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MSS · 27th November 2021, 17:17

Mick,

It al depends on how old or poor the design of the DAB section is in a specific radio. It's reasonable to assume that an old design would consume 500mW more in DAB mode than FM. At 12V, this is only .042 Amp of extra current drain from say a capacity of 40Ah for a car battery that is a few years old. The difference equates to over one moth of 24/7 use. So in practice the difference should be negligible as the average current pumped into the speakers will be much higher.

Modern car radios by quality manufacturers such as Philips should not display any difference between DAB and FM as power efficient dedicated signal processors have been developed by these companies during the past 10-12 years.

Martin - the difference in the signal processors here is very similar to digital cameras. Early cameras used general purpose DSP chips and chewed through batteries e.g. my Kodak DC290 digital camera (which I still have and is a beast for using battery power) compared with a modern digital camera which sips power despite performing far more sophisticated image processing.

Maninder.

27th November 2021, 17:17	#9
MSS This is my second home Rover 75CDT, Jaguar XF-S 3.0V6, V'xhall Omega V6 Estate, Twintop 1.8VVT, Astra Estate and Corsa 1.2 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Suffolk Posts: 7,083 Thanks: 283 Thanked 624 Times in 440 Posts	Mick, It al depends on how old or poor the design of the DAB section is in a specific radio. It's reasonable to assume that an old design would consume 500mW more in DAB mode than FM. At 12V, this is only .042 Amp of extra current drain from say a capacity of 40Ah for a car battery that is a few years old. The difference equates to over one moth of 24/7 use. So in practice the difference should be negligible as the average current pumped into the speakers will be much higher. Modern car radios by quality manufacturers such as Philips should not display any difference between DAB and FM as power efficient dedicated signal processors have been developed by these companies during the past 10-12 years. Martin - the difference in the signal processors here is very similar to digital cameras. Early cameras used general purpose DSP chips and chewed through batteries e.g. my Kodak DC290 digital camera (which I still have and is a beast for using battery power) compared with a modern digital camera which sips power despite performing far more sophisticated image processing. Maninder.