21-05-2011, 10:44 PM
I also have one, but it is an obvious tribute to Hacker - see the attached picture (with a couple of Hacker sets for scale). It's actually rather nice, with a snazzy touch-sensitive control surface that illuminates when you wave your hand over the top, and it sounds very good too. Especially given how small it is...
Best of all, it can be had for £45 delivered: http://www.plugonit.co.uk/product/genus-type-r - and note that this was originally an expensive radio, so what you get is far better than the "supermarket specials". Against that, also be aware that this doesn't do DAB+, but I didn't care at that price.
Apologies to any Hacker Group members who remember the long discussion this set prompted a few months back! Quite a few of these were bought as a result
I also have an Arcam Alpha DAB tuner - the first hi-fi tuner to be released in the UK - although this was free for spares or repair. One LM317T later, I was in business
. It sounds very good as well, given the constraints of MP2.
My views on DAB have been expressed elsewhere, but in short we are paying the price of jumping in too soon. MP2, or more correctly MPEG1 layer 2, was pretty good in ~1990, but today many better things are available but we can't adopt them without obsoleting the existing hardware - not something the BBC wants to do.
In defence of MP2, it's actually surprisingly good at 256kb/s and more. It was optimised for live broadcast, and actually out-performs MP3 at higher bitrates. Of course, MP3 is better at lower bitrates, but MP3 is not well suited to live broadcast. I have a number of test discs for demonstrating these and other codecs, and most people are surprised at how effective these schemes are when you are genuinely comparing *just* the codec.
The last point is important because I know of lots of people who have come to the conclusion that MP3 is crappy because they are listening to a crappy MP3 player! I tell these people to put the .WAV on the same player and do a genuine comparison. Years ago I used a DAT recorder (remember them?) which sounded worse than my MiniDisc deck (remember them?). Surely MD should be worse than DAT because MD used ATRAC to compress the information, whereas DAT is completely linear? Yeah, but the DAT machine had a crappy A-D converter. Just be sure you know where to point the finger, that's all I'm saying...
All that said, there's absolutely no doubt that broadcasters have been forced to push the data rates, and also dynamic range processing (also called "compression" - generically called "Optimod", as Steve mentioned) is generally (ab)used by the majority of broadcasts. Interestingly, Classic FM don't process the DAB feed. But the CDs are normalised when ingested onto the playout system - fine for rock and pop but not such a good idea for classical. Listen for the start of the slow movement, and note how the "atmos" in the venue is much louder than in the opening movement...
Incidentally, if we went for DAB+, which uses the much more modern and shiny AAC, we would be in the same situation. More services perhaps, but still with barely adequate bit rates. Call me cynical, but you know I'm right :D
Mark
Best of all, it can be had for £45 delivered: http://www.plugonit.co.uk/product/genus-type-r - and note that this was originally an expensive radio, so what you get is far better than the "supermarket specials". Against that, also be aware that this doesn't do DAB+, but I didn't care at that price.
Apologies to any Hacker Group members who remember the long discussion this set prompted a few months back! Quite a few of these were bought as a result
I also have an Arcam Alpha DAB tuner - the first hi-fi tuner to be released in the UK - although this was free for spares or repair. One LM317T later, I was in business
. It sounds very good as well, given the constraints of MP2.My views on DAB have been expressed elsewhere, but in short we are paying the price of jumping in too soon. MP2, or more correctly MPEG1 layer 2, was pretty good in ~1990, but today many better things are available but we can't adopt them without obsoleting the existing hardware - not something the BBC wants to do.
In defence of MP2, it's actually surprisingly good at 256kb/s and more. It was optimised for live broadcast, and actually out-performs MP3 at higher bitrates. Of course, MP3 is better at lower bitrates, but MP3 is not well suited to live broadcast. I have a number of test discs for demonstrating these and other codecs, and most people are surprised at how effective these schemes are when you are genuinely comparing *just* the codec.
The last point is important because I know of lots of people who have come to the conclusion that MP3 is crappy because they are listening to a crappy MP3 player! I tell these people to put the .WAV on the same player and do a genuine comparison. Years ago I used a DAT recorder (remember them?) which sounded worse than my MiniDisc deck (remember them?). Surely MD should be worse than DAT because MD used ATRAC to compress the information, whereas DAT is completely linear? Yeah, but the DAT machine had a crappy A-D converter
. Just be sure you know where to point the finger, that's all I'm saying... All that said, there's absolutely no doubt that broadcasters have been forced to push the data rates, and also dynamic range processing (also called "compression" - generically called "Optimod", as Steve mentioned) is generally (ab)used by the majority of broadcasts. Interestingly, Classic FM don't process the DAB feed. But the CDs are normalised when ingested onto the playout system - fine for rock and pop but not such a good idea for classical. Listen for the start of the slow movement, and note how the "atmos" in the venue is much louder than in the opening movement...
Incidentally, if we went for DAB+, which uses the much more modern and shiny AAC, we would be in the same situation. More services perhaps, but still with barely adequate bit rates. Call me cynical, but you know I'm right :D
Mark
