The Pure is one of the early DAB/FM models. But how does it stack up against what's currently on the market? The price has come down a fair chunk and the unit remains competitive on a specs/price basis at least.

Indeed, the specs remain rather good. On this occasion, we are considering the basic model with unbalanced outputs, but balanced signals via XLR sockets are an option and naturally there are also digital outputs (both flavours) active when DAB is being received.

Also on the hardware front, there is a Radio Data Interface and a USB socket for firmware upgrades.

On the software side, things are interesting. Pure started out in DAB tuners and came to FM later, a career which is unusual or possibly unique and thus it thinks in DAB terms. As a result, there are no conventional FM presets.

Treating FM like DAB

Instead the tuner features autotune on FM just as on DAB, scanning the band to find receivable stations and storing them by RDS name or frequency (you can also add names manually) in memory. This makes finding an FM station as simple as on DAB - just scroll through an alphabetical list of names.

Nothing seems to have been missed off the DAB features list. Dynamic Range Control is implemented with three settings (off, half and full), there's a good signal quality indicator and you can get full text information, though the display is looking a little dated alongside some on the market.

FM information is similarly displayed, with an optimistic signal strength meter. Overall it's a well thought-out device, though, with a neat and tidy internal layout.

As in most of its recent hi-fi component DAB tuners, Pure has included PAC ('Psychoacoustic Correction') into the DRX-702, making DAB sound immediately distinctive in any direct comparison with other models.

There's nothing mysterious about this: it's a fairly simple filter which cuts the level of treble output by a couple of dB, ostensibly in order to lessen the 'birdies' and other MPEG coding artefacts which afflict practically all DAB broadcasts.

While we appreciate the point, we're not convinced that 2dB is really enough to make much of a difference to that, but on the other hand, it is certainly an audible tonal change from regular DAB tuners.