Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

The quiet digital revolution

Well, it's happened again. I turned away for a couple of years and a technology matured while I wasn't looking. Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) has been around for getting on for a decade (we had a test receiver in the TOC for monitoring the DAB service when I was at the BBC) but in the early years the problem was that receiver chipsets were expensive. This made receivers expensive as well, and the first commercial DAB receivers (if I remember it may have been a Blaupunkt car radio that got there first) had a very limited takeup. Then it became an audiophile's toy as domestic component tuners became available, before a couple of years ago the Pure EVOKE-1 appeared and became the first mass-market portable DAB radio. I bought one of these delightful toys for my parents last Christmas and it was the best-received present I've given anyone in years - the familiar user interface (hey, it's a radio), easy channel selection, increased channel line-up, lack of interference and fantastic audio makes it an instant hit.

Now, Pure have gone one further with the impending introduction of the Legato mini system. The usual mini system features, only in a seriously elegant box and with the addition of DAB and - I swear I am not making this up - the ability to pause and rewind radio with a 20-40 minute buffer depending on the bitrate of the programme concerned. I think it'll be a winner. I'm lusting after one myself, but unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately) it's not yet available - it'll be summer before it reaches the shops. You see, I'm about to move into a new flat, and my existing stereo is frankly knackered (most of the time when asked to play a CD it just makes a nasty grinding noise), so I could actually justify buying one...

While television has had its own loud and brash digital revolution, radio has quietly gone digital as well, and at a fraction of the cost of the enormous amounts spent on digital television. As a result, people are once again remembering that radio's there. Seems to me that the future of radio's just getting brighter by the day.