UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum - View Single Post

G6Tanuki · 10th Aug 2020, 1:53 pm

Horses for courses.... the imprecision of 'consumer' mechanical dials always annoyed me!

Personally, I like the "Digital" feature of having the station-name displayed - this is particularly handy when there's a lift on and you're trying to ID the stations you're hearing. Great when you're in the car stuck in a traffic-jam and you want to do a touch of FM_DXing but don't want to wait 15 minutes or so before the station you've just heard gives a voice-ident.

One other 'Digital' thing' I'm disappointed never really took-off in the UK was PTY-codes where RDS included a 'program-type' descriptor with the data for each station. This had the advantage that you could tell your radio to scan for "News" or "Rock" and off it would go to find you only stations of that sort. Equally, it's handy when the digital display scrolls the name of the track that's playing.

10th Aug 2020, 1:53 pm	#4
G6Tanuki Dekatron Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 13,998	Re: Proper tuning dial vs digital. Horses for courses.... the imprecision of 'consumer' mechanical dials always annoyed me! Personally, I like the "Digital" feature of having the station-name displayed - this is particularly handy when there's a lift on and you're trying to ID the stations you're hearing. Great when you're in the car stuck in a traffic-jam and you want to do a touch of FM_DXing but don't want to wait 15 minutes or so before the station you've just heard gives a voice-ident. One other 'Digital' thing' I'm disappointed never really took-off in the UK was PTY-codes where RDS included a 'program-type' descriptor with the data for each station. This had the advantage that you could tell your radio to scan for "News" or "Rock" and off it would go to find you only stations of that sort. Equally, it's handy when the digital display scrolls the name of the track that's playing.