DAB+

A family member is bemoaning the demise of Classic fm on DAB. Currently he has an old Genus DAB connected via Toslink to a Sony hifi system (FM receiver) for better sound. He is considering one of these, a converter to DAB+.


Anyone here with alternatives, suggestions or experience with these devices? He doesn't want a stand alone transistor radio, has one in the kitchen, typical tinny sound.
 
Looks OK to me, but really any DAB+ box (tinny or not) will do, so long as it has some kind of analogue output (eg headphone socket).
 
RobH1 said:
A family member is bemoaning the demise of Classic fm on DAB. Currently he has an old Genus DAB connected via Toslink to a Sony hifi system (FM receiver) for better sound. He is considering one of these, a converter to DAB+.


Anyone here with alternatives, suggestions or experience with these devices? He doesn't want a stand alone transistor radio, has one in the kitchen, typical tinny sound.
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For better hi-fi quality I suggest they stream Classic FM to their hi-fi system rather than rely on broadcast radio. Simplest way is from a smartphone over Bluetooth to the amp but even better is a dedicated media streamer with a superior DAC hard wired to an amp input.
 
The hi-fi system is 23 years old but in superb condition (separates include min-disk) so no Bluetooth. Any suggestions re dedicated media streamer?
 
I use a Roberts Bluetune 65 DAB+ radio with Bluetooth and aux input/output connectivity to connect to my hi-fi amp so not up to speed with media streamers. These days my music listening is more "background" than dedicated so no longer chasing perfect sound quality.

I suggest you have a look at what Richer Sounds has to offer.
 
gomezz said:
For better hi-fi quality I suggest they stream Classic FM to their hi-fi system rather than rely on broadcast radio...
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gomezz said:
I use a Roberts Bluetune 65 DAB+ radio with Bluetooth and aux input/output connectivity to connect to my hi-fi amp so not up to speed with media streamers
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May I suggest you've demonstrated yourself not to be best placed to recommend Internet streaming over DAB+? I've not heard it, but if it's an improvement on DAB (what was wrong with DAB, other than bandwidth?) as it is cracked up to be, it will be plenty good enough... and FREE! (Yes, OK, many people will already be paying for Internet so the marginal cost is zero.)

[I suspect ClassicFM are being disingenuous: perhaps they are migrating for reasons other than sound quality, and only presenting it as such.]

If the media streamer is something like an Alexa, it won't have an audio output anyway.

I'm happy enough with 731 on the TV, but it would be nice to have current track info displayed – I don't know why they don't do that on the TV screen (and I use the picture-off function). That might be an option for RobH1's "family member", because I imagine the TV will have a digital audio output which can be connected through.
 
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I have compared Classic FM and other station using DAB/DAB+ as the source and using the online streaming services. The latter certainly sounds better though perhaps only by enough to encourage the dedicated audiophile to sacrifice the convenience of using DAB/DAB+ instead for dedicated listening.

I would suggest you have demonstrated that you have insufficient knowledge to assess my ability to make recommendations as I see them.
 
Black Hole said:
I suspect ClassicFM are being disingenuous: perhaps they are migrating for reasons other than sound quality, and only presenting it as such.
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Of course they are. They want to cut costs by reducing the bit-rate. That's the primary motive. If there's any quality change either way, then that is secondary.
 
prpr said:
Of course they are. They want to cut costs by reducing the bit-rate. That's the primary motive. If there's any quality change either way, then that is secondary.
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Either that or they are making space to introduce other stations, or convert some mono ones to stereo. I noticed when Scala changed to DAB+ ( and from 112 iirc to 40kbps) others in the group also changed (Absolute - they may have added more stations. It looks like it, but I can't remember for sure!)
 
Black Hole said:
I'm happy enough with 731 on the TV, but it would be nice to have current track info displayed – I don't know why they don't do that on the TV screen (and I use the picture-off function). That might be an option for RobH1's "family member", because I imagine the TV will have a digital audio output which can be connected through.
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Last time I checked a few months ago, Classic FM is in mono on Freeview. That is completely unacceptable to me and my parents on our hifis.

I'm currently going through what to do about all this, and in the end have bought a pair of second hand Arcam T32 tuners. They're about 13 years old but are one of the last proper hifi tuners on the market, and just about the only one that supports DAB+.

Personally I find it very depressing that the hifi tuner has disappeared entirely as a current product.
 
EEPhil said:
Either that or they are making space to introduce other stations, or convert some mono ones to stereo. I noticed when Scala changed to DAB+ ( and from 112 iirc to 40kbps) others in the group also changed (Absolute - they may have added more stations. It looks like it, but I can't remember for sure!)
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Scala changing from 112kbps MP2 (which DAB uses) to 40kbps AAC (which DAB+ uses) will have resulted in a considerable reduction in audio quality. AAC needs a fair bit more that 50% of the MP2 bit rate for equivalent sound quality. Classic FM are currently on 128kbps MP2, if they go to anything below about 80kbps AAC it will be a step down in quality not up.
 
Owen Smith said:
Classic FM is in mono on Freeview. That is completely unacceptable to me and my parents on our hifis.
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I am somewhat amazed that people will use the life of their TV to listen to music. (SWMBO would like ours to display pictures all day long, but I've just said NFW. It's an expensive piece of kit.)
Music listeners on TV must be a fairly small proportion of the population, so I imagine the broadcasters don't spend much on them.

Owen Smith said:
a step down in quality not up.
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GenX are more interested in quantity than quality. Did you miss the memo?

But seriously, if you are an audiophile you will have to go outside the general broadcast realms to satisfy your needs.
 
I've mentioned in a previous post that we prefer to listen to Boom Radio/Light which broadcasts a variety of music more to our tastes, rather than the wallpaper music on other commercial stations. Even BBC Radio 2 is now off our radar.
But Boom is not available on DAB+ in our area (Cumbria), therefore at present we listen via Radio Player on the Firestick from the TV without picture display.

We may have to replace our hi-fi system with a soundbar and Bluetooth from a mobile. What a faff!
 
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