DAB Digital Radio via PCI card 

DAB radio has been available in some form or other for around six years; however it is only the last two years that has brought prices to the point where it is affordable for the mass market. Only a year ago a receiver from German company TerraTec was reviewed it cost £300, now this PCI card from Modular Technology is available at less than £100.

Early DAB receivers were notoriously difficult to tune, not so here as it is all automatic. Installation is just a matter of inserting the PCI card into a free slot and then following the prompts from the software installer on the supplied CD-ROM. There is also an Installation Guide covering the same points and my only gripe is that I needed two reboots rather than the one stated. Since then the product has worked fine for many months during both day and night.

A supplied wire antenna (T shaped) screws into the back of the PCI card and you should experiment with best location as even a rotation within the same area can greatly increase reception. If you are unsure of your areas ability to receive Digital Radio why not input your postcode at www.ukdigitalradio.com to check expected reception.

Not only can DAB give improved reception but once tuned into a channel additional information can be beamed as well as the signal such as track details for a song being played or even what is coming next. Both of the features mentioned rely on the radio station transmitting them and at present only a few do.

It is also possible to record output direct to your hard disk using either .mp2 or .mp3 and the quality is excellent.

A lot of the available stations are DAB duplicates of existing ones; however there are a growing band of DAB only stations such as Radio 5’s sports channel and 6 Music to mention two nationally available offerings. Some are strictly regional or even local to one specific area. I found 52 stations on five multiplexes and while some far less than perfect receptions and a few produced nothing the majority gave excellent output. A lot of the duplicates are of AM stations where reception has often been problematic.

There is a spanner tool at the base of the interface than gives a Window showing among other things the receiving level for the currently selected station; I found that if this was above 40% then it was quite listenable to. This screen also has a selected option to update your PC’s clock to broadcast time. This did not seem to work however if you click on the displayed analogue clock within the Window then it will. A good way to accurately update your machines clock.

The radio signal is transmitted from the PCI card direct to the motherboard, the quality of your systems speakers will dictate the quality of output received.

Do I think DAB radio is a good buy, certainly. However I would previously have gone for a unit to connect to a Hi-Fi system but then you may well lose the ability for automatic .mp2 or .mp3 recordings.

Link to DAB Digital Radio via PCI card