Digital Radio

I guess they would be, but then they would sound more like WS/Gold to better suit the FM band. 60s/70s is pretty much exclusively for the AM band these days.

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Shall Iheart Radio Create an Exclusive iheart 60’s & 70’s Music Station for Sydney & Melbourne?

But 2CH does’nt Play Classic Rock While Classic Rock 1377 does’nt Play Easy Pop Music As Smooth, Easy Hits & MMM Classic Rock & Greatest Hits Digital Sometimes.

What?

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I cant see the point of FM-DAB station silmicasts. If I was me I would drop them and that would free up bandwidth for more stations. Whats the point of having smooth/nova on both FM and DAB for in the first place?

That’s probably one of the keys to KQ’s success, they play some classic rock and some softer classic hits. Also the fact that Macquarie handed them 4BH’s audience.

They definitely should. BTW 4KQ also play some 80s and even the odd 90s song.

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I can see your point, but I would personally prefer to see DAB remain as a more holistic offering, rather than just being all secondary stations.

And to be a consistent offering with ALL (and not just some) of the metro wide AM and FM stations on it.

I agree.

When Wesgo took control, the 80/90’s era of ‘Greatest memories, latest hits’, they played lots of 80/90’s music.

Today I was on hold with a business for a brief moment to hear the hook of Owen Paul - My Favourite Waste Of Time.

This is a softer 80’s song that would’ve gone well on the more Smooth like format that Geoff Harrison was running on BH prior to its demise to Magic.

I’m actually wondering if many of the BH audience moved to KQ or its a consolidation of the top end of MMM and 973 audiences moving over to KQ?

What certainly needs to be done for KQ is to improve the digital radio uptake. Even if it is 48kbps, it’s still better than mono AM.

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Yeah I think there would definitely be some older listeners of MMM and 97.3 moving to KQ but it’s such a hard leap to go back to AM after years (decades) on FM. I’ve got friends in their late 40s and early 50s who grumble a lot about the likes of MMM and particularly 97.3 of late. But they are more likely to turn off radio and go to streaming than flick over to AM. That’s why DAB is imperative in places like Brisbane with no Gold or Smooth on FM. Radio is losing people.

I think some BH listeners have begrudgingly moved to KQ. Stalwart 4BH listeners at my local Post Office always had 4BH on but they’re now on 4KQ - interestingly they’ve listened on DAB for quite a number of years.

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Zed (JOY Melbourne) has gone from Sydney DAB.

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Gearing up for the move to 954 perhaps?? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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JOY 954 Sydney perhaps???!!! :joy:

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Just need to remove the response restriction and it would sound like the Melbourne broadcast!

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Well after 2 months the display of my Bush DAB+ radio BR320DABC has decided to die. The display just shows two entire white brightness levels. Fault seams to have occurred during the power point off/on operation whilst away for the afternoon. I had noted a couple of times in past that this radio doesn’t like to be unplugged from rear or via switched off from mains point as radio had difficulty powering up or establishing normal operation.

I suspect the radio has very poor power regulation or power filtering. I don’t know if the display chip is damaged or some kind of hardware reset is required.

The thing is, I can still operate the radio blindly of sorts (too difficult) or use it via the UNDOK Android app, so all is not totally lost, but can’t dim the bright display via the UNDOK app, so very annoying at night as a bedside radio.

For the users of this radio in this forum I would not recommend disconnecting this radio from power source & if you need to do it, then always power off radio by unplugging from the rear of radio rather than via a mains switch. Probably less chance of nasty voltage spikes this way. [Power button, just toggles between standby & operational states] It’s poor radio design re power filtering I suspect that causes this problem. If one has electronics experience, then perhaps designing & building a good smoothing filter/transient suppressor circuit to fit between the 12v plug & radio socket would be a good thing to do. I’m so annoyed at this fault as I love this radio.

I previously mentioned that Blaupunkt has this identical radio for sale in places like Bing Lee under the model of BCR9DABI. I did some further investigation into this & found that this model whilst looking the same as the Bush radio actually uses a different power supply, i.e. 7.5v rather than 12volt. Features & operation appears to be identical. I wonder if the power supply filtering is any better?

Unfortunately there is no service manual for either the Bush Radio or Blaupunkt that I can find anywhere.

I have my doubts doing a factory reset via the UNDOK app will fix the problem. In fact I’m too scared to do it in case I can’t re-establish communication between the radio & the UNDOK app, thus probably turning the radio into a brick.

Does anyone know the company in China that manufactures these radios?
Any other ideas how to get this radio operational again would be appreciated.

I understand these radios aren’t repaired in Australia.

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Weird they would target Nova, when The EDGE would be more competition for them since they both run an Urban music format…

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Though NOVA is a bigger target with a bigger audience and a five city footprint on FM when The Edge is only western Sydney/Blue Mountains on FM and DAB only everywhere else.

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I guess so but do Nova really play that many urban/RnB tracks? I was under the impression that they (at least 96.9 Sydney) have a fairly repetitive CHR format.

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@Brianc68 how have you found DAB coverage out west? I went out west on the weekend and managed good DAB to Hatton Vale and beyond that it was on and off (more on than off). Even driving around Gatton and Grantham I still had reception.

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Gee that’s better than I remember it. I’m impressed if you’re getting reception around Hatton Vale and Gatton. I haven’t been out that way for quite a while but I remember it getting a bit patchy in the car even in Ipswich. Maybe they’ve increased the power since then?
I was out in the bayside a couple of weeks ago and it seemed to be improved there too. It used to drop out approaching downtown Cleveland but didn’t seem to do that anymore.

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