[JonoNZ]

Originally Posted by Daveyc

I think you're quite right in feeling like this. To position DAB as offering good or improved sound is a puffed up con with bells on. There are benefits with DAB, the main one being that you can access more stations. The matter of noise is down to perception - I'd rather have some faint background hiss than listen to the slightly flattened, thin sound of DAB, but each to their own.

One thing to remember: if you have the DAB setup in your car, you have two receivers in one: DAB and FM. Good in some ways, but it means that much less money has gone into the FM side of the unit, so sensitivity and sound quality will suffer. So comparing DAB sound to FM sound on a DAB system will give a poor account of FM. As others said, most FM stations should sound significantly better than DAB counterparts, even on a the HK in-car system, but the gap does vary by station.

If you can bear classical music for a few minutes, it's worth tuning in to Radio 3 FM. That station has the biggest bandwidth allocation of any of the UK stations and you can really hear it. Listening to Radio 3 FM on a big home rig, you can come close to matching the sound of today's top end CD players, even with a relatively modest tuner. In this situation, FM is simply leagues ahead of DAB.

Classic FM is OK on FM, but they put a lot of EQ on the sound, so bass is over heavy and DJ voices rumble (even female ones ...). Radio one suffers same, but much worse, as does Kiss FM. Just too much bass waffle and rumble on the HK system.

Are you sure? On NBT cars i think DAB/DAB+ is just an enabling code, so not DAB cars have the hardware in the head unit/NBT already. Not too sure about the antenna though.

DAB is definitely worse sounding than FM, but DAB+ can sound quite decent, at least here in NZ.