Hi folks.

I put in a dab radio for my buggy but it suffers badly from interferance noise and terribleness.

Any tips or cures?

Sorry to tell you mate but that's modern music for you. Nothing wrong with the radio

change the radio station from radio 1! .......... what kind of noises are they?

Let me guess - crap glass mounted screen aerial with very poor earth connection ?

Or are you using a proper DAB body mounted amplified aerial ? In which case, stick a few square feet of tin foil under the fibreglass to give your self a proper groundplane.

  yeah radio 1 can be a bit rubbish 

Yes glass mounted special from halfords so im guessing thats tje problem. I had it on my rollbar and was still getting crackling through the sound. So poor earth on the radio?

Those glass aerials are designed to earth to the A-Post and use the roof as a groundplane in a normal car

You are really going to struggle in a fibreglass one   


Ideally, you need to change for an external aerial that sticks out proud of the body for best reception.

If you are of an age where you remember having a tv aerial in the loft, you will remember that the signal strength was very poor, compared to the same aerial sticking outside and waving around in the air.

Same goes for car aerials - same principle - those mounted inside the car on the inside of the glass are near on useless compared to a aerial waving about outside.

Try and find a "whip" style aerial that is DAB compatable and use that   

Cheers! Is there anything else I should or could ensure to make the signal as good as it can be?

Check for interference on FM and AM - there shouldn`t be any, and its far easier to trace and diagnose any potential earth problems using these frequencies, tune to a weak station and listen for background noise from engine revs, lights on / off, indicators etc. DAB is very hard to diagnose as its either on or off, no noises as such.

If glass aerial is your only DAB option, then I would remove bonnet, completely cover the underside of it by sticking tin foil to it, refit bonnet and connect a lead to your windscreen frame and the DAB aerial earth tag

I'll try that. I have seen some aerials that dont havae the earth tags on them and I might pick one of them up instead if I get no joy. Still a similar style but these look like black thing rectangular pieces. 

Been looking and most whippy ones are magnetic bases so not much help! Wouldnt be so bad if I had a hard top roof I could just glue down a little steel plate ontop and no one would know...

Will be diagnosing my earths as I have one large earth pole at the front where pretty much everything goes to. The noise maybe from that as its a busy junction, or the power line? I dont think its that as the power is on its own single fuse but you never know.

Give me a yell in the morning, as probably easier to diagnose a few things than email tennis 

01803-391680

Ok so a bit more fiddling and sticking the aerial outside the garage im still getting poor sounds.

Ive taken a video and basically once the volumes over 5 it distorts. Its the same for dab and fm/am. Dab signal strength is at 70 drops down a little when the engines going. The sound also gets even worse when the engines running... so poor connections? I soldered the wires o. The speaker posts so im at a bit of a loss...

Fm
http://youtu.be/5A8jb5nI1c8
dab
http://youtu.be/Gg4ESIYefzA

Brilliant idea doing a video !!

Thats not interference though, thats distortion from the audio chip / internal amplifier breaking down under load - I`m guessing you may also get the same if a CD is played?   


The cause is usually one of the following:

Mismatch of speaker input wattage and radio output power, where the radio has to work far too hard to make the speakers sound. For instance, a 50W stereo flat out is only going to be giving 10% of what 500W speakers need to run them - hence distortion.

An installation error may have occurred, where a speaker wire has been inadvertantly connected to a live or earth point, which has damaged the internal output chips - if so, then a repair is required of the head unit.

General output of the head unit has failed, in which case a repair is required.


If you have connected this up properly, as appears to be the case, then you may have the standardised ISO style connectors on the rear, in which case it could be very easy to rule out the speakers and confirm the head unit at fault by swapping for another unit. I think thats what I would be doing next, if it were me.

Cheers dave! Lots of great help...

Went through all my connectors and soldered them to the wires to make sure 100% good connections before trying an ancient tape player and its seems to be fine now.

Thanks again!