My taxi driver’s car is supposed to have DAB+, but since the car is like 10+ years old it only lists “Canberra DAB+” and “Snow DAB+”.
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Maybe it’s just never had a rescan?
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I had a work trip down to the Central Coast today. Car was a 2019 Kia Cerato (base model).
FM reception wasn’t great, both Newcastle and Central Coast commercial stations were breaking up around Cooranbong on the M1. Not something I’ve ever had in my Focus.
Sound quality was only fair as well.
Pic below.
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I had a ride home in a Camry taxi tonight (one of the older Australian models - around 2016-17.
Here in Newcastle, NONE of the listed presets were local stations, and some were a few years out of date for RDS station names. They were
The Edge
Nova969
SeaFM
2DayFM
triplej
KIIS1065
The radio was tuned to Hit106.9 however.
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We had a few Camrys/Corollas in the work fleet at my last job, and I recall once you’d preset a station it kept that old RDS name stored even if you ‘reset’ it on the same preset. So in Brisbane we had some that still read ‘hit105’ or ‘GOLD-FM’ despite those tags well and truly no longer being used.
It was also a pain on those stations that used dynamic PS (I’m looking at you 98.9) as it would only ever store one part of the dynamic name. I think 98.9 just came up with ‘BEST’ in one of the cars.
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I’m now in the market for a bigger car (currently driving a 2016 Ford Focus which has been a great car) … Would like a Mazda 6 as I’m not an SUV person.
I test drove a 2021 model Mazda 6 Sport sedan (base model) which has the older MZD Connect system… The radio section isn’t as easy to use as it probably should be. It relies on this jog wheel / button system (image below) which makes manual tuning quite tedious.
To access manual tuning, you need to scroll to the 4th option in the image below and press the big button in the image above.
You then get the following screen… To view RDS info you need to press the Music icon on the top image. This takes you back to the image above. To come back to manual tuning, you need to scroll back to the 4th option again.
Not ideal!
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Blimey what a rigmarole. Why do some manufacturers over complicate things.
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Yeah and my dab radio was unstable for both 9A and 9B.
Agree with sentiment, CarPlay and Android auto is great, but I miss a simple radio interface. When you “tune “on the Kia you are tuning by scrolling the RDS FM station and DAB mixed together. Messy. It’s good just an old dial and manual tune FM, no buried menus.
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Because they don’t focus on the user experience when designing the car’s user interface - it wasn’t all that long ago that manufacturers didn’t bother and got away with it, it’s hard to see how you can get away with it now with things like Carplay and Android Auto becoming more prevalent.
I’m driving a Kia Sorento at the moment (waiting for my new VW Tiguan to arrive in a few weeks) - the difference in the user experience is night and day between the two.
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Which is better?
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I also meant to post the Mazda system didn’t recognise RDS on 2HD on 97.5. Same issue as my Focus and also Mitsubishis.
Radio reception is decent otherwise, in New Lambton Heights it received weak Hit102.3:Port Macquarie (but no RDS) next to Triple J, and it also detected RDS on Sydney FMs.
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Surely it’s about time 2HD fixed that RDS issue.
PI code of 0000 (last reported) or any HEX number with leading zero will cause this issue.
PI should be 2098 like their 90.5 transmitter.
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I bought a 2020 model Mazda6 in Canberra today.
Radio fun fact: When I switched the radio to DAB (which wasn’t until on the way back near Sydney) I could see the DAB section had NEVER been used (there were no stations scanned in) despite the car seemingly being based in the Goulburn - Canberra region for most of the first 2 years of its life.
FM presets were all Canberra and Goulburn stations, but not GNFM as yet.
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No unusual. My sister has had her car for five years and never used the DAB. And didn’t know what it was when i mentioned it.
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Yeah I’m not really surprised either.
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Neither of those surprise me. The industry has 100% failed in educating the public about what DAB is and how to access it. There has been absolutely no overarching education campaign whatsoever. Even stations that promote DAB on air never actually say “look for the DAB button in your car”. They just assume people know what DAB is and that it might be in their car. It’s a complete shambles.
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I already miss my Mitsubishi ASX with its DAB radio, 
I listened to DAB stations more often than the terrestrial stations while driving.Someone on Carsales website is advertising their 2019 Mazda 2 Maxx for sale at $16500 and it has a DAB radio ,but I’m not game enough yet to take out another loan to buy this car when I’ve just become debt free ,
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Doesn’t help that most of what is on DAB down here is absolute garbage. At least the ‘TEST’ channel is finally gone, but instead of, say, MMM Classic Rock we get three channels of Kinderling crap. Sigh.
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There’s a number of aftermarket head units - or even things that just plug in like the Pure Highway - so I wouldn’t worry about trying to get one that’s from the factory.
I was able to get DAB installed in my 20+ year old car - though ended up removing that unit as the angle on the screen glared so much based on how it was positioned that it ended up being too distracting while I was driving. But cost me under $100 all in, albeit self installing.
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This Mazda 2 Maxx is the top of the range,the Neo or Genki models don’t have DAB radios.It doesn’t really matter if my next car doesn’t have one ,it’s just one of those ‘nice to have ‘ extras
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