Wintal DAB22COM

Well-engineered and versatile radio & network audio player – I was looking to update the FM/DAB+/network tuner in the home office. The Sangean WFT-1D Plus was a groundbreaking product when released, but now showing its age. It doesn't support FLAC files & some of the newer internet radio streaming formats and has no remote app. I also have a Sangean WFT-3D+ in another system. It's a great unit and doesn't… Read more ·  1

have these particular shortcomings but lacks some of the features found in the current crop of component FM/DAB+/Network players. Natural choice for the update might have been the Sangean WFT-4, but its line output level is not variable, there's no headphone output and it's not available in Australia. It has BlueTooth Rx & Tx but at the expense of supporting local network streaming via Ethernet or Wifi, so not for me.

After some research I purchased this Wintal DAB22COM network tuner as it ticked all the boxes for me as the best option for the home office. It does FM, DAB+, Internet Radio, Network Streaming and Bluetooth streaming. Apart from some minor aesthetic differences, this Wintal unit appears to be identical to the Ocean Digital WR-10 (most likely the OEM) and the Redback A-2696A. The only other product I seriously considered was the Lenco DIR-250BK.

The DAB22COM power supply is an external plug pack, so there is no transformer or SMPS inside the case. Looking inside, there are 2 PCBs, one on the rear of the front panel and the main board towards the rear of the case. It is good to see plenty of breathing space between the various circuit segments on the main board. There is lots of spare real estate inside the case, but that's how the technology is these days.

Construction and soldering all looks very good. Main board is secured via two tapped steel standoffs on the base plus 4 screws from the rear panel, two into tapped metal brackets on the board and two self tappers into the plastic connector housings. Very neat and solid design. It has a solid all-metal case, but only weighs 1.9kg, so the extra bit of force required to operate the pushbutton function on the main dial can cause the unit to slide. Some non-skid material on the bottom of the feet would be better than the current foam pads.

CODEC chip is a Nuvoton 24bit/192kHz device. Not a brand normally associated with DACs in this type of product, but still high quality and an appropriate choice which adds some nice features like 5-band EQ and line output level adjustment. The chip also includes the line output and headphone drivers and this is where I found a weakness. No problems at all with the Line Output, but when I connected my Yamaha YH-2 phones to the headphone output, I had to set the volume to maximum to get a decent level from them. My B&W P3 were better, but still needed a very high setting. Only my Audio Technica earbuds gave me the range of control I would expect, so any headphones used with this device need to be efficient. It's a pity, because the Nuvoton chip also includes 1W speaker outputs which are not used in this product. For the cost of a couple of resistors these outputs could have provided a much more capable headphone output.

I can't identify the RF module, but reception is very good and slightly more sensitive than the WFT-1D on both FM & DAB+.

Setup was easy and the Instruction Manual is well organized and clear. The player is quite easy to use from the front panel or the remote. The colour display is small, but clear and easy to read and brightness is adjustable. The analog clock display option in standby mode is pretty cool.

Storing internet radio stations is a little different but quite to my liking. It's done via a webpage built into the product rather than using an internet radio provider service. The Skytune website is used to search for stations via various parameters, then when you select a station you want to save, it loads the data into the device. Stations that can't be found via the search engine can be manually entered once you've found the URL. I used https://streamurl.link to find the URLs for most stations I wanted that weren't already found via the Skytune webpage. The benefit of this approach is that if the Skytune website is ever discontinued, you can still store, backup & restore your saved stations using the internal webpage via any browser. The built-in webpage also serves as a very basic remote control app allowing 'favourite' stations to be selected, mute/unmute operations and headphone volume adjustment, but the device must be in 'Internet Radio' mode.

'Bluetooth streaming' mode and local network streaming via 'Media Centre' mode both work fine. Navigation is easy and there are no problems with accessing network storage and playing file formats such as FLAC. Ethernet and Wifi connections are available.

Another nice touch is the ability to tailor the line output. There is a 'preamp gain' setting, 10 EQ presets, a 5-band equalizer and a 15-step '3D depth' setting which the manual does not elaborate on but appears to widen the soundstage and add some surround effects.

Overall, this unit is a very versatile radio & media source for home or office hifi use. I'm really happy with it and can recommend it unless any of the minor issues I've mentioned would be an issue in your situation.