Evening folks,

I've had my toppy for a while now and I've made it my mission to convert as many people as possible to the ways of the PVR. (Well my mother and her other half at least!)

This question has many bits to it and if I’m a bit long winded I’ll apologise now. I'm also going to go off on a not quite so toppy tangent as well!

They want to upgrade their not really existing AV system to one that will enable them to record radio from a digital source and then maybe archiving that to CD to play in the car or upstairs. Sound quality is important. Most of the time they listen to radio 3/4 and would like to replay certain one off concerts etc. They are not overly tech savy but are by no means fools. The options for doing this are endless.

I'd also like to upgrade them to the PVR lifestyle and using the toppys radio bit seems like a good idea. They are impressed at the "find program in EPG, press red to record" ease of use.

Here come the questions.
Firstly would the toppy be able to do this using say, jags EPG. I presume the file would be a .rec file and would need converting into MP3 or similar. What would the quality be like after conversion?
How does the freeview radio bit compare to DAB/SKY/FM. Am I right in stating they use different compression/bit rates?

Would a DAB radio with EPG and a CD recorder do a better job with better sound quality and ease of use. Are there any DVD recorders with freeview that would perform a one box solution? Heck, can you get a cd recorder with built in DAB? (they'de then loose the telly bit I know). I've seen DAB radios with SD cards that record to MP3 which I presume you could then convert quite easily to CD?

Any ideas, thoughts etc would be great. Sound quality is almost the top priority so if the best choice is FM so be it but if I can get them to upgrade to a PVR (toppy!) at the same time my mission in life will be closer to completion.

Thanks
Drewboy.

Quick reply on bit rates. If they are only/mostly interested in BBC3/4 then forget about DAB. Bit rates are always as good on Freeview as on DAB and almost always better. Only on 3 do DAB ever equal Freeview and they never exceed it. Only advantage of DAB is wider choice of stations.

Richard

http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da..._bit_rates.htm

chart shows DAB versus Freeview bit rates. Even Radio 3 on DAB does not transmit at 192 all the time (Freeview rate). Even this is not equivalent to FM.

Richard

How would a decent FM set up compare? I know you can't compare bit rates etc as one is analogue. If I can convince them that freeview is equal to FM I've almost won them over. All I have to do then is to find the solution to the recording/archiving problem.

My understanding from memory and from what I have read (and from my own ears ) is that you would need to be somewhere around 220-230bps to equal FM.
Freeview is of course going to sound 'cleaner' than an FM signal with any interference. It is not going to sound as good as a quality FM tuner through a properly set up external aerial.
Radio through Freeview can sound fine but using the bit rates currently employed it is never going to be as good as perfect FM

Richard

Sorry bit of editing going on for clarity
Last edited by Richard46 : 25-05-2006 at 22:37

Beware that the selection of radio stations on DTV is different to that available on DAB or FM. So no Classic FM, for example.

Richard, thanks for the help. I know I'm not going to convince them that digital is better but I at least think it'll come close.
The archiving and storage bit I presume will also add confusion to the quality issue. Then there's the issue of the the end equipment and speakers etc etc etc. Not to mention interconnects and all the other bits the sound has to travel through.
Do you know if the toppy will compress the signal when it records it. I think I remember reading somewhere it was recorded as is?

Ah the classic FM question
I'm not sure how important it is, but it's now a question I'm going to have to ask. That could scupper the DTV route.

The Toppy just records the bitstream as received. No compression is applied at that point.

Richard

some good news at least.
I'll feed back to them tomorrow and get an answer the Classic FM question.

Tune in tomorrow folks!

I had the same question and I think the answer's here:

http://forum.toppy.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4981

Hope I'm allowed to use that link.

I record lots of radio (mostly 4 and 7) on my Toppy and have considered transferring recordings to an MP3 player for listening on the move. But I haven't yet persuaded myself it's worth the effort and expense, as I haven't already got an MP3 player. I've transferred a couple of programmes to CD-RW and listened on my CD Walkman, but as that's limited to about 80 minutes per CD, it's too much hassle. For now I'm making do with cordless FM headphones, which let me listen to the Toppy anywhere at home.

What I'd really like is a Personal Audio Recorder (PAR?) which would do for DAB radio what a PVR does for TV, but be much smaller, ideally about the size of an iPod.

As for sound quality, all I've noticed is that radio 4 on my Toppy sounds poorer than TV channels.

Evening folks,

Classic FM is not overly important. Radio 3 and 4 are top of the list.
I think the toppy route is possible although a tad complicated for them.

Are there any other routes that people can think of?

Could they use the toppy to record the program and then record it to an external source using either the phono or digital outputs. A cd recorder would do the trick I suppose?

Drew.