How terrible is your DAB reception?

[cantanko]

Hello,

I know DAB gets a bad rep generally, but any vehicle install of a DAB radio that I've done has always worked surprisingly well. I use an on-screen antenna that costs all of a tenner in my Kia Sorento, for example, and it can hold a solid lock on Radio 4 extra for my whole commute without a single dropout, gurgle or error conceal:

The DAB section in my Model S is so bad I'd go so far as to say it's broken - it can barely pick up the local radio MUX (and even then only with regular drop-outs) and the national MUXes are missing in action.

Is this a fault or just how it is?

Cheers,
Harry.

 

[MrAliG]

I noticed the same thing when test driving a Model X. Everyone liked Spotify so much that I did not look into it more. I mentioned it to the sales advisor who claimed no knowledge of it.

 

[Cornish85D]

I find mine pretty good 90% of the time or more. And I have a quite an odd cross country commute which it seems to handle without any problems

 

[widodh]

I've been complaining about this with Tesla ever since 2013.

It seems that a Model S has a pretty bad antenna and that seems to cause the issue.

I've been in the UK a few times and DAB+ around London worked really well for me.

Here in NL it works OK, but it switches to FM often, I blame the Model S.

 

[PatrickCH4313]

I have no problem to get DAB/DAB+ stations in Switzerland (very good quality !), but when driving in France, it's very difficult to catch any DAB stations (no stations available). I heard that France want to keep the FM as long as possible and slowdown the implementation of DAB/DAB+ and is implementing (alone in Europe) an other standard: T-DMB (as usual). So I don't think it's a Tesla problem but much more an infrastructure issue in some countries. Switzerland is moving fast to DAB/DAB+ and want to abandon others broadcasting systems (like FM) from 2020.


For Europe you have 4 categories of implementations of DAB/DAB+
- Digital leaders
- Digital embracers
- Digital newbies
- Wait and See

 

[PatrickCH4313]

DAB/DAB+ senders in Switzerland (some of them)

 

[WannabeOwner]

I haven't done any specific tests, but "subjectively" I would say that the MS DAB drops out in the same places as DAB on other vehicles we have / have-owned - they may all have equally bad aerials of course, and from my perspective the drop-out is "somewhere on all regular journeys of any length" so I never listen to DAB as its frustrating to lose lose signal at a crucial point of a broadcast.

Same for Internet and Spotify ... but in the main that is only a few very short intervals on my regular journeys, perhaps because Spotify buffers enough to cover other data dead-spots?

 

[Anode]

Terrible even in central london.

 

[ebyard]

No issues in Oxfordshire, but we have a very good local TX site. Ask any transmitter engineer and they'll tell you DAB is an apocalypse, but that's another story...

 

[cantanko]

Interesting mix there, folks... I only bring it up as there's such a disparity between my other vehicles / radios and the Model S... It's really, really pronounced.

As I say, an aftermarket Pioneer head unit with a £9 stick-on antenna runs rings around the Model S' DAB reception to the extent that it can't pick up half the channels (compared to the Pioneer) and the few that it can get hold of drop in and out seemingly at random.

The Pioneer on the other hand keeps a rock-steady lock on every channel without fail. Meh - perhaps an aftermarket antenna is required, but honestly you'd hope Tesla would manage to squeeze in a decent one amongst the myriad other antennae the damn thing has :-D

I'll do a "scientific" (ha!) test this weekend...

 

[PatrickCH4313]

Very strange, UK is in the group "Digital leaders" like Switzerland !

 

[WannabeOwner]

you'd hope Tesla would manage to squeeze in a decent one

Same in other areas - the SatNav route selection is pants, and exactly the same (AFAICS) as our other cars that equally have rubbish SatNav choices ...

Tesla could invest some effort in the Infotainment and significantly improve it - relative to other marques - but for whatever reason they haven't done that ...

... whereas all the blinking Easter Eggs work flawlessly and some of those - e.g. the X-disco-dance - must have been a significant DEV effort.

Huge WIN for Tesla if they were to upgrade the Infotainment software on the whole of the existing fleet too ...

 

[DrBobM]

My DAB was awful when I got my Model S in March. Pretty much unusable. Tesla took it back in and said there was a problem with the signal booster which they fixed. It's been great ever since - better than my Porsche and BMW reception, rarely drops out anywhere and we have quite a few signal black spots here in S Wales. Might be worth speaking to them.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I had an issue with static on FM radio. Service said that there was sometimes interference with the electrics and they had some shielding that they fitted in those cases ...

 

[cantanko]

Same in other areas - the SatNav route selection is pants, and exactly the same (AFAICS) as our other cars that equally have rubbish SatNav choices

Hehe my sat nav pulled a blinder this afternoon:

Regarding DAB, a software update appeared to fix a lot of my complaints and it appears a lot more stable. It can even pick up the BBC mux, so happy. Never had a car so keen on improving itself

 

[Sound]

My dab radio is not too bad on the whole although it obviously disappears in rural areas. FM on the other hand is crap, noisy and too slow to retune on the move. As for the satnav...........I don't know quite where to start but having a system that depends on live internet reception is a huge mistake in the UK.

 

[Peteski]

As for the satnav...........I don't know quite where to start but having a system that depends on live internet reception is a huge mistake in the UK.

When I asked this question, the sales guy said that the sat nav has a memory cache to deal with internet dropouts. Is that true or does it just drop out when you lose internet? I know for sure we struggle to get decent data connections around our local village (not that I will need satnav there).

 

[WannabeOwner]

I think (based on my iffy memory!) that:

• You can pick a Favourite and navigate to that (without internet) (you can pick one to "get you going int the right direction", until Internet available, but that's a 2nd rate solution of course)
• Once programmed in you don't need internet coverage. But, that said, when internet drops out you won't have traffic -updates (probably not a problem as Internet is only likely to drop out for a short while), and I have no idea what happens if you go Off Script - and miss a turn or similar. My guess is that some "near the route" roads will be OK, but if you get to a blocked road and need a detour I have no idea ...

I use Waze (on my phone) for routing, as I have found it superb in both knowing what's going on on the roads, and also having an accurate prediction of arrival time - but it needs internet to do that stuff and picks a mediocre route until it gets internet connection and one of Google's supercomputers figures out the best one.

 

[Peteski]

Okay, I'll see how it gets on. Hopefully should be okay on routes were I will by reliant on sat-nav. What could be really annoying is having to drive for a few miles from home before getting any decent internet reception. I was hoping it would at least have a base UK map loaded from memory, but doesn't sound like it does.

 

[arg]

• You can pick a Favourite and navigate to that (without internet) (you can pick one to "get you going int the right direction", until Internet available, but that's a 2nd rate solution of course)

• Once programmed in you don't need internet coverage. But, that said, when internet drops out you won't have traffic -updates (probably not a problem as Internet is only likely to drop out for a short while), and I have no idea what happens if you go Off Script - and miss a turn or similar. My guess is that some "near the route" roads will be OK, but if you get to a blocked road and need a detour I have no idea ...

It's not that bad (unless they've broken it since I last tried).

a) If you want to start out in an area with no internet connectivity, you can't use the google-based free text address lookup, but instead you have to enter a street address (not postcode!). There used to be a really bad feature that if you had an internet connection that didn't work (as opposed to none at all - and in 2G areas, O2 internet doesn't work for practical purposes), then it didn't put up the street address entry. Now, as well as putting up the street address entry automatically when there's no connection, there's a link to select it manually from the address lookup box. Selecting from favourites/history used to be a workaround for this issue, and is still usually easier than navigating the street address entry.

b) All the actual route selection is on-board, so provided you can select the destination, it will find a route. So the re-routing after going 'off script' is no different from creating a new route starting from that location.