Pure Digital Highway IN-CAR DAB Tuner > Reviews (6)

##Updated 13/10/10 - see end of review##

The Pure Highway is a Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) tuner that has been designed for use in a car. Installation is simple and needs no wiring into the vehicle dash as the Pure Highway "broadcasts" the received DAB channel over a low power FM transmitter so that it can be picked up by your own car stereo. In the box as well as the main Pure Highway unit is an in-car power adaptor (plugs into the cigarette lighter socket), windscreen aerial and flexible mount. More about the aerial in a minute.

Why DAB?

Okay why bother with DAB when you could make do with the existing FM or LW, after all their are more than enough channels already? Good point and well made. In fact the overcrowding of the air waves is the reason our TVs will be going digital by 2012. The same is also being muted for analogue radio, the timeframe for the switching off of FM could be as soon as 2015. Okay but that is five years away I hear you say. Tough crowd.

Another feature of DAB is that you can listen to channels that are not available on FM, now this can get a bit confusing. The easy area are the national BBC DAB channels are available across the country on the same frequency. Now we start getting a bit more confusing, local BBC radio stations are available on local DAB transmitters. As for commercial radio it gets quite complicated, some stations are national and on the same frequency across the country (e.g. the new name for Virgin radio, Absolute Radio, falls into this category), other stations are semi-national but can be on different frequencies as you move from one transmitter to another (or not at all). Such an example is XFM predominantly a London and Manchester FM station it is available on many DAB transmitters but not all and the frequency varies from one to another. Then finally you have commercial local DAB stations and these, as the name suggests, are available only on local transmitters.

So the above should be super clear? No? How about clear as mud then? Okay to sort out this mess I suggest checking out the following link:

http://www.getdigitalradio.com/whats-on-​dab

To be honest it doesn't really matter about this confusion because with DAB you don't manually tune stations you scan automatically. Once the scan completes the stations are all named and sorted alphabetically.

Other Perceived Benefits of DAB

• Efficient use of the available radio frequencies, means more stations can be broadcast and appeal to smaller more specific audiences
• No hissing or crackling, you either receive the station or you don't. In my experience this element seems oversold as DAB can "bubble" when signal strength is low
• DAB can be paused or rewound by saving the broadcast on the device, bit like Sky Plus
• Reception quality in theory should be better but broadcasters seem to have a tendency to cram more stations into a frequency channel by dropping the bit-rate, this means the sound can be worse than FM and in some case mono only

Pure the Manufacturer

Pure have made a name for themselves producing DAB devices, they are often first to market with new devices as well as cutting edge styling.

Pure have a range of devices to satisfy different usage such as portable, bedside, in-car radios, boom boxes and mini Hi-Fi's

Pure Highway

It is about time I got back to the specifics of the item being reviewed. The Pure Highway is aimed specifically at the in-car market and is designed to be easily installed.Installation

1. First fit the internal windscreen aerial, it is self-adhesive and should be fitted on the passengers side of the car to avoid blocking the drivers field of vision. The cables can be run down the pillar between the windscreen glass and trim, then along the front of the windscreen between glass and dash.
2. Attach the magnetic holding arm to the windscreen. It is a suction affair so the windscreen needs to be dry and clean. Again position it so it doesn't obscure the drivers view. The arm of the holder is bendy but firm so it can be shaped to present the Pure Highway unit in way to ease operation, but not sag whilst driving
3. Fit the aerial lead into the socket of the Pure Highway and attach the Pure Highway to the magnetic mount. You can optionally use a 3.5mm jack to connect the Highway to the Aux port of you in-car stereo if you prefer. The 3.5mm jack and optional batteries can allow the Highway to be used as portable device with headphones
4. Insert the mini USB connector into the Pure Highway (doubles as a power supply socket and method for updating the firmware from a PC). The other end needs to go into the vehicles 12/24v supply which will be the cigarette lighter

Tuning
Now everything is installed securely we can go about tuning the device.

1. Press the central tune button next to the LCD screen
2. Wait for about 60 seconds whilst the Highway scans for DAB stations (the display screen shows a progress bar and incrementing count of stations found)
3. After the DAB scan completes the Highway will move on to scan the FM frequency range to detect an unused frequency that won't suffer cross-talk.
4. The display on the Pure Highway shows the FM frequency it has determined as appropriate and advises you tune your in-car radio to the FM frequency shown.

You now scroll through the DAB stations the unit has found, you do so by rotating the large control next to the display screen. Once you find a station you like (remember DAB only displays station names you are not re-seeking across the frequency range) you can select the station by pressing the inner part of the circular control or if you want, assign it to a preset button by pressing and holding one of the four preset buttons on the top of the unit. Note this clears the existing preset channels that were set at the factory. The last button of the four allows access to another 16 presets which are accessed via the rotating control dial

Opinion

First off I found the internal windscreen aerial awful, this maybe because my car had a special windscreen which can significantly attenuate the DAB signal. Before throwing it away I read a few forum posts by others that recommended using an external aerial. I ended up buying an optional external aerial (think it may have been the Pure aerial @ £19) that had a magnetic base and fixed to the external roof of the car, a long lead came into the car.

The supplied internal aerial was thrown away. The difference was huge the unit worked with all the stations available in my area (check yours higher up in the review, I have highlighted the link in bold).The unit is easy to install, although I left it in my centre console rather than bother with the magnetic attaching arm. Reception by the car radio was great and DAB quality overall is good with the external aerial. I listen daily to Absolute FM which is broadcast nationally on the same frequency or XFM which is on two different frequencies as I travel the 40 miles to work. Quality is good and I simply wouldn't be able to listen to them on FM in my area

If you go on a long journey you may have to retune the internal FM transmitter as other radio stations come close to the prviously chosen frequency. It is just a single press of a button called quickSCAN. Retuning you car radio maybe a bit more of a hassle. As I've explained earlier the number of DAB stations available depends where you live, so if you travel a long distance you may want to or have to retune the DAB stations, again select Menu button on top of the device and scan.

I've really enjoyed the Pure Highway and for