[gsr]

I've owned an E92 with DAB for the last few months and have noticed the DAB keeps cutting out due to no signal. This is mainly up the M40 corridor; between Banbury and Warwick, it cuts out 5 times in 16 miles!!! I listen to Radio 2 and 5live.
Is this due to a problem with the DAB receiver or due to poor DAB coverage.
Comments appreciated

[Boyd1963]

Originally Posted by gsr

I've owned an E92 with DAB for the last few months and have noticed the DAB keeps cutting out due to no signal. This is mainly up the M40 corridor; between Banbury and Warwick, it cuts out 5 times in 16 miles!!! I listen to Radio 2 and 5live.
Is this due to a problem with the DAB receiver or due to poor DAB coverage.
Comments appreciated

At a guess I would say it is probably due to poor coverage although the BBC coverage is better than "Digital One" (commercial stations) Unfortunately I haven't travelled that route since I fitted my DIY DAB receiver nor do I know how sensitive the BMW DAB receiver is.

What's it like around town?

[doughboy]

Agree.

I've been down that way twice in my E91 with DAB and remember both times having to change to FM to avoid drop outs at annoying moments.

10 years or so ago mobiles were rubbish there too and even FM was iffy as its pretty rural execpt for the motorway.

In the North West we've lost analogue TV now so they've been able to crank up the power of digital transmitters, but I don't know if that is digital TV only, or if it includes the DAB frequencies too.

I never have any problems in town, except strangely, outside the chip shop 1/2 a mile from home!

How is your's in town?

[Boyd1963]

I think that the BMW DAB is probably a lot better around town as you have got a proper aerial. I've got a magnetic aerial mounted upside down in my boot! I could mount it correctly outside but don't want to be mistaken for taxi!!!

Not as unlikely as it sounds. I have to keep my black Touran locked at night to stop drunks trying to get into it. It's happened more than once

[gsr]

Cheers guys.
Around town, there are no issues so I guess it's just due to poor DAB reception.

[m1bjr]

BTW the DAB bands are nowhere near that of TV and not related
About 220mhz so about double the frequency of the existing FM band.

[dar2008]

If you have iDrive, you can set the DAB channel to automatically switch to the same channel on FM if the DAB signal is lost (assuming that channel broadcasts on FM, which obviously Radio 2 does). The signal will auto-switch back to DAB once the DAB signal is back again.

It may be possibly to do the above without iDrive, but I don't know how.

[rogerxp]

I had DAB in my E92 (2-3 years ago) and the signal around me was hopeless. I could only get a couple of stations and even they constantly dropped their signal. The 'auto-switch' option dar2008 mentions was present but never actually worked in my experience.

I was thoroughly dissappointed with DAB at the time due to this but I guess things have got better. Sounded great when it worked though (combined with Logic of course; or DSP as it was known then).

[m1bjr]

The audio quality of DAB is generally POORER than that of its analogue counterpart.
Like some Sky TV channels, the data is heavily compressed and quality is lost.
This is nothing to do with signal strength either, digital is pretty much all or nothing.