Dickies at Macquarie Centre has a large number of Bush Personal DAB units on clearout at $44.99 -
Does anyone have any experience with one of these units? At that price it is very tempting as a throw around unit…
A.
Better off just going to Target or Kmart - they’ll have DAB radios in stock cheaper than that if you just want to try out the format - 30% off the Dick Smith pricing still doesn’t make those units that attractive.
I got the handheld radio and it is pretty good. Nice and light. No background noise at lower volumes like some sangeans have. Pretty good battery life.
My only issue is the volume control, volume 1 is still a bit loud.
New show on MMM Classic Rock.Starts tonight 10pm “Hard and Heavy”
John Davidson has reviewed the LG Stylus DAB+ phone in the Australian Financial Review:
The Stylus DAB+ is a 5.7-inch Android 6 phone that, setting aside the DAB+ element for a moment, is LG’s version of the marvellous Samsung Galaxy Note 5, one of our favourite phones ever.
I’ve been listening to the Stylus DAB+ on my commute to and from work, and while I can’t tune in to my preferred ABC stations at home (where there is no DAB+ ABC reception, despite there being excellent AM and FM reception), and while I also can’t tune in to it at work without it breaking up, it works very well for the actual commute between those two locations.
In order to activate DAB+, you need to plug in a pair of headphones, that act as an antenna.
It doesn’t hold a candle to the Galaxy Note 5. The screen is terrible and performance is very very poor. It’s only a smidge better than a Lumia 530 - a phone you can buy right now for $130 outright.
You can currently buy a cheapy DAB+ tuner and hook it up to your phone via USB OTG for a total cost of around $50 (including $17.90 for a tuner app), so really I don’t expect the phone to sell very well.
In relation to my post in the “RDS” thread, I have now purchased a HD radio whilst over here in Hawaii.
First impressions are somewhat underwhelming compared to DAB+ in Oz.
- Only about 6 out of 20 odd stations seem to use HD Radio
- Only the HD enabled stations seem to use RDBS (RDS) on FM (this could be an illusion).
- At least the HD only stations don’t seem to be compressed to buggery like DAB+ is back home. That could be that here, stations generally only have 1 or 2 HD only stations.
The model I have (the only one I could find at Best Buys, kind of a JB Hi-fi equivalent), is an Insignia one as per link below
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-hd-radio-tabletop-radio-black/4635744.p?id=1218505477073
Another oddity is how FM only goes up in 0.2 MHz steps (ie from 88.1 to 88.3 but can’t tune in 88.2, but the radio in a hire car I had here did that too, so must be an American thing).
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Well I guess it’s a good thing that the majority (as far as I know anyway) of FM stations in Australia use odd numbered FM frequencies so if one wanted to, an American radio that only goes up in 0.2MHz steps (rather than the 0.1MHz or even 00.5MHz of most radios in Australia) could still be used back in Australia.
But in general, I found that post quite fascinating Radiohead! 
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Thanks!
I’ll certainly be trying out this radio when I get back home too, but yes, won’t be much good for listening to Hope Sydney or Rebel/Breeze in some parts of SEQLD then!
Next stop Chicago, will be interesting to see if that changes my impressions of HD Radio much.
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Is there a reason why 103.2 can’t be on 103.3?
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Hmm…good question. Maybe because 103.3 had the potential to interfere with the harmonics of a VHF TV signal back in the analogue TV days?
In any case, the main Christian community station in Sydney has always been on 103.2 FM to the best of my knowledge.
Yes - definitely a US thing. I had a US-sourced car here several years ago and the FM tuner had 200KHz increments only.
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I think it’s because of 2GCR Goulburn being on 103.3 ?
(who were somewhat ironically on 105.7 before being asked to move to accommodate JJJ Sydney).
I remember hearing that it was to stop interference near its transmitter site with the VHF 7 TV signal
Re HD radio - I know of some US stations that have 4 HD streams
I’ve always thought HD Radio would suit the Australian market better - with our diverse range of markets outside capital cities, DAB is very unsuited - compared to European markets where you have genuinely national multiplexes and a lot of stations in every market.
There’s downsides to it, like how it can kill long distance reception by taking up the sidebands, and that it is a proprietary technology instead of an open standard - but I think we would have regional digital radio by now if we chose it, and let stations deploy it without the need to have channel plans.
The ideal is DRM+, which has both the benefits of the small channel sizes of HD Radio, and being out of the FM Band means there’s more spectrum.
Australia should certainly consider following Japan’s lead on expanding the FM band. In their case they added 5MHz to the top of the band, but now radios are being sold there that scan through from 76.0MHz to 108.0 to be a ‘World’ radio.
If we expanded out the bottom end of the FM band down to 76MHz, there would be these ready made radios to utilise it. Japan is using it to give supplementary simulcast licenses to AM stations, so that would be a good use of it here as well.
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That was the reason for putting it on 103.2. At the time it was the only station in Australia not on the usual allocations.
The Aussie standard for FM channels is the same as the US and Canada. ie 88.1, 88.3, 88.5…107.9
There are still only a handful of off-channel FM stations. But enough that they have to sell radios with 100kHz steps here.
Agree with you Moe. I also have one of those Insignia HD radios and have used it extensively in the US. HD radio could easily be implemented by regional FM broadcasters.
Australia is not like the UK and Europe. We have independent commercial stations (though they may be owned by the same company) and we don’t have national commercial networks. So individual stations could decide on whether its worth their while adding HD to their FM broadcasts. No need for setting up and operating a bunch of multiplexes in conjunction with other broadcasters or a third party operator.
Interesting that Canada, which is similar to Australia in its mix of commercial and public broadcasters, seems to have given up on DAB/+ and is quietly embracing HD radio in areas close to the US border.
I think however, that HD radio still puts AM stations at a disadvantage. The fidelity of the sound is not as good as an FM station’s HD broadcast and they can only fit 1 stream as opposed to up to 4 for FM stations. Whichever digital format is introduced should put AM and FM stations on an equal footing.
If you took for example the Darling Downs where there are 3 commercial stations on AM plus one FM. It would not get as good a digital service as other areas.
There are also the 87.6-88.0 stations to consider in Australia.
Seems Triple M Classic Rock Digital is no longer - the Triple M brand has been dropped, for reasons unknown.
New website, too. myclassicrock.com.au