A friend let me borrow his Sony XDR-S3HD radio before he sells it on
eBay to try and recoup some of his money. Trying it out I kept
wondering – what’s so compelling about this? I could detect virtually
no difference in audio quality between FM analog and FM “HD”. The
only way I new it had switched to HD was the “HD” symbol quit blinking
and a little text appeared telling me what song was playing. WOW, how
cool is this. What was even more irritating was that the analog and
digital signals were out of sync by about 5 seconds. So much for a
smooth transition. No CD Quality here boys.

AM “HD” was even more goofy. When it did lock, which wasn’t often,
the audio level changed – very irritating. AM “HD” isn’t FM quality
as iBiquity likes to tout. It warbles, distorts and generally sounds
bad – something like talking under water. The only positive was the
reduction of background noise in AM “HD” mode.

The real shocker was how power hungry the radio must be – and this is
just a tabletop clock radio – nothing fancy. It comes with a MASSIVE
external power transformer “brick” that you could use as an anchor for
a boat. But it doesn’t end there. The radio has a COOLING FAN
mounted in the bottom. Yes, that’s right a COOLING FAN in a clock
radio – with all kinds of warnings in the instruction book about
keeping the radio adequately ventilated.

Man, am I glad I didn’t buy this thing.