DAB radio losing preset station names

[David12]

Outlander 4H 2017. Love the car but hate absolute 70! The station keeps playing and my presets keep loosing there station text id.

Has anyone got anywhere with this issue? HELP....

 

[David12]

Outlander 4H 2017. Love the car but hate absolute 70! The station keeps playing and my presets keep loosing there station text id.

Has anyone got anywhere with this issue? HELP....

 

[Ben]

I have the same issue. I purchased the car second hand and it is factory installed with the W-17 MMCS system. When I try to scan for DAB stations the DAB receiver is not tuning into all the multiplexes that I know are available within the London area. When listening to the stations it can receive, it always reverts to Absolute 70s.

I have spoken to a Mitsubishi dealer and they tell me that there is currently an outstanding issue with these radios as well as some in other manufacturers cars as well. They are waiting for Mitsubishi to provide a fix. I did point out that my car is still covered by the manufacturers warranty, however this didn't appear to get any kind of useful response. I guess for the time being it is a matter of holding on until Mitsubishi work out how to resolve this. It could be as simple as a software upgrade or as complicated and as costly as them having to replace the hardware! I would be pushing that they cover this cost as clearly something has gone wrong with an upgrade that they have issued in the past or the radios are simply not to the correct specification.

 

[Wobbling2106]

I have been suffering with the DAB radio losing its presets and retuning frequently to Absolute 70's - it has been driving me nuts. I was also unable to get the preset for BBC Radio 5 to show the station name. I can confirm the behaviour others have reported in that all presets go blank, but are actually still stored as a short press of each preset tunes to the stored station, followed by a long press which restores the station name.

Recently I have been exploring every possible setting and decided to disable DAB-DAB link - this immediately restored all the preset names I had stored (including BBC Radio 5) and for the last week I have not had the radio retune itself to Absolute 70's.

I am due a longer trip round the M25 on Sunday and will report back on whether the problem is indeed solved.

I hope this helps other users and proves to be a fix for the problem.

 

[TJTE5]

I Have had exactly the same Absoluteradio 70s problem in th london area - as soon as you are 30 miles outside london the radios is fine. Where is the Dab-dab link setting>

 

[TJTE5]

We only started getting the Abs Radio 70 problem after the dealer did a system upgrade.
It is a software problem where the radio cant distinguish which dab region its in so it tunes to rubbish-
Sure fire fix is tune to internet radio on your phone and connect via bluetooth

 

[thisoneisme]

Hi all again,

This is still happening to me as well [2016 model from new] & I'm right down on the south coast, nowhere near the M25 and at least 60 miles from London!!!

 

[Bladevane]

I have just disabled the DAB-DAB Link as per Wobbling2106 suggestion. Let’s see if it makes a difference.

 

[Bladevane]

Well, that didn't make a difference. Drove to Cornwall from Oxfordshire - all OK. Coming back through Wantage we lost all the DAB stations and the radio reverted to 12B Absolute Radio - again. Must be an issue with the car.

 

[Chris1972]

Its been a while since someones last update .. Anyone come up with any solutions or if the issue has been resolved. I spoke to Guildford Mitsubishi and they have not heard of anything as yet.

I am trying to solve the issue with out changing the MMCS head unit.

 

[ChrisMiller]

Yes, it's a right pain in the posterior. This only started happening about year ago, and there has been no change to the software in the MMCS, so unless something has changed in the DAB signal format (unlikely), maybe there's a limit on how many stations it can cope with. I live on the edge between two multiplexes (Oxford/London), so this can happen several times in just a few miles.

 

[afreire]

This problem started happening since I had a small incident with the car, when I reversed out of the garage when the garage door wasnt fully opened, and this ripped out the fin at the back/top of the car.

I realised then the fin actually contained the antennae and had this replaced.

I thought I was buying an original part but DAB was never the same since.

 

[Alan466]

Has anybody resolved the issue of dab radio losing presets, as this seems to be a long standing problem and Mitsubishi has been less than helpful

 

[tedder1988]

Hi ,

I only recently purchased a 17 Plate Outlander PHEV and having this issue , its so frustrating !!

I live in Essex on the borders of London , did anybody manage to sort this issue out at all ?

Thanks

 

[anubus]

From what I understand having spoken to a technical guru at Mitsubishi, the problem is hard coded into the radio firmware so short of physically swapping out the unit (or the PGA inside) nothing can be done.

 

[ChrisMiller]

The problem (uncommanded retuning to Absolute and losing all the names on presets) only started at the beginning of 2022, never having occurred in the previous 6 years, and there were no changes to MMCS firmware at that time. It may well be a firmware issue, but something must have changed in the DAB signal to have triggered it. I personally suspect it's something to do with DAB+ (which is the only significant change to DAB in the UK that I'm aware of), but I sit to be corrected.

 

[nrayanov]

The Mitsubishi radio and antenna are notoriously bad, as attested by multiple Outlander PHEV groups on the internet.

Several people bought/changed their antennae, which fixed the issue for them.

Others have bought radio amplifiers that can be fit easily behind the dashboard and shared no issues with DAB afterward.

 

[ChrisMiller]

You may well be right, nrayanov, but it worked flawlessly for 6 years, and nothing has changed on the car, so I can only assume that somehow the DAB signal in the UK has altered.

 

[nrayanov]

I'm only sharing what the thousands of PHEV UK users are reporting here: Log into Facebook.

And yes, it is possible that after the UK dropped from the EU, they are making changes to DAB as they are no longer required to follow the EU law and frequencies for DAB.

 

[themaiz]

Could I throw in some technical comments?

• the tech standards for DAB (and DTV, for that matter) are generally set in terms of a standard receiver/decoder. Broadcasters can change their encoding hardware/styles/channelisation as technology and business models change, but it's pretty much impossible to do anything to "fix" a few million receivers. So protecting the receivers is an accepted practice. But... you have to presume in the first place that the receiver is working correctly according to the standards and the receiver doesn't break its users (us).
• there's nothing (other than regulations) that stops broadcasters from pushing the limits of the transmission standard. And there's NOTHING that stops broadcasters from changing how a DAB multiplex is filled. If (for instance) you have a 1.5Mb/s payload on frequency, you could have one broadcaster running 1.4Mb/s, or 10 broadcasters allocated 140kb/s each, or 100 broadcasters running 14kb/s each.
• in practical implementation, what I just said is nonsense. 14kb/s would sound AWFUL and be unlistenable (although 32kb/s on DAB+ is very very good for the bitrate). Just take it that a bunch of operators get into a meeting room from time-to-time, agree amongst themselves what each is allowed to use in a shared resource. Then they supply that many bits to whoever runs the multiplexor and transmitter.
• within their allocation, broadcasters can change the config whenever they like - most importantly, without having to consult listeners. There are tables in the transmission that tell radios where to look and what channels to find, and those tables can be updated whenever the broadcasters agree to do that.
• when the broadcasters change the channel config, it generally requires a re-tune of the radio (a slow process). The tune does a search and stores what's found so that you can select stations quickly.
• if there are too many services on a DAB+ multiplex it's possible to overload the "fast information channel", so that a tuner can never get all the real-time information it's supposed to find in the time allocated to the channel (that's a GROSS oversimplification statement; please don't skewer me on it).
• engineers never anticipated situations like: operators running large numbers of excruciatingly low-bitrate stations that nobody would or could tolerate, in a market where nobody is listening, to legally get around a music licensing issue and pay less money, thereby creating an overly large number of services that can and do create problems for receivers. Not saying that's the case in the UK, but it's definitely a thing and has been seen.
• RDS in FM works completely differently to DAB or DAB+ (just saying)

And then there's the radio in the Mitsubishi Outlander. Just.... annoying.

As a broadcast engineer I'm EXTREMELY disappointed with almost every aspect of how the radio works. I can't spend much time listening to DAB+ because I live too far from where the service is available. But I don't doubt that the Mitsubishi DAB+ implementation is wanting, based on my experience of how badly the AM and FM interface works.

As the newly-minted owner of a quite expensive asset, I think Mitsubishi has lost the plot with the infotainment system. But that's another discussion.