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JIM ROWE reviews a "Chinese Cheapie" radio
Pocket-sized
DAB+/FM Radio
with SD card music player
If you've tried to buy a portable DAB+/FM radio
locally, you'll know how expensive they can be!
This one, that fits in a shirt pocket, won't break the
bank and it also has a built-in micro-SD card music
player capable of playing both MP3 and WAV files.
Other features include a 3.5mm stereo headphone
socket and a rechargeable 1000mAh Li-ion battery.
D
igital Broadcast Radio, using
the DAB+ system, has been
available in most of Australia’s
capital cities for just over 10 years now.
Many people in these cities have one
or more DAB+ receivers in their homes
and/or offices. And many cars now also
come with DAB+ radios as standard (or
in some cases, as an extra-cost option).
DAB+ is gradually expanding to larger regional cities as well.
As it is a digital service, DAB+ stations lack the noise and (generally) the
interference which can plague AM and
FM stations.
In fact there are many areas in capital cities where AM radio reception is
virtually impossible due to noise on
the band (one street just a few hundred
metres from the SILICON CHIP office is
[in]famous for this!). Fortunately all
AM radio stations are also found on
the DAB+ band.
Even more importantly, there are
also many more DAB+ stations available than in the analog bands, although
the sound quality can sometimes be
lacking due to the low digital compression bit rates used.
Having said that, if you live in a
country town or many of the smaller
regional cities, the above will seem a
bit academic since you probably won’t
have access to DAB+ reception yet.
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Silicon Chip
But if you do live in one of our capital cities and have access to DAB+
reception, you may have noticed that
until now, there have been very few
portable or pocket-sized DAB+ receivers available – especially at affordable
prices. Luckily this has now changed
for the better, with the little radio we’re
discussing here.
The radio in question
It comes from China, and it’s called
the DAB-P9. It is available from online
suppliers such as eBay, AliExpress and
Banggood for around $40-50 including delivery.
See the following links:
• www.ebay.com.
au/i/143470286230
• www.aliexpress.
com/i/33051199955.htm
• www.banggood.com/DAB-P9
… or just search the web for “DAB-P9”
to find other options.
But wait, there’s more! (No, you
don’t get a free set of steak knives.) As
well as having DAB+ and FM reception, it also lets you listen to digital music files (either MP3 or uncompressed
WAV files) from a micro-SD (TF) card.
It can handle cards with a capacity of
up to 32GB, so a single card can store
up to around 40 hours of CD-quality
WAV music files, or hundreds of hours
Australia’s electronics magazine
of compressed MP3 files.
It’s powered by a built-in rechargeable 3.7V/1000mAh lithium-ion battery which can be recharged from any
source of regulated 5V DC. It even
comes with a 1m USB-A to micro-B
USB cable which can connect it to a PC,
laptop or standard USB power pack.
Despite its tiny size, it has an LCD
screen which, like most of the larger
DAB+ receivers, shows both the station name and the ‘running data’ along
the bottom when you are receiving a
DAB+ signal. In FM reception mode, it
instead displays the station frequency
and the time.
It can scan for DAB+ ‘stations’ and
save the settings for 10 of them in its
memory. It can also do this in FM reception mode.
It has a built-in speaker, but understandably this is pretty tiny; a mere
23mm in diameter. That makes it OK
for holding up to your ear, but not for
much else. Luckily though, the DABP9 also has a 3.5mm stereo headphone
jack, so you can plug in a pair of headphones or earphones of your choice, for
much better listening.
User interface
As you can see from the pictures,
for such a tiny radio, the DAB-P9 has a
surprising number of control buttons.
siliconchip.com.au
Features & specifications
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portable DAB+/FM radio with MP3/WAV playback
pocket-sized (105 x 62 x 20mm)
weighs 94g including battery
DAB/DAB+ reception over the 170-240MHz
FM reception in the 87.5-108MHz band
small whip antenna extends to 285mm
accepts micro-SD cards up to 32GB
plays MP3 & CD-quality WAV files
built-in 23mm speaker
3.5mm stereo headphone jack socket
internal 3.7V/1000mAh Li-ion rechargeable battery
charges from USB <at> 5V DC, 1A
Under the LCD window there are
three ‘lozenge’ buttons with functions
to set the sleep time, call up the settings menu or jump to a preset station.
The settings menu allows you to set
the time (either manually or from the
DAB+ signals), set the LCD contrast,
the backlight on time and the FM tuning mode.
To the right of these buttons are three
that are mainly used for tuning and/or
station selection, but also for adjusting the settings menu options. The two
outer D-shaped buttons are the left and
right buttons, while the rounded square
button between them is to confirm your
selection.
To the right of the LCD there are three
more buttons. The round one at the top
is the Mode select button (DAB+/FM/
SD), while the rounded rectangular buttons below it are for muting and scanning (during setup).
Then along the top of the radio and
moving from left to right are the retracting telescopic antenna, the 3.5mm headphone jack, the USB micro-B socket
used for recharging the Li-ion battery,
the main on/off switch and a button
which can be used to lock or unlock all
of the radio’s other controls.
At the top of the right-hand side of
the DAB-P9 are the UP (+) and DOWN
(-) volume control buttons, and just below them, the slot for plugging in the
micro-SD card.
In addition to the USB charging cable, a six-page User Guide is also supplied. The pages are rather small at 94 x
106mm, but the text is reasonably easy
to read and follow.
Trying it out
After unpacking the radio, I used
the supplied USB cable to charge its
internal Li-ion battery from a standard
USB charger. It will also charge from a
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Despite its relatively tiny size, the
DAB-P9 sports an array of user
controls, as these front, side and top
photos show. The micro SD card slot
is on the side with its + and - program
selection buttons immediately above.
computer's USB port.
There’s a tiny blue LED visible via a
1mm diameter hole just in front of the
micro-B charging socket, which glows
to indicate when charging is taking
place. It stops glowing when the battery is fully charged.
When it went out, I held down the
main power button for a few seconds
(described as a ‘long-press’) until the
LCD’s backlight came on.
It was then quite easy to extend the
antenna and get it to scan for DAB+ and
FM stations, after which I could listen
to a selected station whenever I wished.
Luckily, I’m in a fairly good area for
both DAB+ and FM reception, so the
reception in both modes turned out
to be very good. The sound was great
when I plugged in a pair of decent stereo headphones.
Then I decided to try using it as an
SD card music player. I plugged in a
micro-SD card on which I had saved
several MP3 music files. These played
very nicely.
Although the DAB-P9 is only claimed
to play compressed MP3 music files, I
decided to try replacing that card with
another one on which I had saved some
CD-quality WAV files (ie, uncompressed
16-bit 44.1kHz digital audio).
The results were very impressive,
especially using the stereo ’phones. So
I’m happy to confirm that as well as
playing MP3 files, the DAB-P9 is also
able to play uncompressed WAV files.
I can’t really find fault with the DABP9 DAB+/FM radio-plus-SD card music player. It’s basically a pocket-sized
Australia’s electronics magazine
digital music system, with just about
everything you could ask for in such
a system, at a remarkably low cost.
Admittedly, the built-in speaker is
quite tiny and ‘tinny’, but I’d expect
most users nowadays would want to
listen via a pair of stereo headphones
or earphones anyway.
SC
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Published in
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July 2020 43
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