Dab Radio Setup- No National Stations

Casa1862 · June 14, 2015

Hi all, picked up my IS300h executive last week, great car, really happy with it. It's all standard with solid black paint, delivered within 7 days at a great contract hire price, most of those deals finished now, just managed to squeeze on in.

The only small issue I have is with the dab radio, only picks up about 10 stations, smooth radio, hart etc but I can't get any of the national stations such as radio 1, 2, 3and 4, I get loads on my other car in the same area. It must be a setting but can't find anything in the manual and nothing obvious when looking at the menus. Any idea?

Roscobbc · June 15, 2015

I've had my IS for 9 months now and the menu's/sub menu's for DAB still confuse the hell out of me. I had the same issues this weekend having inadvertedly pressed an incorrect 'button' - you need to search for the 'next ensemble' of stations - in you case 'National' - its all there just tricky to find!

Steve44 · June 15, 2015

IN DAB screen, use the manual button, then scroll through the Ensemble button to find the collections of stations. The service buttons below, then allow you to scroll through the selection of stations in an ensemble.

Couple of other tips - pressing the Radio hard button under the CD slot, cycles through the various radio options - AM/FM/DAB - and quick jumps you to the radio screen if you are in any other screen. The Media hard button does the same for Bluetooth, Ipod, USB, AV etc. You can change the order of them in the source menu on the main screen.

The other knob (not the volume one) has various functions depending on which screen you are in or which button you've selected. If you are on DAB presets, turning it will cycle through the preset stations you have saved. If you are in DAB Stations, turning it will cycle through each station it can see - it does it through the stations in the each ensemble it can see. If you are in DAB manual, then it will scroll through all the ensembles and stations it can receive. This is similar for FM and AM too. The up/down arrow buttons on the steering wheel do the same thing as this knob, as do the left/right arrow (or seek) hard buttons on the center console, or you can use the remote touch (mouse) or rotary input too. 4 different ways to do this seems excessive Lexus!

Page 200 onwards of the Navi manual if you have Premium Nav, page 339 of the main IS manual otherwise.

Bluesman · June 15, 2015

I have a DAB Pure and have never had a problem with picking the National stations up. Having said that there are a lot of black spots where there is no Digital coverage yet. Mike.

Casa1862 · June 15, 2015

Thanks for all the prompt info, really very helpful. My wife has the car (in fact most days!) so I'll try when I get home. I've only got standard Nav so didn't look at that manual and the general manual only has a brief paragraph which is surprising as it's so fat.!

I'm coming from a BMW F30 318d SE which was very basic compared to this, never considered Lexus before but when offered at £185.00 + vat pm and £1100 deposit (24 month hire) I'd be mad to refuse, didn't even bother to test drive, placed order with Lexus Reading and a week later it's at my door with no fuss, great service.

Casa1862 · June 15, 2015

IN DAB screen, use the manual button, then scroll through the Ensemble button to find the collections of stations. The service buttons below, then allow you to scroll through the selection of stations in an ensemble.

Couple of other tips - pressing the Radio hard button under the CD slot, cycles through the various radio options - AM/FM/DAB - and quick jumps you to the radio screen if you are in any other screen. The Media hard button does the same for Bluetooth, Ipod, USB, AV etc. You can change the order of them in the source menu on the main screen.

The other knob (not the volume one) has various functions depending on which screen you are in or which button you've selected. If you are on DAB presets, turning it will cycle through the preset stations you have saved. If you are in DAB Stations, turning it will cycle through each station it can see - it does it through the stations in the each ensemble it can see. If you are in DAB manual, then it will scroll through all the ensembles and stations it can receive. This is similar for FM and AM too. The up/down arrow buttons on the steering wheel do the same thing as this knob, as do the left/right arrow (or seek) hard buttons on the center console, or you can use the remote touch (mouse) or rotary input too. 4 different ways to do this seems excessive Lexus!

Page 200 onwards of the Navi manual if you have Premium Nav, page 339 of the main IS manual otherwise.

Thanks for this info, managed to find the stations, a bit overly complicated though. I can't work out how to save the station from various ensemble under the presets, it's got one station in the preset but also can't remove it...any help appreciated.

wh05apk · June 16, 2015

I have to say dab reception is appalling, last night I came back from bishop's Stortford to colchester on the a120 and barely got any reception on anything but bbc stations, I previously had a 7 year old pure portable unit and got perfect reception apart from a short stretch, for a "premium" vehicle the whole infotainment system is well below par and seriously let's the car down.

DanD · June 19, 2015

Has anyone found a way to display song titles / artists?

ganzoom · June 19, 2015

Apart from 'talk' channels like Radio 5 live, I've found DAB to be a total waste of time. I posted on here when we had just of the Lexus, and I found the sound quality from DAB stations to be awful.

As it turns out there was no problem with the car, it was a problem with the awful sound 'quality' been boradcast via DAB stations, many as low as 64 kbps in mono .

These days I just use either Spotify or the BBC radio App on my phone to stream music to the car, much better quality, an so much more choice.

http://www.transmissionzero.co.uk/radio/london-dab-radio/

http://www.lexusownersclub.co.uk/forum/topic/98164-mark-levinson-stereodab-sound-quality-worse-than-fm/

Casa1862 · June 19, 2015

I worked out how to do the presets, for some reason holding down the controller didn't work the evening I tried it. The DAB systems is very poor in my opinion, difficult to work out and not sure why they use this ensemble method of locating the stations, never had this with any other DAB setup, BMW's DAB much better, in fact the Vauxhall one in an Insignia is better than both.

Martin J · July 16, 2015

I've found the DAB setup in my otherwise great NX very fiddly - after delivery I was surprised to find only a small selection of DAB stations listed, and no BBC national ones. The brief user guide doesn't define "ensembles" nor how to navigate through them - in particular omitting the key information that BBC national stations are in a "BBC DAB" ensemble and not the "National" one. After much trial and error I've managed to populate the preset list but I wouldn't be confident about retracing my steps. This is an area where there's room for improvement in terms of ease of use.

twozero3 · July 18, 2015

I'm one of those that has found the DAB radio in my IS300h to be utterly useless. All I ever get it "no signal" despite livng in what is generally a strong signal area. So the other day I decided to make it really easy for the Lexus. I went to my local supermarket and parked with the aerial/rear windscreen directly facing and in clear sight of Winter Hill, which is the major transmitter site for television and radio (including DAB) in the north west of England and attempted to refresh the DAB stations. Guess what I got... yep, no signal! Absolutely abysmal. Lexus really need to sort this out. FM/AM was fine.

wh05apk · July 18, 2015

Two zero 3, that's what I normally see"no signal" although today it was much better, I think the aerial must be very weak, so in anything less than prefect conditions it struggles.

My portable unit gives prefect reception, could it possibly be the signal is too strong?

What is the dealers response?

Roscobbc · July 18, 2015

When I had my Bluetooth issues late last year to be honest it seemed that the local Lexus dealers were out of their depth. A call to the National company who we lease our vehicles eventually put some pressure on and my intermittent Bluetooth issue was 'sorted'. I really think that you should be 'escalating' this with Lexus customer services direct - I certainly wouldn't accept the situation!

keiron99 · October 10, 2016

On 19/06/2015 at 3:04 PM, DanD said:

Has anyone found a way to display song titles / artists?

Did you ever figure this out?

I've just picked up a 2014 GS300h and cannot figure out a way to see the artist/song currently playing.

capese21 · October 10, 2016

31 minutes ago, keiron99 said:

I've just picked up a 2014 GS30 and cannot figure out a way to see the artist/song currently playing.

DAB or USB?

keiron99 · October 10, 2016

Thanks. On mine, the right screen just shows exactly the same information as on the left screen - namely, the channel, and not the song/artist etc info.

capese21 · October 10, 2016

4 minutes ago, keiron99 said:

Thanks. On mine, the right screen just shows exactly the same information as on the left screen - namely, the channel, and not the song/artist etc info.

when DAB is on or USB music?

keiron99 · October 10, 2016

That's on DAB.

When I'm listening to my iPod, all the correct info shows. (It's a bit hit and miss with USB and mostly miss with Bluetooth audio.)

capese21 · October 10, 2016

5 minutes ago, keiron99 said:

When I'm listening to my iPod, all the correct info shows. (It's a bit hit and miss with USB and mostly miss with Bluetooth audio.)

I find USB works well. Do you see Album Art when using ipod? This is one thing I miss that my previous IS300H did. I cannot see how to get DAB to display anything but the station name

keiron99 · October 10, 2016

Yes, the iPod works very well. It displays art work (although it takes a few seconds to pop up, but that maybe because I'm using an old 160gb iPod with the spinning hard disk).

It looks like you can only see the station name with DAB. Which is a bit crappy, given you've been able to see "now playing" info on FM radio for donkeys now.

djkenn · October 16, 2016

Mine is too ancients to have DAB, but I agree with the comment above that the quality of DAB stations is very poor.. to save money and bandwidth the sound is heavily compressed, the only exception I hear is BBC3. I'm not the expert by DAB exists for the convenience of the Government, so they can sell more frequency bandwidth in a commercial basis, while pushing massive cost onto consumers to buy new equipment.

baxlin · October 29, 2016

DAB in mine is useless too, and when I took it into Lexus MK for its first service, I asked for it to be looked at.

so when I picked it up, they said they couldn't find anything wrong, but the DAB signal was very bad there anyway........

To add insult to injury, the NX courtesy car they lent me had a much better DAB performance!

Thankfully most of the stations I listen to are on FM, and the tone is much better IMHO.

wh05apk · October 29, 2016

Do you have anything plugged into your 12v sockets, if so try unplugging them , it was a poor adaptor on mine that caused problems, I think dab is very sensitive to interference.

I use dab all the time, I find the quality much better, I have a premier, which I think handles dab better than"lower" models though .

baxlin · October 29, 2016

Thanks for the tip, Tony, and yes, I do. My dashcam is permanently plugged in, but it's in the centre armrest, quite a way from the radio. However, I'll try unplugging it, and report back.