radio stations and the speaker is really nice quality. My 93 year old mother has taken to it like a duck to water. It answers questions and sets alarms and reminders, easily just by asking it.
@@Jerbod2 The first and second gen Echo have WiFi, not 3G. www.amazon.com/all-new-amazon-echo-speaker-with-wifi-alexa-dark-charcoal/dp/B06XCM9LJ4 www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-Bluetooth-Speaker-with-WiFi-Alexa/dp/B00X4WHP5E/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Manny Calavera Not true. They connect to the house wi-fi network. They can connect to a dongle of course and 4G is actually much faster than my landline wi-fi, but the data usage could be costly. I have four Echo units, three second generation and a second generation Dot. My mother has one of them. They are used to control smart plugs as well. Also they can drop in on each other, so can be used as an inter-room and inter-house intercom.
My wife brought home a prescription yesterday. A steroid pack. “Manufactured in Tianjin China” 😡😡 China is the LAST effing place I want my pharmaceuticals to come from. 😡
In Finland we had some DAB test broadcasts many years ago, but people didn't really listen to them and they stopped. Now there is no plans for DAB in Finland, so for now it is just FM here.
Just lost my mother last week. My father (originally from Gateshead) died a decade ago. I'm probably 10-15 years younger than you. Enjoy their company while can.
I am glad that here in the Netherlands it seems that 48kbps stereo DAB+ appears to be the absolute minimum. Most channels are north of 80kbps and I have yet to find a regular DAB broadcast. I frequently listen to DAB+ broadcasts on my PC so I can record it with an RTLSDR. It sounds good on my hi-fi system as long as channels stay above 60kbps.
Blessings to your father!! I never even considered pay radio services like Sirius XM radio because once upon a time, Cable and Satellite TV was commercial free. Well, look now. The same will happen to Sirius if there was a huge enough following.
I cancelled my Sirius Internet Radio subscription a couple of years back because they kept raising the subscription fee every three months or so. It started out at $10.99 a month, and once it hit $22.99 a month I called and told them I wanted to cancel and they kept asking "Are you sure you want to cancel?" and I said "YES, I'm sure!", and they finally relented.
Rewatching this video made me check how the DAB situation is in Poland. My car stereo supports DAB+ and the quality definitely felt like a step up over FM. From what I could gather, it's mostly 96kbps to 128kbps AAC-LC in stereo, with only a couple of stations in mono and sometimes the 64kbps-96kbps transmission uses HE-AAC v1.
in the early 80's, when we first got cable TV, they carried the audio for the movie channels and MTV (in the days when MTV had music) on FM frequencies. At the time 'stereo television' didn't exist. I had expected the concept of "cable radio" to be the next thing, but I guess the problem of slotting in stations into empty spaces didn't make it worthwhile, and no one wanted to add another clunky station selector on their stereo. Of course, with the variety of 'streaming radio' services like Pandora and Live365, we've effectively gotten what I was thinking of way back then, with far more choice/variety than cable radio would have given us anyway.
I raised my jaw from the floor, when I saw the prices of these devices. It's pity that so expensive, I've really liked their external view and wanted to buy one a new apartment.
Over two years after this was first uploaded, I hope your parents are both well & are keeping safe from that nasty virus that's affected out lives so much. Keep up the good work
My Nan has dementia and when you find something that works for someone with an issue like that, regardless of how much it cost, you're just happy that they can use it. You may have overpaid if you were talking about someone without any complex needs, but it seems like this product hit the nail on the head for you parents. Hope that you have many more happy years together. :) Thanks for the great video.
I the us we have IBOC DAB called "HD" but it ain't. The "HD" radios are expensive and the bit rates are low. It sucks. Analog FM is still the kind for hi-fi sound.
Yep. Digital broadcast of just about any kind is what's wrong with HiFi today. Engineers give, accountants take away. Meanwhile, slapped together DIY audio modules and an Arduino in a wooden box nets you half a thousand bucks. It's enough to send you to the nearest thrift shop, to look for anything with wood grain and VU meters. No matter what it is, it'll sound better than the crap coming out today.
Even on proper FM, a lot of stations use over-compressed music as their source. It's noticeable when you change to a station that still plays CDs (usually classic rock or a college station) instead of whatever they have on a file server.
For terrestrial radio, "HD" is attempting to solve the wrong problem. The reason people stopped tuning in to terrestrial radio has bugger-all to do with the audio quality and everything to do with the poor signal-to-noise ratio (by which I mean "content-to-advertisement ratio"). My new-fangled car head unit has this IBOC stuff (at least for FM; can't say whether it works on AM because nothing lights up the "HD)" indicator), but I have a collection of music on my phone which just gets played via Bluetooth, and SIRUIS , which is a great overpass detector but still plays mostly content. (It BETTER, as I pay for a subscription.) So with other, better sources, why should I even bother tuning in to terrestrial radio now? The IBOC supporters seem to think that "conditional access" will solve the content-to-ad problem. I wager that it won't, or at least be too little, too late. This is because NO ONE will pay for terrestrial radio they've always had for free.
Here in Slovenia it's a similar story with DAB+. They launched it officially back at the end of 2016 (which is horribly late). At least they went with DAB+. Our national radio stations are using 128kbps bitrate which for the codec used is very good - better than FM at least. But some other stations go down to 24kbps which is horrible. The majority are around 40-60kbps. I listen to one of our national stations, so I am really happy with DAB, but most people don't even know it exists since it isn't really advertised or anything. I think it may start gaining some traction when in 2021 the EU will require all new cars to include DAB+ support since most people listen to the radio in their cars.
Alright you have one choice, listen to a radio station like before, or listen to a radio station like before, but you pay 200 euros to keep doing so. And the bitrate is shit How are you HAPPY with the latter? It's like being happy that a toilet does its job, after I paid it to flush. "I think it may start gaining some traction when in 2021 the EU will require all new cars to include DAB+ support since most people listen to the radio in their cars." In 2021 it will be too fucking late, and it's DRM, not DAB+ that will be required. Guess what, some nations will hold dearly to their DAB commitment, while others will walk around with free internet at all times. Gaining traction.. it had DECADES of gaining traction yet it didn't. Somehow politicians can decide when traction happens.
@@randomguydoes2901 128 kbps bitrate with compression used in DAB+ is not shit. It could be better of course, but it is still better than what you get with FM. Plus you get cleaner reception in more problematic areas as well. From what I've seen it looks like it's actually DAB that will be required. And I don't think it's gonna be too late. DAB+ came out in 2007. I don't think you can expect something like this to become mainstream over night. I don't see any other technology that will replace it soon. And don't say internet because that is just not an alternative for transmitting a radio station. At least not yet and certainly not by 2021.
@@rolaroli Internet + FM = Saved a fuck ton of money and resources to put on better . 128kbit DAB+ IS shit. We have ONE station in 128kbit. But it happens to be MPEG 2/DAB, equivalent of 64 DAB+. Also, mono, yes did I mention how most of our stations send in Mono? No? So we get worse SQ than a 192kbit mp3, while not having stereo.. And if we DIDN'T, you'd have like five radio stations for a decent SQ, but then I ask what is the point in switching over to something THAT DOES THE SAME THING BUT MORE EXPENSIVE, AND ALSO POSSIBLY MONO? The price of this switch is at least 3 billion dollars. In NORWAY ALONE. What a great fucking technology, everyone knows how much people LOVED to shop for RADIOS well into the 2000s right? They loved it so much DAB never even was a thing outside of the cities - and barely then.... You are so fucking out of place, as is DAB. Holy fuck what planet are you on.
@@rolaroli Good now ask yourself, why do they make DAB standard when it was ALREADY scrapped in nations that introduced this DAB+ shit? Making DAB radios useless. Now you're applauding that as your new standard in 2021, saying it needs time? Time for what? Wait until wifi covers the entire nation and get a thousand times the capacity, better sound and more functionality on the get go?? You're blowing my mind with stupidity. Did you realize GPS recieve traffic info through FM, the same way your radio can switch to a local station for traffic news? Well duh. GUESS WHAT, A COUPLE OF FUCKING BILLIONS OF GPS RECIEVERS WILL LOSE FUNCTIONALITY. SO GREAT NOW THERE ARE A FEW MILLION CARS THAT CAN'T EVEN RECIEVE INFORMATION IN NORWAY. Did I mention how bad the reception is from the slightest of bad weather? FUck are you going to miss the simple FM channel that at least could be heard all year. It can save your FUCKING LIFE one day but you have no idea why this is worth saving until other technology has completely matured. No, you'd rather be on the winning team. A winning team of fucking DINOSAURS of politicians knowing absolutely JACK SHIT. Did you know Norway is less prepared now than before the switch? And truuust me, DAB has had PLENTY OF FUCKING TIME TO BECOME POPULAR. IT WOULD HAVE, HAD IT BEEN RELEASED IN THE 80S OR 90S FOR CHEAP. BUT IT WASN'T, IT CAME LATE, IMPROVED JACK SHIT AND WAS EXPENSIVE AF. MEANWHILE SMARTPHONES CAN BASICALLY WALK YOUR FUCKING DOG ANY DAY NOW. Why did it take DAB so many FUCKING DECADES to BARELY HAVE LISTENERS, meanwhile everyone upgraded they cell phones to smart phones, tablets, modem, ISDN, DSL and fibre? Ask yourself why this.. "internet" tech of which I'm speaking of... ask yourself WHY DID THAT BECOME MAINSTREAM, ALMOST OVER NIGHT? HUH? Do you know how fucking old DAB even is? It was developed in Norway, started out in the fucking 60s. Yes, that's when that started. and pilots started in sweden/Uk the same day decades later. Already in 2000, it was clear that those 15 listeners Stockholm had was a good indicator of how popular digital radio would be - ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ALREAD GOT INTERNET BASICALLY INSTALLING ITSELF, THAT IS NOT FUCKING HARD TO SEE NOW IS IT? So what happened since that time? Did internet just die off while DAB grew? As I said, what happened was.. DAB FUCKING DIED. THEN CAME DAB+. AND THOSE RADIOS WERE NOT FUCKING CHEAP EITHER. APPARENTLY I NEED TO SCHOOL YOU ALSO ON THIS MATTER. Ask yourself if there was maybe a LARGE FUCKING DEMAND FOR INTERNET AND DIGITAL TV, WHILE NO ONE GAVE SHITS ABOUT DAB? Whereas in Norway, they had to CHEAT THE FUCKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAKE THE SWITCH HAPPEN. THE SWEDISH ARMY SAYS NO, RIKSREVISIONEN SAYS HELL NO, EVERYONE CITING COSTS AND RISKS. BUT NORWAY WHO DIDN'T EVEN START THE PILOT, THEY'RE GOING FOR IT. IN THE MOST CORRUPT WAY POSSIBLE. YEAH DAB RADIO IS SO BAD IT CORRUPTS NORDIC NATIONS, SURE MUST'VE BEEN A POPULAR PRODUCT HUH? You say DAB+ came out in 2007, while DAB was still unpopular as fuck, and internet really broke loose.those listeners had taken over 7 years to accumulate, then they get pissed on. WITHIN TEN YEARS OF THIS AWESOME TECHNOLOGY. AND YOU APPLAUD THIS LIKE A FUCKING IMBECILE????? DAB WAS DEVELOPED IN THE FUCKING 60s, YOU FUCKING IDIOT. When was the last time a normal update on your PC/internet required you to also buy new phone, tablet, Smart TV and everything else. No ask yourself that. How often does an improvement for one platform require you to scrap ALL your fucking devices? PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE UPGRADING PHONES. THEY DON'T LIKE UPGRADING A FUCKING RADIO, DID YOU NOTICE? So how can you be fucking happy. Over having a radio channel. in 2019. Where the fuck is this impressive? You must know almost nothing of technology. Say you wait 15 years with that digital shit, instead of forcing a very expensive standard switch that doesn't even WANT TO HAPPEN???? Anything less than ~infinite channels and 192kbit mp3 quality is 100% unacceptable. I downloaded from napster in a higher quality, at end of 1999, than every DAB and DAB+ channel I've heard. Now you think anything less than that is OK, by 2021? hahaha. What the fuck were you doing in your country all those years? Did you just invent the fire or what?
@@randomguydoes2901 You are one angry person aren't you? - DAB began development in the 80s and came out around the middle of 90s (first commercial station in 1995). So not 60s. - RDS-TMC that the GPS receivers are using will of course stop working when the switchover occurs. But DAB does allow for TMC information to be carried. Currently RDS-TMC has crappy support and standardization and the support for it varies widely. - Digital switchover for TV occurred not that long ago and people apparently survived. Nobody liked switching over to that either. It cost money, people had to buy new TVs, ... - HE-AAC (AAC+) used by DAB+ at 128kbps offers similar quality to 192kbps (or even more) mp3 while being more efficient. - One of the main improvements to DAB+ is better coding which allows better error correction in problematic areas. Of course broadcasters want to save money so they are skimping on bitrate and safety. We will see if they will continue to do that when FM is out. Currently they are usually doing this so they get their spot on the DAB multiplexes but not really switch over from FM just yet. DAB also allows many more stations on the same frequency spectrum than FM. That's one of the main reasons for the switchover. The other being the fact that FM frequency spectrum can then be used for other stuff.
I visited the UK in the fall. We did a VRBO rental in Edinburgh which was a really great townhouse space and I was delighted to find a digital radio as a piece the owner had left for our use. I've always been interested in digital but never bought a receiver for the US digital service. We had been in a shop in York that sold some digital sets and the owner mentioned that satellite hasn't taken off in the UK. I think because of our conversation we both realized what was going on. The US begging so vast is a great place to sell satellite radio. But the relatively small size of the UK makes digital a reasonable service. Anyway, after playing with the Sony receiver I found a favorite station. It's called Magic Soul Radio and I have enjoyed it in the US a few times since returning. Thanks for this video!
That's great that you could help out your parents. DAB sounds similar to the HDTV situation in the US. I can get 100 channels but they are all DVD quality or worse. One good thing about DAB is the R820T2 receiver chip gave rise to the SDR (software defined radio) tuners.
Can't agree on that. Got a DAB+ radio in the car, which sometimes falls back to the FM channel of a station if the DAB receptions drops too low, so you instantly hear the difference. Maybe I'm just listening to stations with higher bitrates, but the sound quality is outstanding and much, much better than FM. Of course you cannot expect 96kHz/24bit PCM over the air, but there's a significant improvement compared to FM.
One day you'll see the REAL point of radio. It's not in the sound. It's in the reach. You reach far with the most vital information, and everything else is a bonus. Now, this point of having reach will never, EVER get old no matter how digital the world is. Why, well. I'm tired of explaining basic, common fucking sense into these dumbass city boys wih ZERO FUCKING PERSPECTIVE. FUCKS SAKE.
@@randomguydoes2901 yeah, "the reach". After about 87 Kilometers (~54 miles) the signal becomes to weak to reliably decode it, which means: No sound at all. No chance of hearing foreign stations if you're not living right across the border. If you live in China you will only receive Chinese propaganda. With analog radio (am or fm) stations had a much further reach, maybe they were a little noisy or distorted, but that wasn't a big deal if you just wanted to hear the news. Radio is dead, deal with it, and switching to digital is the last nail in the coffin. The horrible quality of DAB+ is the icing on top, now you can't even use it to listen to music. Have fun enjoying your very independent, bad sounding, digital state media. COUNTRY BOY.
@@DasMrOSi No radio isn't dead. FM had traffic information sent to peoples GPS. FM provides local traffic information through radios while driving. It can provide weather, news and advice for humans on a skiing tour. Bad weather happens, at that point you REALLY WANT TO STILL HEAR FM SIGNALS. How fucking naive are you, that you don't even consider these situations? Radio will never die completely. Radio is backup for the people WHEREVER you are. Switching for DAB is not the final nail in the coffin.. Switching for DAB in 2000s is just fucking silly stupid. A few years before 5G will realize itself (without political help over 25 years, as is the case with DAB). in fact the national safety and preparedness has WENT DOWN FROM THE SWITCH. This tells me radio isn't dead. It has a use, and it has nothing to do with profits and ands You are missing the point COMPLETELY. as you said it already sounds bad. Sounds bad, and is worse from a safety perspective. Sure was worth the money though.
I repaired a couple of these. The standby power has its own switchmode power supply supplying (I think) 9V (I'd have to check). The switchmode was a cheap unit designed for a plugpack and had no optocoupler for feedback. The unit is contacted to the top of the main power transformer via cable ties. I replaced it with a more expensive plugpack (removed the board from the plugpack and installed it into the Ruark). Worked perfectly and now had optocoupler feedback. The CD transport fails in them, so I am told by a retailer. I did one repair. It is complicated to remove the CD. The front panel is held on by magnets so that is easy to remove. Looking at the transport I was surprised to find rubber mounting which you only see in car CD players. Some research and I discovered that transport was identical to that from some Volkswagen cars (can't recall the model, was years ago). The price online is around 1/5th of what Ruark charge for the same transport. This kind of behaviour is pretty typical, unfortunately. Manufacturers source their parts from other manufacturers so if you can find where they get the part from, for instance if the manufacturer's name and model number is on the part, then you can just buy direct from them or their retail arm or eBay.
It used the CDM-M10 4.11/5 transport, the Raurk player had a sub, removable remote at the top (the top control was removable and could be used as a remote). It was two years ago, a HiFi shop used to sell a lot of them and quite a few were returned with CD problems (so I was told). I came in at the tail end of the business which closed down around 7 months after I started doing repairs, I did three of their Ruarks include one replacement transport. No doubt there are new models by now :)
It's great that your parents are happy with it and I hope that your father makes a speedy recovery. It does seem to have been a little expensive , but that's better than outrageously expensive.
Sweden ended the nationwide DAB trials because nobody listened, and the Armed Forces also rejected DAB from a national security standpoint. Good riddance I say, FM all the way.
I'm so glad here in the US we just use regular AM and FM bands for radio broadcast. We did switch to digital for TV broadcasting, but radio still uses traditional analog signals. There is no talk about changing as far as I know, and I hope they never do.
Well, I live in an area with crappy FM reception, so for me DAB is a no-brainer - even rubbish bit-rates and ancient MP2 encoding sounds better than a hissing, popping, sometimes-mono-sometimes-stereo-ish FM station.
There's a bit of a difference between DAB and AM/FM HD, though. DAB has its own spectrum, so shutting down analog AM/FM would recover their respective frequencies for later reallocation. HD Radio in the US currently slots into spacing sections around each existing AM/FM station and is designed to eventually fill the whole AM/FM spectrum. I believe FM stations are required to simulcast an analog signal, but I'm not sure AM stations are because I know there are some that broadcast digital-only. But it's unlikely that the FCC would require stations to transition completely out of analog for a long time, because they wouldn't recover any spectrum. Chances are stations will just be given the option to go digital-only within their frequency channel when it makes sense for them. So it's not "killing" AM/FM in the US, it's just "letting broadcasters kill it at their leisure."
Or leave them the same way DAB = Dubious Audio Broadcasting or Deficient Audio Broadcasting. The big problem was they started it and got stuck with it before the technology was mature, a bit like NTSC TV
God bless you for helping your parents in such a kind and sweet way. It was such a nice thing for you to help them that way. Take care, and have a nice day.
So lovely to hear a dedicated child helping his parents and it sounds like it was all worthwhile too! As for instructions/understanding, I'm still having fun explaining to my dad how our electric car works! :D
It seems that DAB is right old Cockup all over! Not only in UK at least in Sweden and Denmark the same thing! It reminds me about the Simpson episode about monorail! It seems like someone went around convincing public broadcasting companies to invest vast sums in it! While the public don’t want it at all.
I know in the US/Canada everyone I’ve talked to about our system, HD radio, loves it. The issue here is that it’s primarily confined to only cars (almost no standalone radios exist). I think the issue with DAB is purely implementation and that like the US with NTSC they jumped on the standards train way too early and got a poor result.
GOOD POINT ,,, General decline in service all around ,,,My last 2 RADIOS have a clicky underwater sound ,,like the microphone sound on a laptop,,,, maybe portable DAB is a failure as the bigger ac radios sounding better
Did you send this message via carrier pigeon then? Are are you one of those la-de-dah folks that have switched to that new fangled thing called a telegram?
Well of course the government plans (whatever colour of government at the time) was to close FM and sell of the bandwidth at huge cost, like they did with the 3G/4G spectrum which gave them billions of pounds of revenue. This has backfired. DAB has somewhat withered on the vine in parts of the UK. Where I live, many DAB stations have now closed and our DAB radio sits abandoned. The sound quality was shocking and the reception patchy. Instead we had a new FM radio station start up here in 2010, which is an admission that DAB just isn't happening. The awful truth though is that most people who do use DAB, think that the sound quality is better than FM, even with our ultra-low data rates. Some people just don't care.
Too many people's opinion of audio quality is directly related to the price they paid for the equipment. DAB is expensive, so therefore it sounds better!
I've heard of these guys, usually when I googled my name! Too expensive for me to order as an amusement, but I dig the name!!!!! Just got some mugs with their name on it off Ebay for the Family name cred.
We have 'HD Radio' here in the states and it's basically the same story as what you explained with DAB. It's not a flop, but it's not taking off quickly either. It's an option in new cars but not standard for most. You tune to an FM station like normal, then after a few seconds it links to the digital version of the FM station if you're in range. Then you can switch between the other digital stations on that frequency. Like if you are listening to 101.9FM and you successfully receive 101.9 HD after a few seconds, it will include 101.9-2, 101.9-3 and so on as digital channels. But similar to DAB, I don't find the audio quality superior to FM at all.. Even XM (satellite) radio doesn't have all that great audio quality. Has a sort of tinny sound to it. I have also noticed many stations are mono as well. As far as signal degradation due to distance, I feel regular FM has HD beat. Even when the signal deteriorates, you can still listen.. of course with the addition of static whereas Digital just stops playing until a good enough signal is reacquired. I'll hang on to my old Sherwood S-7300 receiver :)
jamesb1221222, I use a Sangean HD Radio tuner. Many of the HD sub channels sound, if not CD quality, pretty darned good. US commercial radio being a private enterprise compete with other radio stations for advertising dollars and listenership. Broadcast format and sound quality continues to important to many listeners. They will go where they find the stations they like. Government radio is in competition with no one for quality and format.
Thanks so much for reviewing these products. It's almost a full time job trying to find devices like this, or to keep old devices working for our loved ones. I've tried to help elderly family move to newer technology, but that's not always easy, or possible. Recently I was searching for a similar hifi, but it needed to have CD and AM radio. I finally settled on something used. I would never have thought it would be easier to find a new turntable.
Thanks for a very introspective video. I bought a WiFi radio during the holidays to receive poor quality stations and I couldn't ask for better. It sounds good and works fine. Like your unit, the buttons are not exactly logical but they work. The last thing I bought my father was a new VCR. He was so excited to get it but... never got to use it.
You disabled comments on the video about DAB! In regards to that, some stations are now rebroadcasting those poorly compressed DAB streams on their FM frequencies too! In Sheffield, if we tune to Rother FM on 96.1FM you can clearly hear the AAC+ compression artefacts (metallic/watery sound) during music and studio segments. Seems like a travesty to me - but I made a forum post about it on digitalspy and the majority of people don't seem to care. The clarity of audio from a strong FM signal will eventually be forgotten.
I think this is my first comment to your channel. Your love for your parents shines through in this video. My father had a medical emergency this week and we were very nervous for a couple days. Your video reminds us of what is important in life. So glad that your parents' home is now filled with music and sounds that bring them enjoyment.
Hope your father is ok
steve larkin Thank you. He's improving, however the doctor hasn't determined the cause of his internal bleeding. More tests are scheduled.
I mean this with sincerity!
ua-cam.com/video/y5T96LHnEWw/v-deo.html
kcarlson2006 Wow. Just last night had a passing in our family, absolutely terrible. What did I watch [first] to help? THIS GUY. I'm with you- the important things in life, and all. Thanks for that- spot on.
Justin R. Romanowich
So true. It is very admirable. I am just preparing for trip to visit my old man.
You should leave the clock flashing 12o'clock like on old VCRs our grandparents used to have. It's tradition. Best wishes for your dad's speedy recovery!
@Greg pretty good way of telling people it's more suited for tinkerers, at that point in time at least
@Greg I was able to teach my elderly mother how to program her VCR. Does that count?
**what do you think that **_Time is not set_** burn-in is?**
I swear this reminds me of the "radio" in the kitchen in my ex-GF's apartment, it was actually an old National clock radio, they then tuned it into the station and at the volume level they wanted, then set it on top of the fridge, way out of reach, and when I turned on a mystery plug out of curiousity, I heard it playing, and could somewhat make out a flashing 12:00 from atop that fridge.
Well I remembered that 12:00 flashing in my mother's mini Hi-Fi back when I was young
Fear not. The DAB situation in the UK may yet improve, for as the Ruark continues to remind us, "Time Is Not Set".
because that is the truth. the time being a set thing that continues to pass linearly is only an illusion we choose to believe for sake of practicality
@@SlavomirG "People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey - wimey ... stuff!"
Congrats! Very clever pickup tying two of the elements of the video together like that. One of the best comments ever
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I just downloaded the TuneIn app ten years ago and never looked back. ☺
Bravo!
This is a year old, published the day my father turned 85. He loved to hear his music (ranging from Helene Fisher... over Pink Floyd to Beethoven, in fact: anything) on his Pioneer tower. Since cable switched from analog to digital a while ago, an Alexa accompanied the Pioneer to listen to radio stations again.
He died mid december, and I'm touched by seeing you taking care of your fathers audio equipment like I did for decades :-) Hope he's well and enjoys it :)
UIs on consumer electronics are mostly terrible for old people, who typically don't understand modes, and get confused by too many buttons. Symbols are also a problem, but text would probably end up too small.
I think there is an untapped market - perhaps "My Last Sony"...?
UIs on modern equipment are mostly terrible for all people. I'm not sure what's happened but in the last 15years we have gone backwards in a huge way. You look at equipment from the past and the vast majority of it just intuitively make sense. All too often its the exact opposite today.
@@Seiskid Too often these days, user interfaces are designed by software developers and not design engineers (I speak as a software developer).
My Last Sony! 😂 too good amigo
Hard buttons are the best shortcuts. It would be nice if the designer's would let us assign each hard button. As for labeling each button a wide LCD right above or below each button could be customized.
@@chaos.corner Totally agree - I am also a software developer, and I cringe at so many user interfaces these days. My DAB alarm clock has "snooze" has tiny buttons, a tiny display, and being a right Mr Magoo, I have to squint at it from about 6" away at 6am to hit the right button...
All the best and a fast recovery for your dad! Greetings from Germany
80kbps? 128kbps? DAB shame on you. This is pretty much the opposite of Hi-Fi. It should be called Lo-Fi radio. Totally unacceptable. Thanks, Techmoan for another great lesson in audio.
i produce lo-Fi music, and i put more work into my music than UK radio do with their Hi-FI streams...i believe
Old-school FM all the way.
Sadly satellite/XM radio here in the US isn't any better. They spend all their money on sending me mail to join their terrible service instead of putting out higher quality music. Even the talk radio stations are so low quality that I get headaches from them.
If it was 128kbps AAC (aka DAB+) that would be really good quality! Sadly it's not even MP3 128kbps it's even worse as it's ancient MP2 :(
Dab is rubbish, for example KISS radio sounds better on FM than DAB, what a joke
Seeing the 24 kbps DAB+ stream got a chuckle out of me.
Two tin cans connected by string would get better quality....
Though I always enjoy this channel, this video was especially relatable. Being the tech-minded son of aging parents myself, it's a bit gratifying to know things are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.
Any chance you could move your car, its blocking my drive..
Canada flirted with DAB... test trials, etc. But we live beside an 800 lb gorilla that chose a different system, so DAB died a quick death here. Which is apparently fine, because a really great FM tuner sounds amazing.
Norway doesn't serve food in school, it's too expensive SOMEHOW, but they did demolish FM. Now they got DAB+ =). 20% of listeners gone just like that.
@@randomguydoes2901 Yup. They said it would give us more diversity and channels. The result was more channels that more or less have the same content, and a system that is dated and erratic...horray :(
@@secularnevrosis In Germany the DAB+ is superior. We don't have good LTE coverage, we don't have the best internet connections in our homes, but our DAB+ is the finest sh*t out there. Seriously, we have a wide variety of stations, only the big ones are the usual "5 minutes music, 10 minutes spoken nonsense and 15minutes ads". The smaller ones, damn, only music, short news every hour and here and then 1 max. 2 spots of ads.
Also none of the DAB+ stations with music go under 70/80kbit/s, the biggest ones using 128kbit/s. And damn, they sound so much better than FM. At least smaller local Stations now can be recieved without permanent cutouts or weak signal, or shared signals (one half of the day station 1, the other station 2).
I like DAB+, it's nice and at least in Germany it is very usable. The older flintstone-type DAB was killed fast, then DAB+ came and more and more people trying it out. Also better Tuner IC's come to market, which means smaller radios, more battery life and the reception of signals are much better.
I don't know the situation in other countrys, but in Germany it is a very good system nowadays.
@@jensharbers6702 The main problem with DAB here in Norway is how the politicians have handled the matter. Years ago, it was decided that the national broadcasters, both public and commercial, would switch to DAB-only transmission by the end of 2017. Many people, myself included, listen to the radio mostly/only when driving, and by 2016 there were still new cars being delivered without DAB reception, and by far most cars on the road didn't (and still don't) have DAB reception.
Because of this, we urged the government to reconsider or delay the transition to DAB, but they refused. The result: a 20% (400 000) drop in the number of listeners by July 2018, and I'm one of them. I refuse to spend time and money on retrofitting my car just because the politicians are technologically incompetent.
@Jens Hardbers - i have a completely different experience about the DAB situation in germany.
it's about as bad as LTE - great where it works but the coverage outside of cities is terrible.
we have a DAB(+) radio at work - nothing fancy - just a plastic boombox with small mono speaker and telescope antenna but it works quite nice for being used in a basement - that basement is in a city tho.
i borrowed that radio one day, turned it on and put it on the passenger seat of my car when i drove home - the DAB signal dropped out right after i left the city limits and it never came back.
i could not recieve any station at home either even though i tried a few spots throughout the house that usually work for FM and cellphones.
i brought the radio back the next day, knowing that it is NOT worth buying any DAB equippment.
not where i live at least.
FM is not an option for me either because i can get 4-5 stations at best and none of them fits my taste
DAB in reverse is BAD :)
Sounds like the man who went to the doctor to say "it hurts every time I poke my left arm".
Don't reverse it then.
dab on the haters
I actually have the John Lewis unit you mentioned and have been using it daily for the past year. It's brilliant! I remember comparing it to the Ruark in store and it actually sounded better and also had more volume. Handy when you have a kitchen party! Anyway, my wife is Polish and regularly listens to Polish radio stations via its WiFi internet tuner. It just works, sounds great and is a genuine bargain.
I'll second that, Iv'e had some rather crap DAB and internet radios before this but this one is an all-in-one beauty with across the board functionality and ability to add extra speakers, it's a real heavy thing due to it's inbuilt amp and woofer. Lovely wood finish, no regrets buying this after 3 months of use.
In Australia, we've had DAB+ since 2009, but it's only broadcast in the capital cities - which are hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers away from each other. In other words, coverage for regional areas is pretty much non-existent. People seem to be moving from FM directly to Spotify (or internet radio), and forgetting about digital radio.
That's about right.
DAB is a waste of time.
FM is Fine Music and Internet Radio .. Thousands of Channels.
Now explain the meaning of the word Radio.
and what comes out of it, explain that also.
Again a five letter word ending in DIO
I will give you a clue .. The English pronunciation is made deliberately corrupt
to hide the meaning of the word.
@@andrew_koala2974
Radiated Audio?
@@antimattercarp2720
Incorrect. Sorry.
However AUDIO is what emanates from the RADIO, and that brings me to the second question.
Explain the meaning of AUDIO. [The words Sound / Noise have nothing to do with it]
Firstly one has to comprehend that RADIO is NOT an English language word, and English speakers pronounce it incorrectly as RAY-DEE-OW.
That is totally wrong.
1. Who invented the RADIO?
2. What Country did he come from? and;
3. What language did he speak?
When you know the answer to those questions, and should you
be bright and alert enough, you will immediately know the correct
and proper pronunciation.
And ONLY when you pronounce it correctly in the correct language
you will know what RADIO means.
English is a deliberately corrupted language that obfuscates the
TRUE meaning of words.
Anyway, you made a good attempt, but unfortunately approached
it from a incorrect perspective.
I do the same with my students ... teach them to be analytical.
One does not immediately get it right, but with focus and deep
analysis eventually one will arrive at the answer.
It keeps the mind in tune, and when one approaches problems from
different angles often it becomes so obvious, that often we wonder
how er missed the obvious.
As when my mentor and master said when I was studying for Electronics
and Electro-Mechanical degrees "There are NO problems ... Only solutions"
I graduated with those two degrees in 1969.
My mentor came from the same country as the inventor of the RADIO, as did my
fathers parents.
My mentor was a very tough task-master who would make my head hurt and
often bring me close to tears -- But years later I realized that he did me a great favor,
What he 'hammered' into my head I never forgot.
I did a quick search and we are about the same in terms of bitrates, better then the uk but still not sub par
dazaspc exactly what you just said haha
"TIME IS NOT SET" is most definitely the lost Pink Floyd album. If indeed they ever find it. I'm with you Mat, my folks are nearing 80 and my mom has had bad MS for 40+ years, so it falls to us. Excellent job there. Also, thanks a bunch for the shoutout and for showing the BS de Resistance CD, hope you get a yuk or 2 out of it.
DAB is useless. Where I lived previously and where I live now, DAB receivers can't receive a single station reliably, whereas FM stations are received perfectly. I don't live out in the sticks either. And even if DAB did work the quality is appalling. Mono! What the hell!?! The 1950's called and they want their radio broadcasting quality back...
I can understand that and that is where it belongs
Gernot Schrader They do. BBC Radio 4 extra.
DAB is not useless if the transmitters are put out everywhere and cover the same as existing FM transmitters.. And what do you mean mono!? It's not just mono. That's just the bad channels. I get stereo DAB... And with high enough bitrate it sounds better than FM. But not all channels send high enough bitrate
I agree and you could include all these way over rated and pointless so called smart speakers as well. Things like flipping Alexas. They play in glorious 1950's mono sound too! and some are very expensive. I guess for todays mobile phone obsessed youth things like stereo sound is kind of wasted on them!
To be fair DAB can be useful, depending on where you live. I live in Wales, in a valley, surrounded by hills. As a result I have trouble receiving some of the stations I like, Classic FM for example, on my portable FM radio. In my case, something that could receive DAB signals would be useful. However my nan, who has the same radio, who lives in Bedfordshire where it's quite flat, who's nigh on blind, but still has very good ears, appreciates the better sound quality, and the manual tuning knob. For her an FM radio, particularly one with simple controls, is ideal.
based on the data shown in your videos, 2 out of 2 British homes are in valleys that interfere with radio reception
It might be genetic.
The entire Island will eventually sink.
Economically it started sinking around 1912
By 1935 it was bankrupt, where it remains to this day,
and Mrs. Queen is thumb sucking thinking of a new message fro Christmas,
Fat lot of good that will do anyone whilst the people are being harassed for
ridiculous TV licenses.
Televisions are receivers
To receive ( by definition) means something that someone gives you and you accept it.
One receives mail . messages. gifts, greeting cards etc.
None of which the recipient pays for. That is why it is called receive...
Same as a receipt -- Which is GIVEN -- only the Goods are paid for . GOT
Got means something acquired by TOIL....
HAVE is possession of something
"I've got" is a bastardization of the English language by illiterate people.
It is I HAVE ..... NOT Iv'e got
Some of you people are as thick as two bricks.
@@andrew_koala2974 oi m8 where's ya complaint loicence?
@@ColasTeam The word to describe Andrew's comment is "trolling". In internet terms trolling is posting random comments on a message board completely unrelated to the topic that is being discussed.
@@patrickjohnson5658 oi m8 were ya internet behaviour explanation loicence uh
I don't think digital radio has taken off in the US really either. Satellite radio gives you more, although you do have to pay a subscription fee.
I’ve only seen HD Radio implemented in step-up variants of newer car models.
@@MysteryMii there are a few HD radio stations I like, but with clear channel owning everything, most of it is still crap
Satellite radio in the US (Sirius XM radio) has absolutely terrible sound quality, almost as bad as AM. I have an HD radio in my car, it's better than decent FM but not great.
We are glad DAB has not taken off in the US. Analog is better quality IMO. The only problem is that many stations seem to be reducing their signal strength. And then there's station consolidation by big companies that play mostly top 40 junk.
Kyle Scheffler It’s called iHeartMedia now.
In 1999 real time mp2 decoding from a small radio is actually really impressive.
Yeah, but our attitudes shifted and the HE-AAC used in DAB+ in Europe & HD Radio in my country became preferred.
@@rasoirwolfHD Radio preferred? By who? It's been available since 2005 but few people even know what it is...
"According to 2020’s Public Radio Techsurvey, 14% of respondents said they use HD Radio. That’s up from 6% in 2012. By comparison, the survey showed that 67% of respondents use streaming audio or connect via Bluetooth in their cars. Only 52% of new cars support HD Radio."
(conducted by Jacobs Media in partnership with Public Radio Program Directors Association)
A few years ago Wisconsin Public Radio turned off HD Radio on seven of their stations to cut costs, they estimated fewer than 500 people at a time were listening to the digital broadcasts.
@@derek20la I think you missunderstood their comment, they ment that HE-AAC was prefered over the MPEG 2
DAB in the UK sounds like everyone's dial up era MP3 collection.
FM, although a little rough around the edges is still miles better sound quality wise, especially with the processing done on modern sound systems.
acreamymoose I think there’s some digital FM in the US (HD Radio or some crap like that), sounds horrible. Analog FM sounds a LOT better.
My dial up MP3 collection sounds just fine. I was happy to wait 30 mins to download a track that sounded good!
To be fair what kids listen to now it's not that different 😃
Our local Mainstream Jazz station is a bit hissy and crackly - but at least it's in Stereo and sounds about as good as FM ever would - our local Smooth Jazz station is on a digital sub-channel in our system though, sounds a bit tinny actually.
The HD system gives us 96 kbps to play with, which can be split in various ways (stereo for a music channel, mono for talk or bitrates etc.) - but by the time you end up with the Main Program and another signal, that's about the best it can do before descending into a low-quality stream type-sound, which might not matter for a rebroadcast of an AM talk station or such, but for Smooth Jazz (since there are a lot of Jazz lovers on here apparently), it sounds pretty awful.
@@dopiaza2006 Maybe it's time for me to get out my old 512MB MP3 player from the mid-late 2000s, decode everything down to the lowest quality mono MP3s I can get away with, then load the MP3 player full of these low quality mono tracks... It's basically the same as what DAB was/is doing!
What a great guy you are. I refer to the intro and how you speak about your dad - heartwarming hearing it even as a total stranger.
Here in Norway they forced us over to DAB even no-one wanted to, even radio experts.
They were quick to ship of the fully functioning FM transmitters to Malawi so there would be no turning back and we would all have to buy new DAB radios. And it is rubbish with 75 kbps.
Now they are talking about bringing back FM as listener numbers have dropped drastically...
Sunnmöre Hinterland That is interesting to hear. I think, to date, Norway is the only country to have fully switched off FM? I may be wrong. In the UK the full switch off keeps getting delayed (hopefully indefinitely at some stage).
Why is it only the reactionaries that tends to spew out their opinions everytime there's something new arriving. The DAB+ net in Norway works really well, and there's no talk about bringing back FM, it's just people like you whining in the papers. Noone in their right mind would ever consider that bringing back FM as a good idea, just bother to update your god damn stereo. It costs next to nothing.
h017ah some vintage FM tuners and Receivers aren’t replaceable either costing a lot. Getting rid of DAB is going to really hurt the value of them. My vintage Marantz Receiver is worth about £600, but thankfully does more than just radio. I have a Google Chromecast Audio hooked into it so I can listen to either FM or internet radio on it as well. I never got a good signal with DAB radio really so sold my Bose Wave IV. It ended up with a lot of interference and constant clicking and popping.
Don't worry, the US tech blogs made a big fuss about how Norway was far superior to us because they were all digital, never mind we have the HD Radio IBOC system widely deployed plus satellite radio.
Sunnmöre Hinterland In Denmark, idiot politicians are trying to justify an FM turnoff, right after they did a hard standards switch rendering my existing DAB receivers worthless. Adding insult to injury, they ruled that if enough people listen "digitally", they'll execute the kill order. So now, instead of buying new DAB units, anyone who cares about quality has to avoid all forms of digital radio (including internet radio) as long as possible, just to protect all our other equipment from wanton destruction. They also passed more laws to starve our public broadcaster, including replacing the licensing fee by a line item on the national budget, subject to constant future interference.
Sorry to hear about your dad's problems, i hope he's doing okay 🙂
Sorry to hear about your dad, Mat. Hope he makes a full recovery. Great video, though!
Oh man, I can relate having to buy or recommend something for parents. I'm the tech guru in the family, so whenever I'm asked to recommend a tech product for either my mom or dad (and previously, my grandparents some years ago), I'm fully aware of the pressure that goes along with the job of finding just that one thing that's going to satisfy their needs and be easy and intuitive to use. Recently my dad asked me to make an engine start console as he's getting into tinkering with VW engines on a test stand. It's basically some switches and gauges mounted in a little wooden enclosure, wired to connect to the engine to turn it on and monitor its vitals. I went back and forth over the best layout and finally settled on a design I hoped he would like.
It's so gratifying when this person, this parent who you've always strived to impress your entire life, really appreciates what you've done. Of course my dad was happy with the result, but it didn't really hit home until I got a text from my mom the day after saying how much he really liked what I had done and that he couldn't wait for the weather to improve so he could start working in his shop again in the spring (it's unheated).
I was so happy to hear that your parents reported that they'd been happily listening to your radio selection every day since you'd visited. The cost doesn't matter. Making happiness does. Well done, and thanks as always for the video.
Had a bit of an emotional day about folk at work, not to mention personal issues with my Mum and your video brought it home to me very quickly. Hope he gets better soon.
Greetings to your dad, I have lost my mother yesterday, she was 87.
Herzliches Beileid unbekannterweise. :(
I lost my mom last year at 68. You’re never ready. Praying for you.
@@djray369 Thank you!
@@mbirth Danke!
resting peacefully Eric, thoughts with you and your family.
For 700 GBP i would buy a nice TV and separate: decent speakers, some oldschool amplifier, a cd player and some casette deck.
Would look weird in a small bedroom.
Making your parents Happy seize the moment it wont always be there ....... Great video
Too true, I lost my dad way too early in his life and will never really be able to get over it. He had a great collection of Roberts radios and loved his music and stuff. Even though my mum is still around I still think about how I used to show him my new gadgets etc... He missed out on Dab but my mum listens. The interface on that Ruark looks very similar to a Roberts bedside unit I have.
My father had a stroke recently as well, and the forgetfulness aspect is no joke. Kudos to you for being the patient, IT-help for them.
As soon as you showed that many stations blasted their jams in mono, my jaw dropped. Truly appalling!
That 80's broadcast just emulates a nice AM transmission to keep it time accurate :-) :-)
at least you don't get artifacting on am
We had fm stereo in the 80s!
But you do get all sorts of other interfereence on AM.
Absolutely disgusting bit rates. What were they thinking?!?
Even with FM, people tend to be in their car anyway so they dont notice the difference.
@@Jerbod2 True, but seeing those sub-128kbps bit rates just makes it painful.
@Corey N I listen to the radio in the car all the time for the traffic, and a playlist someone else made might have bands/songs you've not heard of
Perhaps something like "If we set the bitrate too high, people can just record high-quality digital music off the air. Then the music studios will sue us!"
One word: money.
I'm glad AM and FM continue to be awesome in the US.
Yes, even the primative AM radio sticks around.
Same deal in Canada, it's a classic case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
AM radio is great, you can build a receiver with like some wire and a rock
Our heritage Clear Channel is the 7th Most Popular Station around here, I think it's kind of a fixture of the dial here - whether it's on 830 or 102.9-HD2, it's just THERE and was there when our parents and grandparents were younger as well.
Primitive? Primitive? Ill actually tell you why for the most part am audio sucks. Standard am modulation used to be 10 khz. The fcc changed it to 7 khz to help alleviate adjacent channel interference. And many radio stations are only transmitting at 4 khz to eek out slightly more range. And most car radios have 4 khz filters as well. Then theres interference made by leds, phone chargers and all sorts of crap we are using. The actual benefits of am radio are awesome to the techie. You can get really good range (80 mile radius for a 1kw station) but that depends on the setup and condition of transmitter and antenna system as well as the receiver and location in relation to interference.
what i dont get is that they used a OLED screen (those are prone to burning in) to show such basic information without any graphics whatsoever. any old lcd or whatever would have worked to
Fryingpan - Perceived value.
@@caulkins69 lmfao 😂
Would you rather buy:
*1.* A cellular telephone with an program that controls the computer chip to process incoming radio waves and display it on an LCD screen
*2.* A smart phone with Artificial Intelligence that streams photons onto your retina with OLED technology
Some of it is buzz and some of it is new and exciting technology. Most people want the new and the buzz.
OLED require no backlight, thus making construction simpler. Also lower power requirements means simpler circuits and display driver. LCD requires backlighting to make the display visible, while vacuum fluorescent require lots more power.
Not all OLEDs are equal. This one is a cheapo PMOLED that is wrapped in plastic, so it's not perfectly isolated from the air.
How right you are sir! All the promises of CD quality radio. And we instead get massively compressed, both in bitrate and in dynamic range, second rate audio. It’s sad when an actual FM Stereo station sound better than most DAB stations. And don’t get me started on the shitty low signal level that we were promised would be turned up, nah, never happened, so DAB is basically useless in your car over long distances.
Yeah, the main issue in the UK is some companies (global) try to cram all the stations into one range so sacrifice bit rate even on classical FM
The BBC is hit and miss talk tends to be low bit rate, music is OK bit rate and radio 3 has the max
The numbers may be wrong, I need to set up my RTL-SDR to check
Its slowly going to DAB+ as the local multiplex tests are using DAB+
FM radio here in the US is great, but sadly many stations are going out of business, selling out to big companies, or reducing their signal strength.
@Gareth Hart Where can we find your reviews?
Wow, I bought a $30 bluetooth speaker and play things from my phone. I can't fathom spending that much on a radio. Heck, I'll take a regular radio and glue Walnut to the outside!
Fun fact: In the beginning of the 2000s long range digital radio for the shortwave band was launched in Europe as Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM). Never really took off but they are still broadcasting.
Very kind of you to give your parents a gift like this. I remember my grandmother always having trouble with her old AM/FM radio and my father had to explain to her how it worked. She was very old and lived on the other side of the country as well, so my father couldn't just come over and fix it within a minute.
Matt, another fantastic video! I don't normally comment here, but wanted to offer my best wishes to you & your father. My uncle suffered a stroke a few years ago -- I empathize with your situation. I provided some training on things he had been using for years. All the best - love your videos, channel and the cool / amazing people who contribute in the comments.
At that price you would hope it would be an internet radio too.
At that price it had better come with tires and a steering wheel...
@@TheBrokenLife I would also expect long legs and a massage with a happy ending
& do the dishes....
£700 for that thing is honestly taking the absolute mick IMO. o.O
@Corey N no doubt even at 400 he overpayed heavily
@Corey N and the only reason was recording new youtube content
my top of the range music system cost £500 when I first brought it lol that is crazy this is selling for 700.
Absolute fecking rip off. Its daylight robery.
400 quid for that pile of secondhand junk has left me stunned!
We have "switched" to DAB+ from FM in Norway for national radio. It is horribly unpopular. Listenership is overall down. In many places there are next to no local radios left due to a ban on commercial FM broadcasts in the big cities. Local DAB only stations have mostly stopped broadcasting. Theres is no market.
DAB+ was outdated in the mid 2000s. Internet radio is so much better it's ridiculous. The majority of radio listeners are now in the 50+ bracket. Young people have pretty much stopped listening to radio. Switching to DAB+ has killed off radio in Norway. People instead use spotify and other streaming services.
Most likely we'll have local radio stations on FM for many more years. If they are forced over to DAB only, we'll most likely lose the majority of our local radio stations. The politicians will never do this, a lot of them are already regretting the national radio switchover.
DAB killed the radio star, by the Muppets. Calling it.
@Gareth Hart Easily, most pensioners have a smartphone so you can just use that for internet radio... If they kill off analogue radio that will be the end of me tuning in, new sets are just expensive and unappealing...
That's beautiful,Matt....i did everything to keep my Dad happy with the things he loved (i even got him a Freesat recorder that he loved to record his films on an watch back) he passed on in 2016. My mum passed on today after living with Althzeimers for 12 years,again always music playing for her on DAB radio.im pretty sure your taking care of them really well....Such a comforting Techmoan to watch today.Love to you all xxx
You brought a genuine smile to my heart to hear how much of a difference you could make to your parents lives.
"Ruark".
Yes, that's remarkably close to the noise I was making after a few dozen too many shots of cream liqueur. Quite fitting, really.
Still love my Yamaha CR620 tuner/amp. I have had it since the 1970s. I see no reason to upgrade as it still sounds amazing.
can't beat 'em. i sold my yamaha over 15 years ago and i still miss it!
I’ve switched to internet radio. I was sitting in the Midwestern United States while listening to a Japanese radio station just yesterday.
My Denon piccolo went for repair with failed firmware upgrade. It came back with no preset channels but won't let me tune any. Denon don't maintain the station list. Vtuner now own it and want yearly payments. My Denon is a brick which was meant to see me through retirement. DONT BUY DENON if you want it to work in future.
Mate I have been watching
Your channel for over two years just watched this again and feel compelled to just say this one stands out for one simple reason..the way you speak about your parents....
You emanate sincerity in all of your videos, which is why your content,aside from being incredibly interesting and informative, is so appealing, and this video shows it in its poetic union , -two things you love dearly..
Tech
And
Your parents ....
With respect mate
God bless mate. Warms the heart . My dads 90 and going through a rough time. He used to love the Yorkshire Brass Bands. But now is totally deaf. Getting old is a really bad deal!.
In Norway they have replaced FM radio with DAB, the sound quality is terrible even as they are using DAB+ and a variable bit rate depending on the content they are broadcasting. Music is usually above 100 kilobits and talk is usually a bit below that. I've gone from listening to broadcast radio to listening to internet radio in my car as the quality is a lot better there and less interrupts because of bad coverage.
DAB was never a good replacement for FM radio, they should really really try to find a better solution if they want to go digital!
They want to kill off FM in Denmark as well. The politicians and civil service must be really friendly with the people selling DAB-radios. Or they are just complete idiots..... (propably a bit of both)
Nothing is currently above 100kbs. It is dreadful, and the math shows they could have kept FM running for 500(!) years for what they used to build the DAB-network.
As a fellow Northerner (near Crewe, if that counts haha!), it’s always nice to hear your familiar delivery (‘it’s a load of crap’ really made me smile haha) amongst all the American UA-camrs.
Great, fascinating video as always, and wishing your dad a much healthier time ahead.
Great video as always Matthew. Nice thing you’ve done there for your dad.
“ I’m happy , that they are happy “ is the way we all need to appreciate our parents .
Lovely statement
I had a Psion Waverider (DAB receiver) in the early 2000's - got it when it was reduced from the initial price of about £300. I was shocked to learn the low bit rate of most stations and it wasn't long before I abandoned it and went over to using a Freeview digital TV receiver which gave many of the popular radio stations at a higher bit rate.
From my experiments with libfdk-aac and the Quicktime AAC encoder music sounds decent at 64k and is still passable at 32k with HE-AACv2 (especially if you're listening in a car). MPEG-1 falls apart below 100k for music. It's the same with digital cable in North America, lots of channels are low bitrate MPEG-2 video that looks shockingly bad but lets the cable companies multiplex lots of channels. At least DAB is free. The truth is that most consumers don't care about sound or video quality, I knew many people who bought expensive HDTVs in the mid 2000s and watched SD analog cable on them (complete with the 4:3 picture stretched out).
My DAB receiver is mono-only and has no headphone socket. Given the codec and bitrate, that's probably a good thing.
Yeah, reminds me of my Sangean that I can't remember the model of because I don't have it with me right now (I leave it in my second home in Australia because there's no DAB in Singapore), and that too has a mono speaker, but it also has an earphone jack.
I always wanted to get a digital radio when they popped up here in the mid00s, but they were always those crappy single speaker little portable things, at a high price. Now we know why that is!
I got mine at Aldi cost less than £40.
I didn't want a pocket radio I wanted something I could hear over the noise of woodworking machinery.
I reckon the Amazon Echo smart speakers would be ideal for them. Just link to the router and load their music onto Amazon Prime Music. I have no Elvis music bought, but I just say "play something by Elvis" and it will shuffle through his music for hours. Also it plays all the normal radio stations and the speaker is really nice quality. My 93 year old mother has taken to it like a duck to water. It answers questions and sets alarms and reminders, easily just by asking it.
If I remember correctly they use a 3g dongle as their internet connection is crap. So, dataplan.
@@Jerbod2 The first and second gen Echo have WiFi, not 3G.
www.amazon.com/all-new-amazon-echo-speaker-with-wifi-alexa-dark-charcoal/dp/B06XCM9LJ4
www.amazon.com/Amazon-Echo-Bluetooth-Speaker-with-WiFi-Alexa/dp/B00X4WHP5E/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Manny Calavera
Not true. They connect to the house wi-fi network. They can connect to a dongle of course and 4G is actually much faster than my landline wi-fi, but the data usage could be costly. I have four Echo units, three second generation and a second generation Dot. My mother has one of them. They are used to control smart plugs as well. Also they can drop in on each other, so can be used as an inter-room and inter-house intercom.
Great to hear its worked for your folks. It's rough and often lonely trying to help your older parents out. Thanks for the video.
Matt, I hope your father is doing okay and recovers quickly. Much love!
"Designed and engineered in Great Britain" This actually means it's made in China.
Yep sadly
My new Roberts had that on the box a far cry from the old ones made proudly in the uk
the next line of text underneath what you read literally says made in china
My wife brought home a prescription yesterday. A steroid pack.
“Manufactured in Tianjin China”
😡😡
China is the LAST effing place I want my pharmaceuticals to come from. 😡
I bought a car jack from Amazon which was advertised using a Union Jack image. It was made in China. It is being returned on Monday.
For that price it should be!
In Finland we had some DAB test broadcasts many years ago, but people didn't really listen to them and they stopped. Now there is no plans for DAB in Finland, so for now it is just FM here.
I was just wondering how's the state if digital radio here. Good thing I can keep using my 70s/80s radios.
"where is the fire extinguisher?" (gestures to the other fire) "How??" "Made in Britan" "oh this is just like the golf incident"
i dunno the context of that within the video but that sure made me laugh.
Tiago Costa at 3:58 it says on the box engineered in great Britain with the flag, reminded me of the IT Crowd episode
Best wishes to your dad, hope he makes a quick recovery!
I love the quality of your reviews and the fact you come from a more realistic viewpoint about sound and audio equipment.
Just lost my mother last week. My father (originally from Gateshead) died a decade ago. I'm probably 10-15 years younger than you. Enjoy their company while can.
Sorry to hear that Ian. Keep your chin up. My thoughts go out to you.
Sorry for your loss, Ian. I lost my mother at the end of 2017, and it's been hard!
All of you who lost a close one, think of the good times! Always think of the wonderful times you had!
I am glad that here in the Netherlands it seems that 48kbps stereo DAB+ appears to be the absolute minimum. Most channels are north of 80kbps and I have yet to find a regular DAB broadcast. I frequently listen to DAB+ broadcasts on my PC so I can record it with an RTLSDR. It sounds good on my hi-fi system as long as channels stay above 60kbps.
Blessings to your father!!
I never even considered pay radio services like Sirius XM radio because once upon a time, Cable and Satellite TV was commercial free. Well, look now. The same will happen to Sirius if there was a huge enough following.
I cancelled my Sirius Internet Radio subscription a couple of years back because they kept raising the subscription fee every three months or so. It started out at $10.99 a month, and once it hit $22.99 a month I called and told them I wanted to cancel and they kept asking "Are you sure you want to cancel?" and I said "YES, I'm sure!", and they finally relented.
Rewatching this video made me check how the DAB situation is in Poland. My car stereo supports DAB+ and the quality definitely felt like a step up over FM. From what I could gather, it's mostly 96kbps to 128kbps AAC-LC in stereo, with only a couple of stations in mono and sometimes the 64kbps-96kbps transmission uses HE-AAC v1.
The price of the radio was worth every last cent: It gave your parents joy and it made you smile.
in the early 80's, when we first got cable TV, they carried the audio for the movie channels and MTV (in the days when MTV had music) on FM frequencies. At the time 'stereo television' didn't exist. I had expected the concept of "cable radio" to be the next thing, but I guess the problem of slotting in stations into empty spaces didn't make it worthwhile, and no one wanted to add another clunky station selector on their stereo.
Of course, with the variety of 'streaming radio' services like Pandora and Live365, we've effectively gotten what I was thinking of way back then, with far more choice/variety than cable radio would have given us anyway.
Still, for a time when channels wanted stereo, it did came in handy.
I raised my jaw from the floor, when I saw the prices of these devices. It's pity that so expensive, I've really liked their external view and wanted to buy one a new apartment.
There's a bunch more out there that are cheaper. It just takes a bit of searching to find one you want since wood grain is a bit out of style
Over two years after this was first uploaded, I hope your parents are both well & are keeping safe from that nasty virus that's affected out lives so much. Keep up the good work
Get better soon and keep pushing on mr. Moan sr, your son is a gift to us all
My Nan has dementia and when you find something that works for someone with an issue like that, regardless of how much it cost, you're just happy that they can use it. You may have overpaid if you were talking about someone without any complex needs, but it seems like this product hit the nail on the head for you parents. Hope that you have many more happy years together. :) Thanks for the great video.
I like how they made the top of the unit unusable space by putting the knob there instead of on the face.
It's like they have gone out of their way to make the worst possible product. And then make it even worse ;)
I have one and using the knob on top is a lot nicer on the top than on the front
@@slipperyavocado9457 you own a $700 radio player?
What a stupid wanky design. Silly knob with buttons curved round it.
That used to be removable
I the us we have IBOC DAB called "HD" but it ain't. The "HD" radios are expensive and the bit rates are low. It sucks. Analog FM is still the kind for hi-fi sound.
Yep. Digital broadcast of just about any kind is what's wrong with HiFi today. Engineers give, accountants take away.
Meanwhile, slapped together DIY audio modules and an Arduino in a wooden box nets you half a thousand bucks.
It's enough to send you to the nearest thrift shop, to look for anything with wood grain and VU meters. No matter what it is, it'll sound better than the crap coming out today.
Even on proper FM, a lot of stations use over-compressed music as their source. It's noticeable when you change to a station that still plays CDs (usually classic rock or a college station) instead of whatever they have on a file server.
For terrestrial radio, "HD" is attempting to solve the wrong problem.
The reason people stopped tuning in to terrestrial radio has bugger-all to do with the audio quality and everything to do with the poor signal-to-noise ratio (by which I mean "content-to-advertisement ratio"). My new-fangled car head unit has this IBOC stuff (at least for FM; can't say whether it works on AM because nothing lights up the "HD)" indicator), but I have a collection of music on my phone which just gets played via Bluetooth, and SIRUIS , which is a great overpass detector but still plays mostly content. (It BETTER, as I pay for a subscription.)
So with other, better sources, why should I even bother tuning in to terrestrial radio now? The IBOC supporters seem to think that "conditional access" will solve the content-to-ad problem. I wager that it won't, or at least be too little, too late. This is because NO ONE will pay for terrestrial radio they've always had for free.
Here in Slovenia it's a similar story with DAB+. They launched it officially back at the end of 2016 (which is horribly late). At least they went with DAB+. Our national radio stations are using 128kbps bitrate which for the codec used is very good - better than FM at least. But some other stations go down to 24kbps which is horrible. The majority are around 40-60kbps. I listen to one of our national stations, so I am really happy with DAB, but most people don't even know it exists since it isn't really advertised or anything. I think it may start gaining some traction when in 2021 the EU will require all new cars to include DAB+ support since most people listen to the radio in their cars.
Alright you have one choice, listen to a radio station like before, or listen to a radio station like before, but you pay 200 euros to keep doing so. And the bitrate is shit
How are you HAPPY with the latter? It's like being happy that a toilet does its job, after I paid it to flush.
"I think it may start gaining some traction when in 2021 the EU will require all new cars to include DAB+ support since most people listen to the radio in their cars."
In 2021 it will be too fucking late, and it's DRM, not DAB+ that will be required. Guess what, some nations will hold dearly to their DAB commitment, while others will walk around with free internet at all times.
Gaining traction.. it had DECADES of gaining traction yet it didn't. Somehow politicians can decide when traction happens.
@@randomguydoes2901 128 kbps bitrate with compression used in DAB+ is not shit. It could be better of course, but it is still better than what you get with FM. Plus you get cleaner reception in more problematic areas as well.
From what I've seen it looks like it's actually DAB that will be required.
And I don't think it's gonna be too late. DAB+ came out in 2007. I don't think you can expect something like this to become mainstream over night. I don't see any other technology that will replace it soon. And don't say internet because that is just not an alternative for transmitting a radio station. At least not yet and certainly not by 2021.
@@rolaroli Internet + FM = Saved a fuck ton of money and resources to put on better .
128kbit DAB+ IS shit.
We have ONE station in 128kbit. But it happens to be MPEG 2/DAB, equivalent of 64 DAB+. Also, mono, yes did I mention how most of our stations send in Mono?
No?
So we get worse SQ than a 192kbit mp3, while not having stereo.. And if we DIDN'T, you'd have like five radio stations for a decent SQ, but then I ask what is the point in switching over to something THAT DOES THE SAME THING BUT MORE EXPENSIVE, AND ALSO POSSIBLY MONO?
The price of this switch is at least 3 billion dollars. In NORWAY ALONE. What a great fucking technology, everyone knows how much people LOVED to shop for RADIOS well into the 2000s right?
They loved it so much DAB never even was a thing outside of the cities - and barely then....
You are so fucking out of place, as is DAB. Holy fuck what planet are you on.
@@rolaroli Good now ask yourself, why do they make DAB standard when it was ALREADY scrapped in nations that introduced this DAB+ shit? Making DAB radios useless. Now you're applauding that as your new standard in 2021, saying it needs time? Time for what? Wait until wifi covers the entire nation and get a thousand times the capacity, better sound and more functionality on the get go?? You're blowing my mind with stupidity.
Did you realize GPS recieve traffic info through FM, the same way your radio can switch to a local station for traffic news?
Well duh. GUESS WHAT, A COUPLE OF FUCKING BILLIONS OF GPS RECIEVERS WILL LOSE FUNCTIONALITY.
SO GREAT NOW THERE ARE A FEW MILLION CARS THAT CAN'T EVEN RECIEVE INFORMATION IN NORWAY.
Did I mention how bad the reception is from the slightest of bad weather?
FUck are you going to miss the simple FM channel that at least could be heard all year. It can save your FUCKING LIFE one day but you have no idea why this is worth saving until other technology has completely matured.
No, you'd rather be on the winning team. A winning team of fucking DINOSAURS of politicians knowing absolutely JACK SHIT.
Did you know Norway is less prepared now than before the switch? And truuust me, DAB has had PLENTY OF FUCKING TIME TO BECOME POPULAR.
IT WOULD HAVE, HAD IT BEEN RELEASED IN THE 80S OR 90S FOR CHEAP. BUT IT WASN'T, IT CAME LATE, IMPROVED JACK SHIT AND WAS EXPENSIVE AF.
MEANWHILE SMARTPHONES CAN BASICALLY WALK YOUR FUCKING DOG ANY DAY NOW.
Why did it take DAB so many FUCKING DECADES to BARELY HAVE LISTENERS, meanwhile everyone upgraded they cell phones to smart phones, tablets, modem, ISDN, DSL and fibre?
Ask yourself why this.. "internet" tech of which I'm speaking of... ask yourself WHY DID THAT BECOME MAINSTREAM, ALMOST OVER NIGHT? HUH?
Do you know how fucking old DAB even is? It was developed in Norway, started out in the fucking 60s. Yes, that's when that started. and pilots started in sweden/Uk the same day decades later.
Already in 2000, it was clear that those 15 listeners Stockholm had was a good indicator of how popular digital radio would be - ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ALREAD GOT INTERNET BASICALLY INSTALLING ITSELF, THAT IS NOT FUCKING HARD TO SEE NOW IS IT?
So what happened since that time? Did internet just die off while DAB grew?
As I said, what happened was.. DAB FUCKING DIED. THEN CAME DAB+. AND THOSE RADIOS WERE NOT FUCKING CHEAP EITHER.
APPARENTLY I NEED TO SCHOOL YOU ALSO ON THIS MATTER.
Ask yourself if there was maybe a LARGE FUCKING DEMAND FOR INTERNET AND DIGITAL TV, WHILE NO ONE GAVE SHITS ABOUT DAB?
Whereas in Norway, they had to CHEAT THE FUCKING REQUIREMENTS TO MAKE THE SWITCH HAPPEN.
THE SWEDISH ARMY SAYS NO, RIKSREVISIONEN SAYS HELL NO, EVERYONE CITING COSTS AND RISKS.
BUT NORWAY WHO DIDN'T EVEN START THE PILOT, THEY'RE GOING FOR IT. IN THE MOST CORRUPT WAY POSSIBLE.
YEAH DAB RADIO IS SO BAD IT CORRUPTS NORDIC NATIONS, SURE MUST'VE BEEN A POPULAR PRODUCT HUH?
You say DAB+ came out in 2007, while DAB was still unpopular as fuck, and internet really broke loose.those listeners had taken over 7 years to accumulate, then they get pissed on. WITHIN TEN YEARS OF THIS AWESOME TECHNOLOGY.
AND YOU APPLAUD THIS LIKE A FUCKING IMBECILE?????
DAB WAS DEVELOPED IN THE FUCKING 60s, YOU FUCKING IDIOT.
When was the last time a normal update on your PC/internet required you to also buy new phone, tablet, Smart TV and everything else.
No ask yourself that. How often does an improvement for one platform require you to scrap ALL your fucking devices?
PEOPLE SEEM TO LIKE UPGRADING PHONES. THEY DON'T LIKE UPGRADING A FUCKING RADIO, DID YOU NOTICE?
So how can you be fucking happy. Over having a radio channel. in 2019. Where the fuck is this impressive? You must know almost nothing of technology.
Say you wait 15 years with that digital shit, instead of forcing a very expensive standard switch that doesn't even WANT TO HAPPEN????
Anything less than ~infinite channels and 192kbit mp3 quality is 100% unacceptable.
I downloaded from napster in a higher quality, at end of 1999, than every DAB and DAB+ channel I've heard.
Now you think anything less than that is OK, by 2021? hahaha. What the fuck were you doing in your country all those years? Did you just invent the fire or what?
@@randomguydoes2901 You are one angry person aren't you?
- DAB began development in the 80s and came out around the middle of 90s (first commercial station in 1995). So not 60s.
- RDS-TMC that the GPS receivers are using will of course stop working when the switchover occurs. But DAB does allow for TMC information to be carried. Currently RDS-TMC has crappy support and standardization and the support for it varies widely.
- Digital switchover for TV occurred not that long ago and people apparently survived. Nobody liked switching over to that either. It cost money, people had to buy new TVs, ...
- HE-AAC (AAC+) used by DAB+ at 128kbps offers similar quality to 192kbps (or even more) mp3 while being more efficient.
- One of the main improvements to DAB+ is better coding which allows better error correction in problematic areas. Of course broadcasters want to save money so they are skimping on bitrate and safety. We will see if they will continue to do that when FM is out. Currently they are usually doing this so they get their spot on the DAB multiplexes but not really switch over from FM just yet. DAB also allows many more stations on the same frequency spectrum than FM. That's one of the main reasons for the switchover. The other being the fact that FM frequency spectrum can then be used for other stuff.
I visited the UK in the fall. We did a VRBO rental in Edinburgh which was a really great townhouse space and I was delighted to find a digital radio as a piece the owner had left for our use. I've always been interested in digital but never bought a receiver for the US digital service.
We had been in a shop in York that sold some digital sets and the owner mentioned that satellite hasn't taken off in the UK. I think because of our conversation we both realized what was going on. The US begging so vast is a great place to sell satellite radio. But the relatively small size of the UK makes digital a reasonable service.
Anyway, after playing with the Sony receiver I found a favorite station. It's called Magic Soul Radio and I have enjoyed it in the US a few times since returning.
Thanks for this video!
hope your dad's doing well! He's got a son to be proud of that's for damn sure.
That's great that you could help out your parents.
DAB sounds similar to the HDTV situation in the US. I can get 100 channels but they are all DVD quality or worse.
One good thing about DAB is the R820T2 receiver chip gave rise to the SDR (software defined radio) tuners.
I use SDR to track aircraft so I'm glad that came about
Yeah, we got DAB+ here in Germany. Most stations are broadcasting in 48kbps. It sounds like crap, I had to turn it of after half an hour of listening.
Still woeful, but at least it's DAB+ 48kbps instead of MP2 48kbps. Here max rate for DAB+ is 32kbps :(
Can't agree on that. Got a DAB+ radio in the car, which sometimes falls back to the FM channel of a station if the DAB receptions drops too low, so you instantly hear the difference. Maybe I'm just listening to stations with higher bitrates, but the sound quality is outstanding and much, much better than FM. Of course you cannot expect 96kHz/24bit PCM over the air, but there's a significant improvement compared to FM.
One day you'll see the REAL point of radio. It's not in the sound. It's in the reach. You reach far with the most vital information, and everything else is a bonus. Now, this point of having reach will never, EVER get old no matter how digital the world is.
Why, well. I'm tired of explaining basic, common fucking sense into these dumbass city boys wih ZERO FUCKING PERSPECTIVE. FUCKS SAKE.
@@randomguydoes2901 yeah, "the reach". After about 87 Kilometers (~54 miles) the signal becomes to weak to reliably decode it, which means: No sound at all.
No chance of hearing foreign stations if you're not living right across the border.
If you live in China you will only receive Chinese propaganda.
With analog radio (am or fm) stations had a much further reach, maybe they were a little noisy or distorted, but that wasn't a big deal if you just wanted to hear the news.
Radio is dead, deal with it, and switching to digital is the last nail in the coffin.
The horrible quality of DAB+ is the icing on top, now you can't even use it to listen to music.
Have fun enjoying your very independent, bad sounding, digital state media. COUNTRY BOY.
@@DasMrOSi No radio isn't dead.
FM had traffic information sent to peoples GPS. FM provides local traffic information through radios while driving.
It can provide weather, news and advice for humans on a skiing tour.
Bad weather happens, at that point you REALLY WANT TO STILL HEAR FM SIGNALS.
How fucking naive are you, that you don't even consider these situations? Radio will never die completely. Radio is backup for the people WHEREVER you are.
Switching for DAB is not the final nail in the coffin.. Switching for DAB in 2000s is just fucking silly stupid. A few years before 5G will realize itself (without political help over 25 years, as is the case with DAB).
in fact the national safety and preparedness has WENT DOWN FROM THE SWITCH. This tells me radio isn't dead.
It has a use, and it has nothing to do with profits and ands
You are missing the point COMPLETELY. as you said it already sounds bad. Sounds bad, and is worse from a safety perspective.
Sure was worth the money though.
*Designed and engineered in Great Britain*
We're all gonna die!
😀 😀 😀. Best comment I red today !
I've never seen a radio leak oil!
Still made in china though.
Haha, IT CROUD
Engineered in GB.... so was the Titanic
I repaired a couple of these. The standby power has its own switchmode power supply supplying (I think) 9V (I'd have to check). The switchmode was a cheap unit designed for a plugpack and had no optocoupler for feedback. The unit is contacted to the top of the main power transformer via cable ties.
I replaced it with a more expensive plugpack (removed the board from the plugpack and installed it into the Ruark). Worked perfectly and now had optocoupler feedback.
The CD transport fails in them, so I am told by a retailer. I did one repair. It is complicated to remove the CD. The front panel is held on by magnets so that is easy to remove. Looking at the transport I was surprised to find rubber mounting which you only see in car CD players. Some research and I discovered that transport was identical to that from some Volkswagen cars (can't recall the model, was years ago). The price online is around 1/5th of what Ruark charge for the same transport.
This kind of behaviour is pretty typical, unfortunately. Manufacturers source their parts from other manufacturers so if you can find where they get the part from, for instance if the manufacturer's name and model number is on the part, then you can just buy direct from them or their retail arm or eBay.
Your probably thinking of the un revised model. Whole new transport system now.
It used the CDM-M10 4.11/5 transport, the Raurk player had a sub, removable remote at the top (the top control was removable and could be used as a remote).
It was two years ago, a HiFi shop used to sell a lot of them and quite a few were returned with CD problems (so I was told). I came in at the tail end of the business which closed down around 7 months after I started doing repairs, I did three of their Ruarks include one replacement transport.
No doubt there are new models by now :)
It's great that your parents are happy with it and I hope that your father makes a speedy recovery.
It does seem to have been a little expensive , but that's better than outrageously expensive.
In Norway they weirdly removed FM to force everyone over to DAB. The result is just that people don't really listen to the radio as much.
Sweden ended the nationwide DAB trials because nobody listened, and the Armed Forces also rejected DAB from a national security standpoint. Good riddance I say, FM all the way.
I'm so glad here in the US we just use regular AM and FM bands for radio broadcast. We did switch to digital for TV broadcasting, but radio still uses traditional analog signals. There is no talk about changing as far as I know, and I hope they never do.
Well, I live in an area with crappy FM reception, so for me DAB is a no-brainer - even rubbish bit-rates and ancient MP2 encoding sounds better than a hissing, popping, sometimes-mono-sometimes-stereo-ish FM station.
Amazing, the Swedish government actually did something right - maybe there is hope for Sweden after all! Just kidding :)
There's a bit of a difference between DAB and AM/FM HD, though. DAB has its own spectrum, so shutting down analog AM/FM would recover their respective frequencies for later reallocation. HD Radio in the US currently slots into spacing sections around each existing AM/FM station and is designed to eventually fill the whole AM/FM spectrum. I believe FM stations are required to simulcast an analog signal, but I'm not sure AM stations are because I know there are some that broadcast digital-only. But it's unlikely that the FCC would require stations to transition completely out of analog for a long time, because they wouldn't recover any spectrum. Chances are stations will just be given the option to go digital-only within their frequency channel when it makes sense for them. So it's not "killing" AM/FM in the US, it's just "letting broadcasters kill it at their leisure."
Many US stations are abandoning the HD part of their signal for lack of listeners. IBOC= I Bother Other Channels
Reverse the letters DAB
ABD
@T R
B A D
Of course it says its bad right in the name because it is, they didnt want to lie to you
HA! I had never noticed that!
So true, though.
Or leave them the same way DAB = Dubious Audio Broadcasting or Deficient Audio Broadcasting. The big problem was they started it and got stuck with it before the technology was mature, a bit like NTSC TV
God bless you for helping your parents in such a kind and sweet way. It was such a nice thing for you to help them that way. Take care, and have a nice day.
So lovely to hear a dedicated child helping his parents and it sounds like it was all worthwhile too! As for instructions/understanding, I'm still having fun explaining to my dad how our electric car works! :D
It seems that DAB is right old Cockup all over! Not only in UK at least in Sweden and Denmark the same thing! It reminds me about the Simpson episode about monorail! It seems like someone went around convincing public broadcasting companies to invest vast sums in it! While the public don’t want it at all.
I know in the US/Canada everyone I’ve talked to about our system, HD radio, loves it. The issue here is that it’s primarily confined to only cars (almost no standalone radios exist). I think the issue with DAB is purely implementation and that like the US with NTSC they jumped on the standards train way too early and got a poor result.
Digital Radio in UK. It's more like the broadcasters are DAB-ing to listeners and don't care.
GOOD POINT ,,, General decline in service all around ,,,My last 2 RADIOS have a clicky underwater sound ,,like the microphone sound on a laptop,,,, maybe portable DAB is a failure as the bigger ac radios sounding better
"Sorry girls, I like my obscure media formats more than all of you."
-Me this Valentines Day.
quite sad actually
You know you can have girls and nerdy-ass hobbies right? Just don’t talk to the girls about it!
Did you send this message via carrier pigeon then? Are are you one of those la-de-dah folks that have switched to that new fangled thing called a telegram?
Great video as always. Sorry to hear of your father's stroke. All the best.
Lovely intro mate, I'm sorry to hear about your father, my grandfather too has had similar problems recently.
Well of course the government plans (whatever colour of government at the time) was to close FM and sell of the bandwidth at huge cost, like they did with the 3G/4G spectrum which gave them billions of pounds of revenue. This has backfired. DAB has somewhat withered on the vine in parts of the UK. Where I live, many DAB stations have now closed and our DAB radio sits abandoned. The sound quality was shocking and the reception patchy. Instead we had a new FM radio station start up here in 2010, which is an admission that DAB just isn't happening.
The awful truth though is that most people who do use DAB, think that the sound quality is better than FM, even with our ultra-low data rates. Some people just don't care.
Too many people's opinion of audio quality is directly related to the price they paid for the equipment. DAB is expensive, so therefore it sounds better!
DAB Dead And Buried .....
I've heard of these guys, usually when I googled my name! Too expensive for me to order as an amusement, but I dig the name!!!!! Just got some mugs with their name on it off Ebay for the Family name cred.
We have 'HD Radio' here in the states and it's basically the same story as what you explained with DAB. It's not a flop, but it's not taking off quickly either. It's an option in new cars but not standard for most. You tune to an FM station like normal, then after a few seconds it links to the digital version of the FM station if you're in range. Then you can switch between the other digital stations on that frequency. Like if you are listening to 101.9FM and you successfully receive 101.9 HD after a few seconds, it will include 101.9-2, 101.9-3 and so on as digital channels. But similar to DAB, I don't find the audio quality superior to FM at all.. Even XM (satellite) radio doesn't have all that great audio quality. Has a sort of tinny sound to it. I have also noticed many stations are mono as well. As far as signal degradation due to distance, I feel regular FM has HD beat. Even when the signal deteriorates, you can still listen.. of course with the addition of static whereas Digital just stops playing until a good enough signal is reacquired.
I'll hang on to my old Sherwood S-7300 receiver :)
jamesb1221222, I use a Sangean HD Radio tuner. Many of the HD sub channels sound, if not CD quality, pretty darned good. US commercial radio being a private enterprise compete with other radio stations for advertising dollars and listenership. Broadcast format and sound quality continues to important to many listeners. They will go where they find the stations they like. Government radio is in competition with no one for quality and format.
Thanks so much for reviewing these products. It's almost a full time job trying to find devices like this, or to keep old devices working for our loved ones. I've tried to help elderly family move to newer technology, but that's not always easy, or possible. Recently I was searching for a similar hifi, but it needed to have CD and AM radio. I finally settled on something used. I would never have thought it would be easier to find a new turntable.
Thanks for a very introspective video. I bought a WiFi radio during the holidays to receive poor quality stations and I couldn't ask for better. It sounds good and works fine. Like your unit, the buttons are not exactly logical but they work. The last thing I bought my father was a new VCR. He was so excited to get it but... never got to use it.
You disabled comments on the video about DAB! In regards to that, some stations are now rebroadcasting those poorly compressed DAB streams on their FM frequencies too! In Sheffield, if we tune to Rother FM on 96.1FM you can clearly hear the AAC+ compression artefacts (metallic/watery sound) during music and studio segments. Seems like a travesty to me - but I made a forum post about it on digitalspy and the majority of people don't seem to care.
The clarity of audio from a strong FM signal will eventually be forgotten.