This is not just a problem with my system in particular or my aerial, as it has been confirmed by my fellow high end equipment users and even on car radios!

Timbo, if where you are, you have no compression or limiting as you say, consider yourself lucky.

Perth is far from ideal as ABC FM gets here delayed via sattelite and DOES suffer from limiting and compression and all the other crap associated with analogue to digital conversion forwards and backwards.

On top of all that, we sometimes have an unknown station loudly '' burst in'' over the regular braodcast for a couple of seconds nearly giving us a heart attack!
Then comes the mysterious drop in signal strength.......but that's a whole story in itself.............

Dick Smith Electronics have just released an $88.00 DAB+/FM portable stereo radio(originally $199, then $129, now on special at ( 88 bucks!),which is comparable in construction/features and quality it appears, to much more expensive ones............ and I'm going for it.

Most likely, it can be modified for line out and an external antenna and maybe/eventually an attractive metal case?

Either way, even with DAB+'s shortcomings, I'd rather listen to a clean signal than the crap we're getting now.
If worse comes to worse, it'll be a nice portable radio to have............and it won't be set to FM !!!

 VERDICT?................ - robert.zygadlo 21:23:46 10/27/09 (0)

Listened for three hours straight, battery powered.

If you live in the metro areas of West Australia, and listen to ABC CLASSIC FM and/or love JAZZ..........DAB+ is simply far superior to FM analogue.

There is NO mysterious chopping off of musical transients in loud passages, compression?............what compression?.....FM analogue shows compression....at least on the ABC......and most definately on commercial stations.

So, I'm extremely happy with DAB+....................there has been a lot of slagging towards digital radio (myself included)and this is probably due to the ''theory'' linked with the technology instead of real listening on a high quality system in a home environment.
Just listening to DAB as a portable radio won't tell you anything about it's true abilities.

Link it up to your hi-fi system and enjoy!