Radio reception

Interesting, as the DAB signal deteriorate the audio quality only declines slightly to the point of no audio at all. Older systems had squelching mud sound as the audio was on the cusp of stopping. Therefore if you are getting heavy hiss on DAB I would say something is wrong with the receiver.

Are you able to see signal quality and strength for the DAB channels?

Simon

........  yes interesting.  My two pen'uth .    Keep in mind an FM aerial is normally rigged for horizontal polarisation (although it can be rigged vertically) & DAB must be vertically polarised; so in your home set-up the DAB reception is not optimum.   The single aerial connection in the Naim design is probably OK on a less than optimum DAB signal in that the DAB system does not suffer a slow decline in quality with a poor signal as does FM, instead like digital TV it will be good straight line unchanging quality until it reaches its sharp drop off point & pix-elates - with DAB it either hits the drop-off point & the DAB bubbling mud or like my DAB, just switches off.    I suspect a small variation between the 272 & UQ DAB modules are hovering around the drop-off points.  

I would look at the aerial,  can it be mounted vertically & capture the V (mixed) FM & V (only) DAB.  Or can you add a splitter & a vertical DAB dipole  ..........  but that's a whole other subject.    

To prove the point I would test both radio units DAB for quality using an indoor DAB wire aerial or even a crude made up dangle wire,  but it must be rigged vertically.

You can check the signal strength by pressing the i button on the remote. I'm not sure why I know this, as I never use DAB. In my location, I can only get a small range of BBC stations, but all of them show a full strength signal, even with no aerial attached.

As Mike wrote - you actually need a dedicated FM / DAB aerial.
It needs a 'mixer' at it's end, which then sends a combined signal to your receiver.

I use that solution with my NDX equipped with FM / DAB module.

What is most likely with your set-up is that you are actually picking up the DAB signal on your aerial cable, rather than the aerial itself.

Thank you all for your help.

i should have known that the i button would give that information.  That was a great help.  Of course, the signal is displayed as full on FM and very poor on DAB.  I did find that it varies and, when it is slightly better, the Unitiqute is almost tolerable.  The 272 does seem to cope with the same level of signal much better although it struggles a bit when the signal is at its lowest.  I had imagined that they both had the same DAB tuner but I guess that is not the case.  I am now happy that the Unitiqute will be capable of functioning normally when given a decent signal.

i am grateful for the aeriel advice.  I shall install a dedicated FM/DAB aeriel with a mixer.  There is a connection point in the loft so I shall try a vertical dipole there first and, if that doesn't do the business I shall have to send someone up onto the roof and re-do the whole thing.  I imagine it won't be hard for an aeriel engineer to set up an FM/DAB aeriel together with the TV aeriel.  I might manage to get away without doing that.  My tiles are very brittle and one job leads to another up there.

Thank you, Simon,

I know what you mean about squelching and stopping and that has been my experience with a DAB radio and a poor signal previously.  In fact, if that had been what occurred, checking the signal strength would have been my first job.  I was thrown by the constant very poor reception with white noise type hissing which did not vary.  That made me wonder whether the Unitiqute was faulty.  

I am hoping to go on the Naim factory visit in April and I had expected to have my new Unitiqute under my arm.  I can now leave it at home and focus on learning how they can possibly make so many different things in such a small factory with so few staff.

Paul

Combined FM/DAB aerials are not much good for FM unless you are in a strong signal area.  The FM element is a folded dipole formed into a circle & as such has little or no gain.  The DAB element is a standard folded dipole & that will be just fine.

Another way to do this is like I hinted at in my 1st post  ...... "add a splitter & a vertical DAB dipole"      By a splitter I mean a diplexer / triplexer    & a pukka DAB aerial.   This way you keep your existing FM aerial & just add a little DAB element.    Your aerial installer will know exactly what to do. 

yes in radio land -mixers usually mean something else entirely... just bear in mind if using a diplexer its best to use slightly larger aerials than you otherwise would do and/or be in a good signal area as you will get a small loss across the diplexer - the better (and more expensive) the diplexer the smaller the loss.. I would focus on as best FM aerial you can and you can probably get away with a more minimalist aerial on DAB. Also bear in mind you should use a BAL-UN on the dipole/yagi aerials (as you will almost certainly be using unbalanced coax) for optimum performance and lowest noise and will become more important if you use a duplexer. A good aerial installer will/should confirm signal levels as well as fit the BAL-UN if not part of the aerial assembly and whether a higher gain aerial is required.

Back to the drawing board.  I have a large horizontal H shaped FM aeriel strapped to my chimney with the TV aeriel attached.  I did try a circular horizontal dipole but the signal was not good enough.  I am in a valley about 25 miles from the Isle of Wight transmitter so reception is generally poor.

 I shall leave them alone and hope that a vertical dipole in the loft will be adequate.  If not, FM is more important to me than DAB - at least until they switch it off.

I've never been able to stand listening to DAB on the stereo as it sounds so dreadful. The 272's FM module, on the other hand, is extremely good. You may find that you can find the various DAB stations on Internet radio - certainly a lot of them sound really good. 

We too use the Isle of Wight transmitter, and get a great signal, but we are not in a valley. 

coiledmagnet posted:

I shall leave them alone and hope that a vertical dipole in the loft will be adequate.  If not, FM is more important to me than DAB - at least until they switch it off.

So are you discounting the right way to do this  .............  Add a pukka DAB aerial with a diplexer to your existing FM aerial.  

Mike-B posted:

coiledmagnet posted:

I shall leave them alone and hope that a vertical dipole in the loft will be adequate.  If not, FM is more important to me than DAB - at least until they switch it off.

So are you discounting the right way to do this  .............  Add a pukka DAB aerial with a diplexer to your existing FM aerial.  

Given that DAB sounds crap, and the stations are available on iRadio or FM, I certainly wouldn't add a DAB aerial at the risk of it degrading FM sound.

Lets say I disagree Chris,  DAB is not crap,  its not as good as FM & HD iRadio,  but crap it is not.  OK the low bit rates stations are crap,  but 128kbs & higher such as carried by BBC is not that bad,  & if you get the chance to listen to DAB+ before it comes to UK, you might be surprised 

A diplexer insertion loss will be around 1dB,  its nothing.  

I'm blessed with having main DAB and FM transmitters 4 km from my flat. With line of sight between the aerial and the transmitter on the Palace of Culture in Warsaw. The signal is wonderfully strong - FM is a poor relation to DAB+ in those circumatances.

DAB+.  Does that mean another tuner will be needed or will Naim provide an upgrade to their existing models?  Sorry if this information is well known.

Mike-B posted:

Lets say I disagree Chris,  DAB is not crap,  its not as good as FM & HD iRadio,  but crap it is not.  OK the low bit rates stations are crap,  but 128kbs & higher such as carried by BBC is not that bad,  & if you get the chance to listen to DAB+ before it comes to UK, you might be surprised 

A diplexer insertion loss will be around 1dB,  its nothing.  

Fair enough, Mike, personally I've never heard a DAB setup on which I'd be happy to listen to music: I'd say it was OK for listening to the news in the car, and that's about it, but I dare say you have a better DAB setup than most. I've heard good things about DAB+, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for it to arrive in the UK.

A quote on DAB+;

DAB+ is an upgrade based on the original DAB standard using a more modern digital encoding system (codec) Existing DAB radios are not capable of receiving DAB+ transmissions but DAB+ receivers are backwards compatible and can receive DAB. All dabonwheels DAB aerials are DAB+ compatible.

Poland is a very late adopter of DAB. So we went for DAB+ straight away. My NAIMs pick it up withough any problems, although the manual says: DAB.

The Naim DAB module is DAB & DAB+ compliant.  Its required under WorldDMB Digital Radio Receiver Profiles who specify a minimum set of requirements to be built into different classes of digital radio receivers for operation across Europe where broadcasters use DAB, DAB+ (or DMB)  under the Eureka 147  standard

ChrisSU posted:

Mike-B posted:

coiledmagnet posted:

I shall leave them alone and hope that a vertical dipole in the loft will be adequate.  If not, FM is more important to me than DAB - at least until they switch it off.

So are you discounting the right way to do this  .............  Add a pukka DAB aerial with a diplexer to your existing FM aerial.  

Given that DAB sounds crap, and the stations are available on iRadio or FM, I certainly wouldn't add a DAB aerial at the risk of it degrading FM sound.

I have to say I agree that DAB is crap, don't use it at all and can't see why I would want to

Have you actually listened to a decent DAB broadcast on a decent receiver DayJay ???

Mike, it depends on your definition of decent.  I had dab and FM on my Qute 2 and had good reception in my area and I found it to be woeful with FM being much much better.  I have a Nat05xs now, if there is dab that can better it I'd be astonished

Hi Dayjay, I will not disagree on that last sentence,  I asked the question because I've found a tendency for DAB to be given thumbs down based on hear-say.  Before my NAT-05 I had an Arcam FM/DAB & DAB was not that bad, OK OK not as good as FM,  but the higher bit rate stations & BBC R3 in particular were very acceptable.  I sold it to someone who wanted the DAB section as he had FM problems in his apartment (now very happy)    I know someone with a Ruark radio & the DAB is clearly better than FM running off his Sat,TV,FM fully wired house system.   I prefer DAB in my car; it has a better top end & is more dynamic,  indicative I believe in the presence of FM's pilot tone roll-off & compression,  something that DAB does not have.   That said I travel around the Chilterns a lot & it just does not work (does not receive anything) in the valleys,  but FM is pretty dire as well.