Thanks to Brian for getting the robi over in London, this is just a very short review of the first hour of operation and a rant about DAB.

Overall I’m impressed with the robi it’s small and neat and the volume is great which is very important in a noisy city. You turn it on for the first time and it scans for DAB channels and lands on the first channel in the first mux. The signal in my area of Dublin’s northside is not the greatest but the robi did a much better job of pulling in a signal than the ferguson I returned to Dixons a while back. However, breakup of signal was very noticeable on a walk around the house.

At first listen the DAB sounds ok, but then you change mode to FM and the old analogue sounds far superior. This is not a fault of the robi, most of us would think that the switch over to digital would bring with it better sound quality, but the opposite is true here. DAB sounds shite and that’s when you’ve got a good signal, when the signal drops it becomes unbearable to listen to or it disappears totally.

RTE says

“Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB):RTÉ is at the starting block of a new revolution in radio.”

now in my mind revolutions are are necessary to bring improvements, and the sound quality of DAB is one step forward two steps back, we need to start a campaign to save the FM transmission system.

How can it be that all this technology that DAB employs can be bettered by a BC108 transistor a few resistors and capacitors made by a kid with a my first electronic kit?

It’s because the MPEG 1 layer two (MP2) codec is lossy when it compresses down, it’s like MP3 at a low bit rate with the top and bottom end cut off. It reminds me of cramming loads of punk tracks on to my first MP3 player (Diamond Rio 32Mb) because punk rock doesn’t sound much different at lower bit rates. But classical music must sound like it’s coming down the hoover pipe.

Anyway back to the robi, the FM sound and signal is great, it even has RDS id’s, I must test it for RDS channel switching. The ipod remote function is handy, it allows for simple control of the ipod like play pause previous/next track and volume, it allows for the original earphone socket to be used for a pillion passenger. Where the remote fails is it doesn’t have a lcd read out of the current track and it can’t navigate the menu system. The clip on the back broke the first time it was pressed which is crap. I’ve to do more tests with the robi and will comment on it’s impact with battery life.

So over all the robi gets 7 out of 10, and DAB gets 2 out of 10. James Connolly (first clandestine radio operator) said to the citizen army “hold on to your rifles” I think in this case he’d be advising us to hold on to our FM radios. DAB is definitely not for use in the port tunnel, it just sounds a bit like the port tunnel.

I’m very interested in getting my hands on one of these

It’s the Roberts Robi, its RRP is 49 British pounds. it does DAB and FM and Ipod remote, I’m not hoping for much from the DAB on the northside of Dublin, the signal is way too sensitive about polarisation for it to work in weak signal areas. But the back up of VHF (FM) untill the signal increases at analog switch off will do nicely, and the remote will be handy too.

If anyone has found one of these let me know, comment below