[gui-talk] So I bought a Digital radio..

[Dane Trethowan]

Hi everyone!

I bought myself a Digital radio today and thought I'd tell you of my experiences with the set thus far.

I chose the Roberts Ecologic 4 DAB/DAB+ portable digital radio  as I know people who are using it and I wouldn't be surprised if some of those people are on this list so hello to you and I hope you're enjoying the rich listening experience which Digital Radio in the capital cities of Mainland Australia offers.

Now I have to warn you of a couple of things here, when you initially turn the set on it will do a scan of the DAB+ bands in Australia and DAB bands if you're in the U.K., so far so good.  The next challenge you have is finding what you want and I've found ways to scroll through or "seek" stations, once you've found what you want you can put that station into the preset memory by holding down the button you want the station to be associated with, say button 1 or if you want to use the presets above 5 hold down the shift key and then old down preset 1 for preset 6, you can just press the preset then of the desired station you want so others may find it easier to have someone sighted go through the stations and that way you can nominate the one's you want in the preset channels.

I live about 24 miles away from the centre of Melbourne so signal is probably fairly week and I'll talk more about that in a few moments.

I've noticed that in Melbourne stations are sorted in alphabetical order which may make things easier when you're setting the presets, for example suppose you know you're listening to ABC Local Radio 774, turn the selector knob once clockwise and press the select button, you'll then be on 3mp+, turn it 2  clicks and you're on 3MP etc so perhaps a few notes taken will be handy here.

Digital radios are a bit of a pest in that you have to be careful of placement and the Roberts Ecologic 4 in my experience thus far is no exception, I'd like to have it in the back room but the radio and my computers just don't get on so the radio is on the top of my fridge in my kitchen and even then! I had to adjust the aerial to exactly the right angle, you know if you don't get a signal on the Ecologic 4 as the sound drops out totally so I wouldn't recommend you walk around the house with one of these things even though the set is a good tough portable.

the radio runs on both AC mains and battery power, its claimed in the manual that the Roberts Ecologic 4 radio will last up to 150 hours on a set of alkaline batteries.

Sound quality exceeded my expectations for such a small set, the radio has both headphones and line output.

Last but not least, the radio has a FM band for those times when you can't receive a digital signal and why this radio doesn't have a standard AM broadcast band I'll never know, do the manufacturers of digital radio sets think we just live with a FM band even though top rating radio stations in Melbourne and Sydney for instance are on the AM band?