DAB radio losing preset station names

[themaiz]

My radio (not DAB) gave me a start the other day...

Suddenly the RDS text displayed on my classical station was announcing songs from another station.

Given the artists and song titles, I'm guessing it was a "Hits from the Eighties" type station.

I went around the dial and couldn't find a local station that matched the content, but noticed that the text was correct for every station, except my classical station.

Best guess?

Somebody was broadcasting the RDS text for a different, interstate, station on their frequency.
(i.e. somebody at the national classical station had re-tuned a device to the wrong feed)

I have also noticed in the past, that the text on that station sometimes was half an hour ahead of the program content...

These things suggest to me that there are a lot of things that can go wrong with broadcast radio.

(Here in Adelaide, we had a repeater station in the city broadcasting the wrong station for a couple of hours, because a technician in that room thought that the 'tuner' in the rack was just for that room. He changed it to his favourite radio station while he was working in the room, and left it in that condition.)

The way RDS on FM works is quite different to how DAB+ works. And it would be quite hard (if not impossible) for one station to acquire another station's RDS data on the way past. If you have a way to PM me offline, I'd like to find out what happened to 5MBS (out of personal interest).

There is nothing to prevent a software-defined-radio having a horrible bug, but even then it's hard to imagine how that would happen in practice. But your repeater station story is cute. That definitely can happen (and clearly did!).

 

[Amarjit Dhaliwal]

I gave up on using the DAB radio long ago due to this annoying issue and reverted to FM.
As it's a while since the last post I wondered if anyone had been successful with finding a fix ?

 

[ChrisMiller]

Still happening to me. Recently, the 'rogue' station seems to have changed from "Absolute Radio" (first alphabetically) to one of the Virgin stations.

 

[Nick Jarman]

Still happening to me. Recently, the 'rogue' station seems to have changed from "Absolute Radio" (first alphabetically) to one of the Virgin stations.

I concur - mine is still losing stations and the default is no longer absolute radio, it is a virgin station (neither of which I have the slightest interest in listening to !) . . . I hadn't thought of reverting to FM - will definitely try that . . .

 

[Nigel McGoldrick]

On the subject of lost DAB channels... wondering if anyone else has had the issue I've got with DAB reception, or lack of recently with their Outlander PHEV (2019 MY)?

I've had the car for about 18 months and always enjoyed reasonable DAB reception. A few weeks ago though the reception in DAB was dropping off. I'd select typical channels, but get no reception so had to switch to FM which usually worked, but as expected, with lesser quality. I put this down initally to bad atmospherics, then when the situation didn't right itself, started to wonder if I needed to do a periodic re-tune all the pre-select DAB channels I have in the audio's memory. Got the book out today on how to re-set DAB channels and have just had an hours session in the car only to find that on all my DAB pre-set stations the display simply says 'No Data'

I've tried different locations to no avail, & have tried switching between Band III / L Band / Both. Turned on/off things like TI Interruption. Tried the radio station tuning 'Update' button, but the display just comes back again to 'No Data'. I've looked at where the aerial lead likely enters the boot. It's sheathed, but no sign of damage/stress on this. And I'm not using or plugging my phone in, using carplay or anything else that would effect the signal's reception.

Any thoughts/advice on what to check/cure much appreciated.

 

[dabram]

I have the same issue on my DAB. Was there ever a solution for the DAB problem?