DAB Radio Aerials

Author
Discussion

firemunki

Original Poster:

364 posts

138 months

Friday 12th November 2021
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My '06 VW T5 stereo is terrible, it's not the original double din but it's not a modern DAB offering. I'm using winter time to try and get all the niggling jobs done ready for some adventures next year so it's time to find something modern that gets stations other than R2, R1, Heart and some random Christian station plus has Bluetooth for podcasts/nav lady shouting at me.

I've found conflicting info re aerials, getting a new head unit will I need an aerial fitting as well, and as an aside are new aerials easy to fit if required?

FilH

750 posts

151 months

Friday 12th November 2021
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Your factory antenna should just plug in, if not an autoleads adapter for a few quid will sort it. Not familiar with vw stuff, but factory antennas are usually poor.

I recently fitted an eightwood antenna via Amazon cost £30ish to my mondeo and it's a great improvement on FM and DAB.

Dog Star

16,489 posts

175 months

Monday 15th November 2021
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I've fitted Sony XAV 3005 carplay units to a few cars. They have two antenna sockets - one for FM and one for DAB. Aftermarket DAB antennae are awful things stuck on the windscreen.

I use these powered splitter things - they take the cars existing antenna feed, goes into a little powered amp and this has two outputs, a DAB and an FM. It has a single +ve line in, which I take from the switched feed into the stereo.

Works great. Costs a few quid. No ugly stick on antenna.

One of these, to be precise. They do various input versions.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B076WPS3FV/ref...

donkmeister

9,250 posts

107 months

Monday 15th November 2021
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If going for the most-involving option is your sort of thing, I had to replace an aerial on one of Mrs D's cars anyway, so I went with one of these:

https://www.dabonwheels.co.uk/product-category/dab...

As the car was already somewhat in bits I used the existing coax for the FM tuner and ran a new coax alongside for the DAB tuner.

Combined with a decent DAB-equipped HU I can, when driving away from London, receive London-broadcast multiplexes a couple of miles further away than I ever could with the best of the factory offerings I've had from VAG, Mercedes and PSA.