For your next trick...
If I ask nicely, could you do a similar comparison of portable DAB radios- i.e. the little ones that run headphones? Would save me the effort of figuring out which ones are rechargeable etc.
Thanks
Tim#3
The great DAB debate rages, but there's no doubt digital radios make great presents for regular listeners still tuning in to old trannies. Ahem. And these new fangled ones do FM and internet radio too. Pure Digital Evoke Flow Pure Digital Evoke Flow internet radio Put simply, this is a great little radio. In terms of …
The thing I can't get my head around, and excuse me if this seems odd.. Why the feckin' hell would you pay that much for a kitchen radio? Let's just leave aside how horrible layer 2 audio at that bitrate sounds, and how disconcerting the time delay is due to DAB, and look at the fact that it's a small radio with small speakers. Paying that much for something that sounds crap seems like madness.
I'd much rather get a semi-decent FM radio of the same size for a lot less- since it's gonna sound as good, if not better. I guess there are a few stations not on FM, six music and the world service are ok if that's the sort of thing you like. Personally, I either listen to radio 4, or have my favorite streaming drum and bass station on..
..which brings me onto... Do a roundup of nice streaming boxes too- the sort that people can connect to their big hifi, like the squeezebox. They're becoming more mainstream, and I'm sure some folks wouldn't mind one for christmas..
I just bought a flow and its fab! Sound quality is pretty decent, the media streaming is superb , the Lounge makes adding extra stations really easy. I like being able to access all the web stations I normally listen to without having hear them through the tinny speakers on my laptop. Worth forking out extra for the rechargeable battery too. Oh and the DAB radio is pretty decent too.
A few minor quibbles. Setting the box on a wireless network took me a few goes until I figured out how to do lower case for the wpa passcode. If the web station you want isn't on the Lounge list then you have to be able to read html to figure out the correct url for some web stations. And I've not yet figured out if you can get it to remember where you got up to last time on the listen again stations.
Minor quibbles aside I'm happy to have forked out my hard earned cash for this as it gives me access to loads more radio stations, podcasts and listen again stuff that is not available through a transistor radio.