Digital Radio GaGa

But does DAB really sound that bad? I’ll use my Dad to debate this. He may not know one end of a PC from the other but he does possess a good ear. He enjoys classic music and quite unbeknownst to me replaced his analogue radio with a digital one because he was fed up of all the hiss and fade. He told me he that the first time he listened to a classical concert he was blown away with the clarity and depth of the sound. Then again, my parents house enjoys a DAB signal strength of 99 per cent and Radio 3 broadcasts at a bit-rate of 192Kpbs, the only one that high in the UK, so may be it’s not the best example.

So I guess I’ll find out for myself very shortly how good or bad DAB sounds, as I’ve just received for review from Sony its DAB6650 in-car head unit. They first mentioned this at a briefing in April but it’s taken till now for it to appear in the market. I don’t really know why. But brilliant, I thought. This would enable me to get my in-car DAB, and finally get an Ice Link Plus for my iPod.

One problem. It turns out that despite Sony marketing material all year stating that the head unit supports a CD charger, it, in fact, doesn’t. Once again, designers have got it wrong, assuming that if the CD transport can read MP3 and ATRAC3 Plus, you’d have no desire for a CD changer.

However, the Sony unit does have phono inputs so what I’m going to do is give up on the Ice Link and instead go from the iPod into the head unit, via a Belkin Car Auto kit, which provides a line level output. I’m going to get a local installer to wire this up discreetly for me so I don’t have cables running everywhere, and secure the iPod with a Brodit Proclip. I’ll lose out on the head unit control but at least I’ll be able to listen to my iPod properly and have access to DAB.

I’ll then be able to choose between the thousands of compressed audio tracks on my iPod, or the compressed audio of DAB. I guess no one's going to be accusing me of being an audiophile in a hurry.