Hitachi TRK100

The Hitachi TRK100 gives good sound from its built-in stereo speakers, lacking on many other DAB radios. It's fairly easy to use, and is mains/battery operated. But it is ugly, even more than most DAB radios!

I bought this because I wanted to enjoy more channels than FM could provide, mainly for use with headphones at my work desk. I use a pair of Philips noise-cancelling headphones with it, and the resulting sound is rich and powerful, ...
...ghastly.

The Hitachi has an FM radio included, so you can select the analogue FM channels for those stations you can receive locally, for example most of the BBC stations, and enjoy significantly better sound quality on Radio 1. It's good to have the option. However it's only a basic FM tuner, no RDS channel identification or features are included, but there are 10 preset channels.

** SOUND QUALITY **

... more

The Hitachi TRK100 gives good sound from its built-in stereo speakers, lacking on many other DAB radios. It's fairly easy to use, and is mains/battery operated. But it is ugly, even more than most DAB radios!

I bought this because I wanted to enjoy more channels than FM could provide, mainly for use with headphones at my work desk. I use a pair of Philips noise-cancelling headphones with it, and the resulting sound is rich and powerful, very satisfying. Furthermore, the FM channels are available too, not all DAB radios have FM included.

** BUTTONS **

Some more detail then. On the sloping top is the backlit (blue) LCD screen and the buttons. If you look down on the unit then the screen is clear, but if you are sat at a desk at the same level as the radio, you may find it hard to read and I find I have to tilt the radio forwards. The buttons are very positive, perhaps too much so, they give out a definite click every time you press one. There are 10 preset channels for each of FM and DAB, but only 5 buttons plus a "SHIFT" button to get to the other 5. So they saved four buttons and made it fiddlier to use, where 10 buttons would have been much more straightforward. On the left is a power switch (but remember to unplug or switch off the power socket when running on mains power) and a small headphone socket.

** SOCKETS **

I would like to have had some more sockets, in particular a line-out for connecting to a hifi system (you can get by with using the headphone socket but technically this is less than ideal), and an external aerial socket would have been useful too. There's a telescopic aerial fitted, and I found better results were obtained for weaker signals by clipping a length of wire to this and running it in the office window! There are signal strength and error count display options which help you to get the best signal when messing about like this.

Personally I would have preferred a mains input rather than an external mains adaptor, then the power switch would have switched the radio off properly. The adaptor is a pretty big and heavy lump, but fortunately is supplied with a reasonably long cable to connect to the radio.

There is the option to run from batteries, missing from many DAB portables. It would have been even better if it could have recharged batteries.

** DAB sounds bad in the UK **

Now a word or two about DAB itself, and this is no criticism of this particular radio. DAB was intended to have 192kbits/s for music channels; just remember the 192k number. Speech channels could get away with a lower number, 128k for example. Other countries use it in this way and get great sound quality. But when our beloved government introduced DAB in the UK, they saw another opportunity to make a quick buck and sold lots of licences which meant there wasn't enough space left to give them 192k. They therefore squeezed music channels into 128k and hoped no-one would notice. And now they gleefully look forward to closure of the FM radio services so they can sell more hideously squashed channels and make some more money. What this all means is that, 1: Blair must have really bad hearing if he can't notice that a music channel squeezed into a speech slot sounds horrible, and 2: DAB usually sounds horrible. It's not the fault of the radio, but most DAB radio channels sound squishy and lack detail, like a bad MP3 file you downloaded from some dodgy web site. Only BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM are given more room to breathe and give sound quality which might be better than FM. This isn't just a matter of opinion, you can look up the figures and see that the UK has the lowest DAB sound quality in the world. So why bother at all? Well some broadcasters work really hard to work with the technical limitations of UK DAB transmissions. By very careful encoding of the signal and attention to detail, some radio stations are not too bad. Not as good as FM of course, but not too bad. You might not hear the poor sound quality when using speakers for example, and if you're not too fussy it might even be good enough on headphones. The channel "Chill" for example really is quite acceptable, whereas "Virgin" sounds ghastly.

The Hitachi has an FM radio included, so you can select the analogue FM channels for those stations you can receive locally, for example most of the BBC stations, and enjoy significantly better sound quality on Radio 1. It's good to have the option. However it's only a basic FM tuner, no RDS channel identification or features are included, but there are 10 preset channels.

** SOUND QUALITY **

So, having read the above comments about DAB having rough sound quality in the UK, how does this radio do? It has two inbuilt speakers, which many DAB portables fail to provide. You pay extra for another speaker on the Pure Evoke radios, making the whole package expensive and cumbersome. The Hitachi speakers are not powerful, only 1.5W RMS per channel, but give plenty enough sound to fill a room and have a reasonable depth. There is a BASS button which gives a bass lift, albeit with no indication on the display so you may not always know whether you have got this feature on or off at first. No other tone controls are included.

Via headphones I have spotted a slight problem. There is a persistent hum and hiss at a low level regardless of volume control setting. If you have very sensitive headphones, like the electronic noise cancelling headphones I use, you will find low volumes marred by this noise. Less efficient headphones, or ones with a built-in volume control, will hide this noise because you will run the radio at a higher volume setting. With high quality headphones and a good radio station, be it DAB or FM, you will enjoy very rich and pleasant sounds using the headphone outlet, far beyond what you might expect if you just audition the speakers.

** EASE OF USE **

I've already mentioned that I think the presets should have had 10 buttons instead of 5 plus a SHIFT. But generally the unit is fairly easy to use. Just read the instructions a couple of times through to learn about some of the features and how to use the presets, and you won't need to keep referring to them. The display is a two-line by 16 character dot matrix blue backlit LCD, it has not been purpose built for the radio. So there are no special characters to assist with using the radio, for example to tell you if BASS boost is selected or to give you signal strength at the same time as scrolling DAB information. But you can get most of what you need by pressing INFO and also the SELECT button, but it could have been a little easier to do. Your granny might find it slightly confusing at first but for a technophile it qualifies as pretty simple.

There's no alarm clock built into this radio, though it can display the time from DAB.

** CABINET **

I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But boy this thing is an ugly bug. Why do nearly all DAB radios look so strange? This thing certainly is. It looks neither contemporary nor retro, just very, erm.. white! And curvy, for some reason. But it's quite solid (which must contribute to the reasonable sound quality from the speakers). There is no proper carry handle, rather a slot in the back, which is not really good enough to carry it around with, you would need at least to have a thumb holding the front and that thumb would tend to press on the display which is not good

** CONCLUSION **

I picked up this up from Richer Sounds for £50. At that price it's better than most DAB radios in terms of features and the sound quality is good too. Get over its ugly bug looks and this model is well worth considering. I've certainly got no regrets. If only DAB was better in the UK, but that's another story.
 

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