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Pure DMX-50
DAB/CD/MP3/SD/USB
Micro System
£229.99 from Amazon

The Pure DMX-50 is 16.5x31x23cm. It is a single unit but looks like it is a three piece stack as the face is divided into three sections horizontally. The top piece has a 6.5x4cm monochrome 5.5 line display. While it is mono you can alter substantially the brightness and contrast of it, useful as it displays a clock when the unit is in standby. The display has three soft buttons either side to perform various tasks according to what it is doing. To the right of this is a larger knob that is labelled tune/select, there are four other small buttons and a rather large infra red receiver for the supplied 32 key remote control.

See also: DAB Radios

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The middle section is dominated by a very large knob to control volume this has a nice distinct notch for each step change, the on/off button and four other small buttons complete this section. The bottom section has CD door five small buttons to control it and an SD/MMC card slot.

When you first power up make sure that the eight piece 72cm rod aerial at the rear is fully extended, as it powers up it automatically searches for all the DAB stations, once complete it starts - at a reasonable volume - with the first alphabetical station. The six soft buttons can store up to 99 stations, five at the top level and I think most people will only listen regularly to this number, any other station is quickly available from the notched knob anyway. You can also perform the same with FM but there is also a method via the notched knob where the FM stations can be named so you do not have to search by frequency such as 105.4FM, a nice feature, and an awful  lot quicker than a manual tune.

The CD can of course play in various ways standard audio CD's it can also play MP3 CD's and these can even be in folders, again a nice feature as an 80minute MP3 CD can hold around 20 hours of music saved at 128mbps. Certainly this enables faster searching to play a particular track.

So you are probably wondering what the SD/MMC slot is for, well, like one of the very early DAB offerings from Pure their 'Bug' it can record MP2 from radio, yes I said MP2. This is rather like MP3 and indeed a Windows PC can play MP2 files but you would need to convert them in Windows to MP3 to play them in an MP3 player.

I suspect it's all to do with licensing the fact that it records in MP2, however this unit it is also quite capable of playing any MP3 files you transfer to an SD or MMC card.

Recording to a card is as simple as a single button press either on the facia of the unit or the remote control, however it cannot record from CD's.

Another feature first seen on the 'Bug' was 'ReVu' and this allowed around five minutes of music or speech to be saved to memory. Providing the unit has been switched on for that length of time you can go back in time, now with the DMX 50 that time is increased to between 10 and 20 minutes according to the bit rate the station broadcasts at. For example the phone goes and you miss five minutes of a play you can press the 'Re-Vu' button and continue listening at the point you stopped listening, what is currently being broadcast is automatically being saved, what you are actually doing is time shifting for that five minutes, so your play will end five minutes after everyone else's.

The speakers provided are 15x25x23cm, a light wood colour with a removable grey mesh, they are 8 Ohms 40W. Already this piece is too long and there are many features I have not mentioned, check out the link below for more details.

The stated price for the Pure DMX-50 is £229.99 and this is the price currently offered by Amazon from the link below:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000E3LC9G

http://www.puredigital.com/Products/Product.asp?Product=VL-60773