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DAB Digital Radios

DAB stands for 'Digital Audio Broadcasting', and has been develop to broadcast digital radio transmission. The benefit of converting to digital transmissions was to increase the fidelity, the amount of stations available (some towns and cities can now have 40 or more digital stations) and finally to reduce interference noise. It reduces sound distortion by using both MPEG and COFDM technologies, they convert the analogue signal into digital code and this reduces the potential for the corruption of transmissions by adverse weather and environmental conditions. DAB is also known amongst the techie fraternity as 'Eureka 147', and has been coordinated by the World DAB Forum since 1997. DAB began as a joint research project conducted by the EU, with the UK taking a leading role in terms of implementing the new transmission. Like with Nicam stereo sound, the BBC has helped pioneer another new sound transmission standard with DAB, they were the first broadcaster in the UK to transmit DAB radio in 1995. Out of all EU countries the UK has currently sold the most commercial DAB receivers, and created the most commercial stations. Statistics have also projected that over 45% of UK homes will receive the transmission by the end of the decade. Frustratingly commercial sales of DAB radios have only been buoyant in the UK and Denmark. One reason could be because only Roberts and Pure have released a solid range of portable and stand alone radios. There are currently three versions of digital radios that you can buy, a portable version with headphones, a stand alone version and the third which is integrated into a hifi system. On a positive note the likes of Sony, Philips, and Hitachi are beginning to launch their own models. Some of the best technological features of DAB radios are they can display additional information about any given radio station, such as the name of the song you are listening to and who wrote the song. They can pause and rewind transmissions of live radio and can save them onto storage device like memory cards.