Digital

Digital means that information is coded as numbers. For radio, that means the sound is turned into data, sent over the air and rebuilt by the receiver.

The benefit is a clean sound when the signal is good, and room for more programmes on one frequency. The drawback is that the signal either decodes or does not. At the edge of coverage a digital radio drops out rather than fading gradually.

DAB+ is the Swiss digital radio standard. Internet radio is digital too, but travels over a data connection rather than the air. The label digital radio on a box does not by itself say which of these a device supports.