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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. 42 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 • • • • • • • • • • • • 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 siliconchip.com.au 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 FOR THE ULTIMATE IN HEADPHONE LISTENING... Published in Sept 2011 You need the ultimate in Headphone Amplifiers! Be prepared to be amazed at the difference a good Headphone Amp can make! Most equipment has the headphone output as an afterthought – and not a very good one at that. Run your headphones from this amplifier and you’ll wonder where all the extra fidelity came from! Want to know more? Log onto siliconchip.com.au/project/headphone+amp July 2020  43