World's First Affordable Digital Radio

Easily a match for most other digital tuners on the market
Gramophone, February 2001

We’ve all known it for far too long: digital radio has much to offer - in reception quality and range of programming.

I’ve attended press events where hardware manufacturers have acknowledged the fact, and some broadcasters have been outspoken on the same topic, but it has taken almost two years for someone to do something concrete about it.

That someone is the British company VideoLogic Systems, and the something is its £300 DRX-601E digital radio tuner, which enters the market at a little over half the price of its nearest rival and is likely to do more for the cause of digital radio than any product so far.

Build quality is very good, the tuner uses a good torodial transformer and 24-bit/96kHz digital-to-analogue conversion, and the internal layout is clear and logical. The dot matrix display is also easy to read, and delivers all the information users will ever need.

Set-up is quick and easy, aided by the fact that the VideoLogic is pre-programmed for all existing and forthcoming broadcast allocations, and nine presets are provided for favourite stations, controlled from a tiny remote handset. A rotary control selects stations, and there are buttons to select display brightness and information such as signal strength and frequency, while the handset also allows secondary services - such as Radio 5’s split coverage of sports events - to be received.

With good broadcast quality such as Radio 3 and 4 - the DRX-601E sounds very fine, and is easily a match for most other digital tuners on the market. Voices have excellent intelligibility, and well-engineered live concerts - or the BBC’s own concert recordings - sound excellent, a fine sense of space and presence adding to the atmosphere.

For the money, then, this tuner is a very fine buy, as an evening spent listening to Radio 3 will soon show. Orchestral music has good power and dynamics, detail levels are very high, and smaller-scale works are handled sympathetically, making just about everything received both involving musically and enjoyable in hi-fi terms. This is a real bargain, and comes with a solid recommendation for anyone considering a move into digital radio but discouraged by the high prices of hardware to date.