{"id":32,"date":"2010-01-05T11:19:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T11:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/2010\/01\/05\/dab_-_30_years_of_engineering_progress\/"},"modified":"2010-01-05T11:19:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T11:19:00","slug":"dab-30-years-of-engineering-progress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/2010\/01\/05\/dab-30-years-of-engineering-progress\/","title":{"rendered":"DAB &#8211; 30 Years of Engineering Progress"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_107\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-107\" class=\"size-full wp-image-107\" title=\"Bush CDAB5R DAB stereo radio\" alt=\"Photo of Bush CDAB5R DAB stereo radio\" src=\"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/01\/dabradio.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-107\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bush CDAB5R DAB stereo radio<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) became available where I live yesterday. I had given my wife a present of a Bush CDAB5R DAB stereo radio for Christmas in the knowledge that DAB radio transmissions were due to become available. This replaced a Waltham W152 mono transistor radio (FM, MW and LW), which was about thirty years old. The Waltham was a low-cost radio when I bought it and was not of high specification for the time. However, it served without fail and there was never any justification for replacing it as\u00a0the counter-top radio in the kitchen.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_109\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-109\" class=\"size-full wp-image-109\" title=\"Waltham W152 analog radio\" alt=\"Photo of Waltham W152 analog radio\" src=\"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/01\/anradio.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-109\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Waltham W152 mono transistor radio (FM, MW and LW)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Engineers should be rightly proud of the progress that has been made in radio in thirty years. A single radio station can now be transmitted and received at high quality\u00a0while\u00a0using up only\u00a0a very tiny fraction of the capacity of the airwaves. However, when I experience a product such as the Bush I am not proud to be an engineer. I find the sound quality very tinny and, in fact, there is a buzz at certain pitches in speech and music that irritates me. The radio has a small backlit display for the station name and other broadcast information. This has disappointed me because the text is blurred and difficult-to-read for my\u00a056 year-old\u00a0eyes, especially moving text on the second row.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_110\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-110\" class=\"size-full wp-image-110\" title=\"Backlit display of Bush DAB radio\" alt=\"Photo of the backlit display of Bush DAB radio\" src=\"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2010\/01\/dabdispl.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-110\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Backlit display of Bush CDAB5R DAB radio (lower line is moving text)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The Waltham radio was self-contained and mains-powered, with its transformer inside the casing. The Bush radio has an awkward and heavy transformer plug. It is rated as 230-240v 90ma input for 9v 600ma output, which means that it is very inefficient. Furthermore, it is wasteful of energy if left plugged-in to a live socket.<\/p>\n<p>On the web today I learned that DAB is not forward-compatible with DAB+, which is more efficient and may supersede it, so the Bush is unlikely to serve for as long as the Waltham. Thankfully!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) became available where I live yesterday. I had given my wife a present of a Bush CDAB5R DAB stereo radio for Christmas in the knowledge that DAB radio transmissions were due to become available. This replaced a Waltham W152 mono transistor radio (FM, MW and LW), which was about thirty years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[28,36,87],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-product-review","tag-bush-cdab5r","tag-dab","tag-waltham-w152"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fun-engineering.net\/blogs\/funeng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}