I Finally Got Sold On DAB+ Radio

Change is an excellent thing unless it has anything to do with analogue radio. I’m old and that’s how I’ve felt about radio technology.

You can change other things, but don’t change the radio. It’s AM or FM. Turn it on and then step away. There’s no reason to add anything or take something away. It certainly doesn’t need digitising because it’s working just fine the way it is.

I like that AM static. It’s comforting. And there’s a certain warm fuzziness capturing a free-floating analogue radio wave and playing it on a radio: music, talk-back, races, weather and the news. The charm isn’t just its content but the freedom to discover it. The compressed audio tones isn’t offensive either. It turns it into easy-listening background noise.

But no, that’s not enough. We went and altered simplicity just because we could. Clarity and sound improvements complicated it.

During my time, television went from monochrome to colour, seen in a small, chunky curved box on one day to a large, thin, flat-screen on the next. Short-wave radio all but vanished, and the Internet appeared. The music went from records/cassettes to CDs to every digital file you can think of. Nothing I grew up with stayed the same. That is why I refused to let a pimple-faced salesboy sell me a digital radio. I didn’t feel it was necessary to change what I already had. It worked. A carrier wave and a tuner are all anyone needs to pick up music. I like that kind of simplicity. It works without digital alterations or inclusions.

“That’s the way radios are, sir”.

He spoke as if my past never mattered and there would be no going back.

I wanted to tell him to go to hell.

And then my old clock radio died. I had to make a sudden choice. Do I replace it with something similar or upgrade it to DAB+.

Ick!

I never used the radio section much, so its sound quality didn’t matter. Unfortunately, the choice of clock radios is similar to that of radios. You either pay a few dollars for a piece of plastic crap or a few more to move into digital. DAB+ is standard. If I wanted a retro clock, I’d have to find a second-hand one.

Retro?

I’m getting old!

My new clock radio was plugged in and the numbers flashed. I picked up the instruction manual and drew in a deep breath. Would programming this one be as complicated as the last? I dreaded having to learn a new process. It took most of my life to get used to the last one. I glanced at the clock in disgust only to find the clock showing the right time. That disgust turned into surprise!

First, I didn’t need to program the time into the clock. Within seconds, the tuner had found my local radio stations, too. I didn’t need to do a thing! It was ready without effort! It even picked up a few other stations I didn’t know existed!

As expected, the radio didn’t hiss, not even when encountering a low signal. It plays the sound cleanly or not at all. (Weak signals won’t load.) Another point of note is the visual data on the tuner’s screen. It displays the title of the song it’s playing! (Meta-information is supplied somewhere in the carrier wave.) It’s a different world with DAB+.

I don’t have enough evidence to continue hating it.

In the old days, I would’ve checked the compression rate, wow and flutter, sensitivity, or a sound specification before buying audio equipment, even click radios. These days, I see a clock radio as a clock. It’s not a device for producing high fidelity. It’s a bit of wake-up noise… but I was pleasantly surprised by the tone of my new gear. It’s much better than the clock radio it replaced. It’s so good that I’m considering getting a table-top DAB+ for my home.

Yes, I’m sold on DAB+.

I listen to it when writing novels.

– Michael

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