I like to listen to Radio Four on FM before I go to sleep and I listen to it when I'm away in our Motor Caravan. As I am very hard of hearing I use a set of headphones and turn my hearing aid to Induction setting.
This week my dear old Sony ICF-900 radio which I bought ten years ago for five pence at a jumble sale gave up the ghost and I need a replacement.
I have heard the term Digital Radio and DAB used but do not understand what they mean or even if they work.
So, could anyone offer me some advise as to what sort and make of radio I should be looking for.
If this is on the wrong forum please let me know where it should go.

You can buy any radio you want that has a headphone socket. DAB is digital radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting), it's not better quality than FM (quite the opposite. it just offers more channels). DAB radios have the capability to use FM anyway.

Sounds like you need to visit a car boot again

Would you care to recomend one up to £50.00?

Another factor with DAB radios is battery usage. While a lot better these days, still an issue compared with FM radios. So, you choice of model also depends on whether you will be mostly using it on mains power or not.

When I was young and impressionable I used to believe that the Government was at least efficient but they appear to have made a total mess of this or could it be that they thought that the number of the population affected by these changes was so small they could just ignore them.
Several people have suggested an older radio or one with FM but I thought that FM was being dumped.

I'd recommend the Pure One Mini, which has excellent sound quality for its size. You can buy them for a good price in Co-Op stores, or take advantage of the truly first-class service from their website http://www.coopelectricalshop.co.uk/...A&gclsrc=aw.ds I have absolutely no connection with teh Co-Op, it's just that I bought a HD recorder from their website and was very impressed by their service.

The main annoyance is that they don't take normal batteries, so that to use it away from the mains you need to by the re-chargeable battery pack, which cost almost as much as the radio itself.

I am guessing by your use of the term "Motor Caravan" that you're well into retirement, which means that the multi-function buttons on all DAB radios might seem quite baffling. Once set up though, you can usually store between four and six channels on the pre-set buttons, which should make it easier to use.

If you're not running it frm the mains and you don't want to spend money replacing batteries every 10 minutes or spend what will seem like eternity recharging batteries, consider a Roberts solar powered digital radio.

I have a pocket 1500 dab made by pure.
It's a great little radio, very strong robust design (dropped my one several times onto concrete floor at work, and still works).
It also has fm as well.
Battery life is very good, like 16-18hrs constant use. It has a mobile phone style battery pack. So u charge the phone with the mains adaptor. No need to keep buying batteries.
Sound wise, very good. If you compare dab to a weak hissy fm station, then dab is much better. Also dab is way better than AM quality. The only time fm can match or beat dab quality is when u have a solid fm reception with no hiss, & a proper hifi with high quality speakers or high quality headphones. On little systems with tiny speakers or little ear bud headphones the lack of quality in those parts hides the potential fm sound quality advantage.

Further to this, whilst I was looking at Roberts radios for my post I noticed that several of their models will recharge rechargeable batteries whilst on mains power.

That's extremely poor battery life, all my AM/FM portable radios have weeks of battery life and I use them for hours every day. The short battery life of portable DAB radios is very annoying, I don't use mine any more.

Also, reception-wise, portable DAB radio reception does not degrade gracefully like portable AM/FM radios - they cut in and out suddenly and annoyingly when struggling for signal, often with an even more irritating burbling noise at such times. That scenario is quite likely when O/P is away in their motor caravan!

DAB is OK if you like lots of different stations at lower quality than a good FM radio setup - but IMO for many people who are not permanently next door to a transmitter (like the O/P) not as practical as AM/FM.

Good quality AM/FM portables cost much less than equivalent quality DAB radios. I got a new hand sized one for a fiver from Tesco the other week and it's surprisingly good! I'd advise the O/P to get an AM/FM portable as pound for pound it will be better value than a DAB/AM/FM portable, which is the only sensible alternative in O/P's situation.

If the OP wants to keep the radio for any length of time the digital switchover is bound to happen in the next few years. Even though the 2015 switchover has been delayed the government will get round to it eventually.

With that in mind perhaps the best financial solution would be to buy an FM/DAB radio. I recommended 2 in my first post.

As O/P travels away in a motor caravan, FM *and* AM/MW with preferably (but hard to find) LW reception is an essential prerequisite and such a radio will be much easier to find at a decent price without built-in DAB.

For a radio costing under £50 as mentioned, it's far too soon to be worrying about a digital switchover at some unknown point in the future which could be many years away and isn't even guaranteed to happen at all. The cost will probably be more than paid for in battery savings anyway, by the time it has to be ditched in 5 or 10 years time.

Yer probably right d'@ve. I don't like to give in without a fight tho'!

If you do decide to get a radio with dab and keep in many years (into the digital switchover era), then I would suggest only buying a design which features DAB+, rather than than plain DAB. As when the uk does switch away from fm to only digital radio, it is likely to be the newer DAB+ format that is used, and plain DAB radios won't pick up stations on DAB+. Having fm built in is adviseable in the meantime if dab reception is not always guaranteed.

How many stations you can get on fm and dab depends on your location. So for this part of wilts, we only get strong fm signals (suitable for portable sets) on BBC R1,2,3,4, local BBC wilts, and heart. Anything more on fm requires a fixed fm aerial in the loft or on the roof, the radio in a car also tends to do better than average.
For DAB however, we get 32 reliably on a table top radio with its own pull up telescopic aerial or on a small hifi placed upstairs with its own supplied hang up wire aerial. This drops to around 16 DAB stations on the pocket radio from Pure using its headphone cord as the aerial, used inside a metal framed building at ground level with lots of machines and computers close by.

And consider if an AUX in and / or Bluetooth input are also something you are likely to make use of for playing stuff from an MP3 player, mobile phone or the like.

We've been through all this before and the conclusion has always been that it isn't really an issue, as if it does ever happen it can be solved with a firmware update.

The more I think about it, the more I think that it would be far more sensible for the original poster to buy a good quality AM/FM radio which has the ability to self-scan and store pre-set stations. Until the transmitters are finally allowed to increase their power I think this is a far better option. My DAB radio struggles to get constant reception from the local BBC DAB station and I nearly always ending up listening to football commentaries on FM (which also lacks the time lag).

I would suspect you're dreaming, if you think that software upgrades will be available to upgrade an old DAB radio to be DAB+, I would imagine almost none would be capable of such an upgrade, and of the small number where it might be possible it won't happen (for obvious cost reasons, and the age of the items concerned).

Not to mention most such radios are just cheap Chinese things, and updates are probably never available anyway.

The voice of reason, yes I agree I have 3 different DAB radios yet none of them have any form of pc connectivity to obtain new software that way, and they are not budget supermarket own brand radios either
Maybe over air broadcasts might work, but radios have to be designed for upgrade. If they are not, then they can't be.
So while a few radios may have the ability to upgrade I bet the majority don't.
Of those that do have an upgrade path, there is no guarantee the original manufacturer will provide any such upgrade. You only have to look at this same issues regarding various brands of TV in respect to their general operation & freeview features. All such tv's have an upgrade option, but many models are never updated. Once they reach a few years old, I think upgrade responsibility goes out the window anyway.

Back on the fm subject, I can't even get classic fm on an fm portable radio, yet do get it via DAB radio.

A couple of points I'd consider.

Firstly the Sony that you mention is fairly old now - and would have had 'average' sound quality given its nature as a portable radio.

Let's look at the DAB issue - if your main listening is going to be Radio 4 then there's probably little point in going DAB.

If, however, you're interested in the additional stations (e.g. BBC6 Music, R4 Extra etc) then it is worth looking at DAB.

Now - you're going to be using this when you are travelling - so size is clearly a consideration as is the ability to power using mains and battery.

If you're not interested in DAB now you hopefully understand a bit more about what it means then something like this http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/audio/r....html#longDesc for under £20 should do the job nicely.

If you're looking at DAB (and bearing in mind you use headphones which means the quality of the radio's speaker is less important) I'd be tempted to suggest something like this http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/audio/r...31237-pdt.html which is also just under £ 20

Now - I realise some on these boards will point out that a PURE or other brand will be a better quality set, and they are probably right in some respects - but, the fact is you're using headphones which means the radio's speaker isn't of such importance and in fact the sound quality will only be as good as the headphones you're using.

The Logik radio (whilst exclusive to Currys with that brand) can also be found in other outlets with their brands on - I recently bought a RED branded one from Sainsburys - for a £20 radio it is absolutely fine - it picked up all the stations I'd expected it to, it doesn't suffer from signal dropouts and whilst not 'hi fi' quality, is perfect for what I wanted.

Hopefully this gives you some other ideas - if you have further questions please ask.

Many thanks for the last post and its recommendations. In fact many thanks to all of the contributions and I now know a lot more about DAB than I did when I started looking. Much as I like new technology I think that as I use the radio when I'm on the road with my camper a battery use that is 20 times worse than an old radio is a nonsense so it looks as though I will stick with old technology.

Full info here: http://www.which.co.uk/technology/au...dab-explained/

Just to add, don't forget to seek out an AM/FM radio with Long Wave - as that's how you'll be listening to Radio 4 when outside the range of FM transmitters. There are such places in the UK!

Such as this: http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/audio/r...76924-pdt.html from Currys, though the idiot copy writers have listed the wrong specs in the "overview" list... here are the correct ones: http://www.robertsradio.co.uk/product_details/R9993.htm

Wow. I thought DAB was meant to be much better sound. I won't bother then as I leave R4 on all the time.

It has the potential to have really good sound, the problem is the bandwidth is sacrificed to providing more stations rather than a smaller number using higher bitrates.

If you ever listen to the World Service a DAB radio can be handy though.