Digital Car radios

Honest John Back Room » Technical matters
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Thu 8 Apr 2004 18:56
Digital Car radios - MW
I am toying with fitting a Blaupunkt DAB52 radio, in a Mercedes 230E 1992. The wide range of stations and standard fitting are attractive. Has anyone had experience of this unit. Is the CD player the normal 'one disk goes into the front slot of the head unit' arrangement?
What is the dab reception like. My experience of kitchen dab radios is that they can very touchy about positioning and aerials. Is this unit easy to fit and operate?
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Thu 8 Apr 2004 19:30
Digital Car radios - Civic8
www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/product_info.php?products...4

hope that helps
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Fri 9 Apr 2004 14:21
Digital Car radios - IanW3
I put the DAB52 into my 1990 Audi (and probably doubled it's value...).

A button on the top right causes the front plate to pivot down, and reveal the CD slot. Insert the CD half way, and the motor draws it into the drive. Push the front plate back up by hand.

DAB reception is patchy while driving - perfect sound quality when available. Mostly the problem is that an ensemble is not available when you select a service, rather than it disappearing when you're listening (I suspect it automatically tunes back to BBC R4 on FM, but I've never caught it in the act).

The unit was very easy to fit - it has rectangular ISO connectors on the rear, so the previously fitted B'punkt Casablanca just slid out, and the Woodstock slid in.

It has a second small aerial connector on the rear, and comes with an SMA (I think) adapter. This needs to be routed to a DAB aerial - mine came with the radio.

Operating it is probably no more difficult than any other modern aftermarket radio. A fair number of small buttons, not as easy as OEM radios. Most things are controlled through a menu, so really need to be set up at install time, eg bass/treble/fade/display. Volume & source selection/tuning are about the only things with their own buttons.

The unit gets a bit hot, so I'm in the process of adding a small amp to drive the speakers, rather than the amps in the DAB52.

BTW, I bought mine from Scan, as part of their 'Today Only' others - UKP235 including VAT & aerial.

Ian.
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