Blaupunkt Woodstock 53 DAB Radio

I miss my DAB 53 so much, I kept it when I changed cars and now find that it can't be fitted to my new car. I have an Evoke 3 (and previously Evoke Bug) that record Radio programmes to an SD card then I smply plugged it into the DAB 53 and had hours of "my choice radio"

One of the other great features I loved was, I'd be listening to the car radio, arrive at my destination just press record and it records the end of the show (upto 1hr) fabulous and it didn't even damage earlier saved recorings. I want it back I may even have to change cars to get it. I bought this radio way back in about 2002 or 3 it cost £600 + fitting, lot cheaper now. Also works in the Limehouse Tuunnel, spooky!

I bought the Blaupunkt Woodstock 53 DAB Radio simply for DAB and because it was so cheap...£250 at Halfords a few years ago, with free instillation. Of course because it was a Blaupunkt I knew it was good quality so I could rest easy knowing this wasn't false economy and that it would deliver on all fronts.

What can I say? Not disappointed in any way as far as I can think. Superb sound quality from the DAB radio and CD player, even on my 13 year old BMW 520's original speakers. The DAB really is good - very good. Wonderful sound quality although it's sometimes baffling when looking for a particular station, but you get used to it. When in built up areas, you will still experience interference in the form of a farting sound....just saying!

The CD player is also top notch, delivering a rich and lively sound but be careful, it reacts a little petulantly to scratches and general flaws in your CD's, unlike my old Sony which was welcoming to all my offerings, but maybe that's because of the refinement in general.

I bought the Blaupunkt Woodstock 53 to replace an ageing Pioneer CD/radio. Having got an Evoke 2 DAB set at home I was sure that I wanted digital radio and the mp3 ability to connect my Apple iPod as a CD changer (rather than use a naff cassette adapter).

As with any car radio the hardest bit is the installation. In this case it was the aerial. The DAB radio needs a special aerial. The Woodstock has aerial inputs for both the FM and the DAB (so that you can always fall back on the analogue FM if you need to). Mine came with a stick on aerial that had to be mounted at the top centre of the rear screen. No drilling was needed - it used an inductive/capacitive connection to a pad stuck on the inside. It did take some while to route the new cable from the back screen to the front fascia.

The Woodstock 53 has a CD/mp3 CD player/DAB/FM radio plus the capability for auxilliary and CD changer inputs. No cassette, but having an iPod has eliminated the need for cassettes (and carrying a CD collection in the car).

The sound quality is very good. On DAB it is noticeably better than FM with an absence of background noise and better bass.

Having been used to analogue tuning it is slightly confusing to use DAB in the car. DAB stations are grouped together to form an ensemble on a single frequency. There are several ensembles, each of which might have 4 to 8 stations. Some stations seem to appear in more than one ensemble. To tune you first select the ensemble, then navigate across the stations within it. I'm probably just getting the hang of it.

In the UK we don't appear to have DAB trafic, weather or news reports to interrupt the programme (the Woodstock allows you to decide whether you want these interrupts).

There is a good range of control on the loudness and various equalisation pre-sets and you can also create your own profile. I think that the factory set ones are good enough so I haven't bothered to do this.

The CD plays both conventional and .mp3 CDs. You can see that it takes the artist and track information from the file content rather than file name (a good thing).

In theory it will play .mp3 files on a multimedia card. To date I've not managed to make this work without encountering a read error. As a driver I don't think the ability to record on a multimedia is useful - I'd rather concentrate on the road.

To this end I've also bought the matching RC10 IR remote control that straps onto the steering wheel. Although not cheap it works very well. As ever the hardest part was finding an unobtrusive path for the thin cable between the IR receiver and the back of the Woodstock.

The only disappointment so far is that it seems to be impossible to receive traffic break-throughs whilst on the CD/cd-changer. It shouldn't be a technical limitation since the set can obviously still receive radio whilst playing something else (as the old Pioneer does).

All in all I'm very happy with it. The digital radio works a treat (it should do - DAB was originally designed for mobile reception in a car after all) and ability to operate it and the iPod hands free works well.

I've still some way to learn all the functions.

There is a very good simulation of the lesser Woodstock 52 on the Blaupunkt site - very true to life - so that you can see how to operate it before committing yourself.