The K-Zone: Oono MiniDAB

Overview

There has recently been a fad for combined MP3 players and DAB radios, and the Oono MiniDAB is (at the time of writing) the latest manifestation of this craze. The unit is sensibly priced for its feature list, which is extensive. The problem is that, attractive as multi-function media players may sound, there is a tendency for the whole to fall short of the sum of the parts. But is this the case here?
      The MiniDAB combines a DAB radio, a traditional FM radio, an MP3 player, and an MP3 recorder that can takes its signal direct from the radio tuner, or from a built-in microphone. The unit has a timer for making scheduled recordings, and also scheduled playback -- although it's not clear to my why this would be useful. The unit is small and amazingly light -- you could easily forget it's in your pocket. There is a rudimentary, but satisfactory, monochrome display. The unit has a non-removeable battery, and charges through its USB socket. A USB charger is included. Built-in memory is a paltry 128 Mb, but the unit can play from, and record onto, SD cards of up to 2Gb.

DAB reception

One of the problems with DAB radio, I'm told, is that UK DAB coverage is sketchy. Where I live (north London), that doesn't seem to be a problem, and the MiniDAB can pick up about 50 DAB stations in reasonable quality. That's comparable to other pocket DAB radios I've used. A full frequency scan takes 1-2 minutes. A nice feature, when you can receive many stations, is that the MiniDAB's user interface groups them by ensemble (station group). So you can navigate very quickly to a particular station if you know which ensemble it's in. This seems a trivial feature, but it's not so trivial that all other DAB radios include it. Navigating between stations on the Sony XDM-1, for example, is a horrible job.
      The sound quality from the DAB tuner is at least as good as from other DAB radios I've used. As most DAB stations transmit at 128 kbits/sec or lower, the sound quality is unlikely to be as good as that of an MP3 track encoded competently at, say, 320 kbits/sec. However, it's generally better than FM quality, at least where I live. There are a handful of stations that transmit at 192 kbits/sec (BBC Radio 3, for example), and these sound pretty good.
      There is a relatively low level of background hiss and machine noise, although the MiniDAB is not as competent in this respect as full-sized DAB radios tend to be (hardly surprising, of course, given the design constraints). Of course, it goes without saying that to get decent sound quality, you need decent headphones or earphones, and those supplied with the unit are nothing special.

The MiniDAB does not (so far as I can tell) automatically retune when moving from one location to another. Some national DAB stations broadcast on slightly different frequencies in different regions, so it is necessary to do a re-scan when travelling. Happily, the scheduled recording feature references DAB stations by name, not by frequency, so scheduled recordings should continue to work when travelling (provided you remember to re-scan).

Like most pocket radios, the MiniDAB uses its headphone cable as its antenna. Unlike most pocket radios, the MiniDAB is supplied with an external antenna so that you can listen on the built-in speaker without needing to have the headphone plugged in. The problem with the external antenna is that you have to remember to plug it in -- I share my headphones with other gadgets, so it often turns out that a scheduled recording starts with no antenna. Needless to say, you don't get much of a recording when this happens. There isn't really any technical solution to what is, after all, my absent-mindedness. Maybe the unit could beep or flash when it starts making a timer recording and there is no antenna?

MP3 playback

It's hard to fault the MiniDAB at MP3 playback. Most MP3 varieties, including variable bit-rate, seem to play very well. There is an equalizer with presets, and a `3D effect', which doesn't seem to do anything recognizable. The unit understands and displays an arbitrary directory arrangement, and can be set to play all the files in a directory, or a single file. There are the usual repeat and shuffle modes, and support for bookmarks. If you don't understand directories you can set the unit to display all the files in the memory in a single list, but with a 2Gb memory card it's likely to be a very long list. There is no facility to index tracks by ID3 tag (artist, album, etc) as, for example, the Archos units can.
      The MiniDAB supports seeking forward and backwards within tracks at various speeds, and in the slower seek mode plays little snatches of the audio so you have some sort of idea where you are. There is a numerical display of the relative position within the track, but no graphical display, so moving to a particular part of a long track can be a bit fiddly.
      I understand that the unit supports WMA audio, but as this isn't a format I ever use I can't really comment on this.

All in all, the MiniDAB provides the same sort of features and quality of audio playback as most pocket MP3 players in the same general price and size range.

DAB recording

You can schedule recordings from DAB or FM, or simply start and stop recording using the record button on the front panel. The scheduler is reasonably flexible -- you can record between the same times on each weekday, for example, or at a specific time on a single specific day.
      I venture to suggest that the quality of recording from DAB is not all that marvellous, particularly if you're recording at a different bit-rate than the source. For example, recording at 96 kbits/sec from a 128 kbits/sec source is particularly bad -- every second or so there is a gap in the recording, as if some data is missing. When recording at 64 kbits/sec the problem is still there, but much less annoying. I suspect that this is a result of the mathematics used to do the bit-rate conversion. Whatever the cause, it's easily avoided by recording at the same bit-rate as the source if possible.
      Rather annoyingly, DAB recordings are classed as `voice' recordings in the MiniDAB's user interface, and do not appear in the same lists as MP3 tracks in user-defined directories.

Memory and data transfer

The MiniDAB has 128 Mb of built-in memory, and can accept SD cards of up to 2GB capacity. When the MiniDAB's USB connection is attached to a host computer, it appears as two distinct USB disk drives: one for the internal storage and one for the SD card. I can confirm that this arrangement works very well under Linux (and other operating systems, I guess, although I haven't tried). Of course, you can put audio files on the SD card using a separate card writer, and that may be faster. But the built-in USB interface seems reasonably fast.
      The MiniDAB manual makes it clear that the unit is designed to take SD cards, rather than MMC cards, which do fit in the slot. MMC cards are generally cheaper than SD, but they tend to be slower. I found that the MiniDAB would play audio from an MMC card, but it would not write date onto an MMC card. That is, it wouldn't record from the radio onto MMC, and managing files on an MMC card was painfully slow. Still, there was no particular reason to think that MMC cards would work at all, so it's a bonus that they work partially.
      Memory cards push right down into the unit, and can then be covered with a rubber flap, so there is little chance of a card dropping out whilst the unit is in use.

User interface

All that can rasonably said of the user interface is that it isn't as bad as it could have been. Like many new products, the MiniDAB's user interface shows signs of having been designed by people who use the unit too much. If you don't use the unit every day, it could be tricky to remember how to do things. For example, although the interface is basically menu-driven, there are some functions which are not accessible through the menus, and rely on unlabelled button presses. For example, to switch between internal memory and SD card when playing MP3 tracks, you have to use a button labelled `AB repeat' on the front panel. Why?
      Worse, some buttons have dual functions, with the secondary function being invoked by pressing the button and holding it down. I can't remember any but the most important of these functions. In principle, this is a reasonable way to make a small button count go further, but only if the functions are both obvious and labelled, as well as being consistent across different modes of operation.
      The menu organisation is rather quirky, too. For example, in DAB playback a completely different menu is displayed to that in any other mode of operation. It is therefore unclear whether the functionality of the missing menus is unavailable in DAB mode, or just unavailable through the menu. For example, you can use the sleep timer (to switch off the unit after a predefined time) in DAB mode, but you have to switch to FM mode to get the relevant menu to appear, and then back to DAB mode. Whether other functions (equalizer, for example) are useable in DAB mode with similar finger gymnastics, I'm just not sure. There are many, many other minor quirks of this kind.
      None of this stops the MiniDAB being usable, but it's not as easy to use as it ought to be.

Battery life

The battery is non-removable, so it's good that the battery life is reasonable. With MP3 playback, it just goes on an on -- I measured twenty hours on one charge before giving up. Battery life with DAB playback is given in the manual as six hours, which seems about right. That the unit charges over its USB connection is potentially rather useful, because there are a number of generic USB chargers and battery extenders on the market -- you don't necessarily need to use a computer to charge the battery.

Conclusion

The Oono MiniDAB makes a fair stab at combining a DAB radio and an MP3 player, and doesn't cost or weigh appreciably more than either of these devices would alone. To that extent, it is a success. The MiniDABs small size and decent battery life make it a useful thing to carry when travelling. Like many new gadgets, however, it is let down a bit by its clumsy user interface.
©1994-2006 Kevin Boone, all rights reserved