Signal v noise

Radio has been much in the media new these days, following the Radio Festival in Birmingham last week. New digital radio (DAB) products have been arriving fairly regularly, with the latest being the Pure Bug, which allows broadcast pause and rewind as well as record.

A couple of months ago I acquired my third DAB radio, this time a pocket device from Philips, the DA1000. I particularly like BBC Radio 6 Music, only available on digital.

While the tabletop DAB radios perform well, my experience with the DA1000 is that DAB signals degrade a lot less gracefully than analogue. Railway cuttings are particularly bad: one minute the signal is great, the next it has disappeared. So not much cop on many cross-country rail trips. On a recent journey from Birmingham to London, I just gave up listening.