Installing New DAB+ Radio and on-glass antenna

[MLarsen85]

Hello good people.

Michael , 35 , and from Denmark here.

I Just bought myself a cute little Aygo from 2008.

I am buying and installing a new DAB+ Radio for it. The Radio does come with a on-glass antenna, to be installed on the front windshield.

I was told that if the car has a polarized windshield, it would affect the signal quality of the DAB+ signal.

So my question here is following, Does the Toyota Aygo 2008 have a polarized car windshield ? 😄 

Cause if it does, i would need to buy a seperate DAB+ Antenna for the roof top. ( 3-400DKK) i would definitly not want to spend a unecessary amout of mony on my tight budget.

 

Thank you - and hope to get some help.

Kind regards 

Michael

[haelewyn]

Sorry I can't answer on your question about the windscreen but I do think an external antenna would not be a crazy thing to buy.

These stick on antennas usually don't give a great result and I don't know how close you are usually to antennas or how dense the network there is / how good or bad the conditions.

Could be, that no matter what windscreen you have, the simple antenna solution would not be good enough ..

Try it out ! I hope you will let us know the result.

[Puglet]

Not sure if there is any signal difference between DAB and DAB+, but I fitted a Kenwood KTC-500 DAB adapter about a year ago to our similar 107 (2008 model) and that uses a stick on DAB aerial to the windscreen and it works a treat, it a neat upgrade to my ancient single DIN Kenwood headunit.  

[Cyker]

DAB is hot garbage; Our government really held back the adoption of digital radio by forcing us to stick with it for so long (Ostensibly to protect early adopters), rather than allowing DAB+ to be legally/officially licenced until a few years ago.

The main reason is DAB uses ancient compression algorithms, and has no doppler compensation, so the quality of the signal is awful and gets even worse the faster you are moving! DAB+ fixes all of these things, and while it still sometimes sounds worse than a good FM signal, due to operators trying to cram as many channels in as possible, it at least works properly in a moving car!

I think they've missed the boat on it tho', as I know hardly anybody that uses DAB - Most people I know either uses FM (A small fraction), or uses some sort of internet streaming service on their phone, even to stream radio stations available on FM or DAB  

I only use the radio for traffic announcements and it's usually the FM ones that trigger it (I've yet to see DAB trigger it, but I'm wondering if I've not configured it properly or something!)

 

[Guest]

Where I used to live in north Devon mobile coverage was so patchy that streaming was not an option, so I listened to DAB/DAB+ almost all the time (except when I really wanted my own music off a USB stick) as the station I wanted to listen to isn't on FM. The only time DAB/DAB+ was a problem was in deep valleys or in occasional 'not spots' (like the hill west of Tiverton on the A361).

Remember there are still large parts of rural areas in the UK where there is very poor or no 4G (or even 3G in some areas) coverage so streaming isn't an option.

[Cyker]

Ahh good point, worth reminding! I tend to forget that - Round here, if the mobile signal's bad the radio usually is too  

I mostly listen to my own music collection these days - Get wound up by how increasingly manipulative adverts are, and just find most of the people on the radio, esp talkshow hosts, annoying AF!

 

[haelewyn]

Same idea goes for DAB+ here too.
In some areas I drive through, the DAB+ stations or some of them have poor reception with an outside antenna already.
The inside 'stick it to the window' system has less result, so the problems will multiply if I would install one like that.
 

[MLarsen85]

oh i did not see all these responses to my post. sorry for that. i thought i would get a notofication on email , when people a answered to my post.

i did know that if the mobile network has bad reception, the dab/dab+ signal would properly also be bad. i am getting the radio next week, and will try the dab+ ubiktion with the stick-on-window option first then. the reception of mobile/fm i mostly good in my area, with only a few spots, where fm rattles a little.

80% of the time i stream music from my phone to my previous radio, which i can't now with my "new" old aygo and it's original radio. 

i will return next week with the results, and pictures. thank you all, i am so glad for all the respons on my first post 😄 

 

[haelewyn]

Dab antennas , fm antennas and mobile phone antennas are usually in different places and have a different range and output power. So it doesn't always go bad together.

If you are in a mountainous area, it could be you are not receiving some or every technology well enough.

 

Curious to see your pictures. Do show us what you made of your Aygo.