Page 1 of 1

DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2012 8:36 pm
by timrosser
Hi,

I understand dab radios work on a different sort of areal or antenna to fm/lw radios (more modern cars have those little shark fin areal's I think). So my question is, if replacing my old areal for much needed re-spray is it a good idea to upgrade my areal to a dab type & my car stereo at the same time?

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2012 9:13 pm
by strongtom
I have dab radio in, and just used a converter, the £19.99 one from dab on wheels.

http://www.dabonwheels.co.uk/DAB_car_aerials.html

It works brilliantly, the key is to hook it up at the rear near the aerial, you will need to get an extension for the dab wire thing I got this one;

http://www.dabonwheels.co.uk/DAB_aerial ... w_loss.asp

Only problem is I tapped into the near side dlr lights at the back for power and it has made them dim so will need to sort that, you could run another accessory 12V from behind the din along with the extension. I drive from Leeds to the countryside of east Yorkshire where they are still waiting for channel 5 and it never looses signal so could be worth a try before forking out on a new one.

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Sun Sep 02, 2012 6:48 pm
by timrosser
Great, thanks for this, very helpful!

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 4:31 pm
by jamesy12345
hello gents....a thought just occurred to me...i can use my mobile phone to get digital radio via the internet, and have a head unit that will take aux input. Tried it and its not bad. I've also used a cassette tape with aux lead attached to get DAB through the older volvo tape players.

Its never going to feature on Pimp My Ride but does the job! The Orange Blossom Special recently completed a Peterborough to Durham run to the sounds of Bobs Ska Radio from Seattle check it out...

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:02 pm
by strongtom
Yep that does work nicely, but relies on you having a good 3g connection also be aware (for those that want to do it) that it could get through your download limit if you have one, and ultimately cost money.

I have a rear aux that I run a wire from, under the centre console and up through the arm rest which is quite neat for putting your phone into (or ipod). I found it really hard to get a DAB radio with a rear aux (got a JVC KD-DB52 DAB in the end), everything else seems to have them on the front these days, therefore an old cassette player will do just as well, if you don't mind wires everywhere, or getting a clever little micro-sd card cassette converter thing which are quite cool they can even skip files using the fast forward buttons on the head unit.

Tom

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:05 am
by jamesy12345
aye true enough those megabytes aren't cheap unless you have all-u-can-eat plan on yr phone or whatever. And yeah lots of wire everywhere. I won't give up the day job and start selling my ideas just yet then

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:56 am
by strongtom
Well don't stop just yet, I should imagine everything will tend to head towards streaming and cloud storage in the end; cassettes - CD's - MP3's on your own storage (iPod etc) - cloud storage music (still MP3's or the like), get ahead of the game!!

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 2:06 pm
by Anadinolin
If you dont want to convert to DAB just yet, then there is always the FM mechless headunit route. iv got an alpine XDA-100 at the moment and plan to pop in an XDA-305, with bluetooth option.

you just run a cable from your radio to your ipod - no more CD's or anything like that ancient tech the egyptians called Cassettes or you can use USB interfaces. if you hook the unit up to a USB hub you can have 3 usb sticks + 1 ipod, or if you are fancy, a USB output DAB radio :) best of both worlds!!

or if you prefer the way james does it, with your mobile, theres an android headunit that takes your sim or links up to your phone and you can play the internet radio then!

another option is to strap a Site radio to your backseats. and keep the old HU in place im getting silly now lol :roll:

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 11:05 am
by timrosser
Thanks for this- I keep holding off buying a dab as I agree with most of you it kind of seems like yesterdays tec already, I would o for James route but I still own a moto razor and don't plan to upgrade until it falls apart - sI'll look into this sexy Alpine thing :-)

Re: DAB car stereos & aerials

Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2014 1:17 pm
by spree
timrosser wrote:Thanks for this- I keep holding off buying a dab as I agree with most of you it kind of seems like yesterdays tec already, I would o for James route but I still own a moto razor and don't plan to upgrade until it falls apart - sI'll look into this sexy Alpine thing :-)
You can get an 8GB Moto G from tesco direct for £89.99 with the £10 discount code for a new sign up. They sell out quick but you can call them and they will tell you exactly when they are coming back in. It is a fantastic little phone as long as the camera is not vitally important. It's quad core, it's getting the latest android 'kitkat' this month and has a better screen then the iphone 5s. ;-)

The latest android kitkat also has much improved audio eq with compression and it is also much easier to use the navigation app as you don't need to manually switch on GPS any any more. Plus google have finally sorted out the voice on it. Basically android now works very well in the car as a combined navigation and music system.