I realize that this is the wrong sort of "radio" newsgroup, but I
cannot find any newsgroup dedicated to consumer AM/FM receivers. I
figure you folks would have opinions on the relative merits of
digital vs. analog tuners.

Which is better for pulling in a weak, distant radio station: a
top-of-the-line analog tuner, or a digital tuner with quartz crystal
oscillator, phase locked loop, etc.?

I am seeking a "good portable radio". None of the portables that I
have owned have been able to pull in weak stations as well as my
no-name car radio. Now, according to what I was told in some courses
over a decade ago, I thought the "best" radio receivers used a quartz
crystal local oscillator and phase locked loop to "lock on" to the
received signal. However, the high end radios people have been
refering me to (like the Tivoli Portable Audio Lab) have analog
tuners. I have to admit that part of the charm of a digital tuner
is the laziness it allows: key up 1340kHZ or 91.5MHz and you're
there.

I doubt that my no-name car radio was expensive even when the car
was new. There should be a portable radio out there that works at
least as well. Any recommendations? It wouldn't necessarily have
to have a speaker; headphones would be fine.

--
Please reply to: | "One of the hardest parts of my job is to
pciszek at panix dot com | connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
Autoreply is disabled | -- G. W. Bush, 9/7/2006

put up a beverage antenna!

"Paul Ciszek" wrote in message
...
I realize that this is the wrong sort of "radio" newsgroup, but I
cannot find any newsgroup dedicated to consumer AM/FM receivers. I
figure you folks would have opinions on the relative merits of
digital vs. analog tuners.

Which is better for pulling in a weak, distant radio station: a
top-of-the-line analog tuner, or a digital tuner with quartz crystal
oscillator, phase locked loop, etc.?

I am seeking a "good portable radio". None of the portables that I
have owned have been able to pull in weak stations as well as my
no-name car radio. Now, according to what I was told in some courses
over a decade ago, I thought the "best" radio receivers used a quartz
crystal local oscillator and phase locked loop to "lock on" to the
received signal. However, the high end radios people have been
refering me to (like the Tivoli Portable Audio Lab) have analog
tuners. I have to admit that part of the charm of a digital tuner
is the laziness it allows: key up 1340kHZ or 91.5MHz and you're
there.

I doubt that my no-name car radio was expensive even when the car
was new. There should be a portable radio out there that works at
least as well. Any recommendations? It wouldn't necessarily have
to have a speaker; headphones would be fine.

--
Please reply to: | "One of the hardest parts of my job is to
pciszek at panix dot com | connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
Autoreply is disabled | -- G. W. Bush, 9/7/2006

"Paul Ciszek" wrote in message
...
Which is better for pulling in a weak, distant radio station: a
top-of-the-line analog tuner, or a digital tuner with quartz crystal
oscillator, phase locked loop, etc.?


Hi, Paul,

Believe it or not the best receivers seem still to be the old-fashioned
analog tuners, partly because of an inherently lower phase noise level in
analog tuners and partly because a couple of manufacturers have put some
great engineering into putting out really good portables.

One is the GE Superadio which always gets great reviews everywhere, and the
other is a little-known Radio Shack Chinese clone of the Superadio, their
catalog #12-903, which I believe is a little bit more solidly built than the
GE and closely approaches its performance.

Any portable with a jack for an external antenna is a plus because you can
run a lot of wire outside an bring it in through a window. This is much
better than even the large 8-inch ferrite rods in the GE and Radio Shack.
(Both models have connectors for external long wire type antennas.)

My recommendation is to stay away from the Sony ICF-SW7600GR which a lot of
people like because of its digital tuning and synchronous AM mode but I have
one and there is no comparison between it and the RS 12-903, for example. It
eats batteries like nobody's business and doesn't sound as good as the RS.
One of the other big advantages of the GE and RS are their beautiful audio
quality thanks to well-designed wide IF bandwidths and large speakers. And
you can expect your batteries to last more than 200 hours!

Another word about synchronous AM: on the Sony mentioned above, it does help
on a moderately noisy signal but it raises the phase noise even higher
compared to normal AM mode. In addition, on the very weakest signals near
the noise floor Synchronous AM isn't effective at all because it needs a
minimum S/N ratio to work properly.

One last model that you may hear discussed is the CCRadio Plus. I wrote a
review of it on Amazon.com which was later pulled for no apparent reason
although some other folks claimed that the manufacturer had pressured
amazon.com to reconsider any negative reviews of the product. Whatever
happened, I had some solid engineering data in that review to support my
opinion that it was a mediocre receiver, certainly not the stellar product
that the ads claim.

Sorry for the extra long post. Good luck in your decision and enjoy AM
DX'ing.

Regards,

Al W6LX

In article ,
Al Lorona wrote:

Believe it or not the best receivers seem still to be the old-fashioned
analog tuners, partly because of an inherently lower phase noise level in
analog tuners and partly because a couple of manufacturers have put some
great engineering into putting out really good portables.

One is the GE Superadio which always gets great reviews everywhere, and the
other is a little-known Radio Shack Chinese clone of the Superadio, their
catalog #12-903, which I believe is a little bit more solidly built than the
GE and closely approaches its performance.

Is the GE Superadio III as good? (Sometimes the model name stays the
same, but later versions aren't the same product at all.)

Any portable with a jack for an external antenna is a plus because you can
run a lot of wire outside an bring it in through a window. This is much
better than even the large 8-inch ferrite rods in the GE and Radio Shack.
(Both models have connectors for external long wire type antennas.)

I understand the merits of big antennas, but the whole idea of a portable
is that you can pick it up and take it to the office, lab, etc. without
having to get permission to string wires. Do these radios come with some
sort of default antenna (like the traditional telescoping chrome rod)?


My recommendation is to stay away from the Sony ICF-SW7600GR which a lot of
people like because of its digital tuning and synchronous AM mode but I have
one and there is no comparison between it and the RS 12-903, for example. It
eats batteries like nobody's business and doesn't sound as good as the RS.
One of the other big advantages of the GE and RS are their beautiful audio
quality thanks to well-designed wide IF bandwidths and large speakers. And
you can expect your batteries to last more than 200 hours!

Is there anything similar to the GE or Radio Shack that gets shortwave?
More to the point: In the middle of the continental US (Colorado), can
I pick up international news in English? Someone told me once that the
BBC was going to stop its shortwave broadcasts for the US because we
weren't offsetting the cost.

Shortwave wasn't part of my original interest, but I got curious after
one guy claimed that any shortwave radio has to be better quality than
a mass-market AM/FM radio.

--
Please reply to: | "One of the hardest parts of my job is to
pciszek at panix dot com | connect Iraq to the War on Terror."
Autoreply is disabled | -- G. W. Bush, 9/7/2006

Paul Ciszek ) writes:
I realize that this is the wrong sort of "radio" newsgroup, but I
cannot find any newsgroup dedicated to consumer AM/FM receivers. I
figure you folks would have opinions on the relative merits of
digital vs. analog tuners.

rec.radio.shortwave is the proper group, it's intended for any distant
listening of radio stations, not just shortwave. (THis isn't a
retro-definition, it was there from the start and "shortwave" just
seemed like the best way to name the group.)

You have to "define" best, when shopping for a radio. In a lot
of consumer equipment, the radio sections are an afterthought, and
certainly not intended for much beyond local stations. That's what
most people are interested in, if they even care about radio, so
there's no real incentive for manufacturers to design good radios.
So if you ask for "best", it may turn out that the salesmen are
thinking in terms of sound or some other function, when you are
talking "radio that is good at receiving distant signals". And cost
isn't necessarily a factor. Since an expensive stereo receiver may
be sought after for sound and features, the cost may not be reflected
in the radio. Of course, in the past, there were some very good
stereo receivers with good reception qualities.

I once got into an argument with someone about their having a "good FM
receiver" when it turned out to be a portable shortwave receiver that included
FM. They thought since they'd paid a lot for it, the FM section
is naturally good. But the FM section would not use any of the circuitry
from shortwave section, so it was a "feature" added to sell more radios,
and the designer likely wouldn't have allocated much to the FM section,
since it would raise the cost or reduce the shortwaver performance.

Car radios have traditionally been good because of the environment
they are operating in. One minute they could be near a radio station,
and if they overload then that whipes out the other stations. The
next, they could be way out in the middle of nowhere, where all
the stations are distant. Or a combination, where you need to separate
out a strong signal from a weaker signal. So car radios traditionally
were designed better. An rf stage at the antenna, better selectivity
in the intermediate frequency.

Meanwhile, other AM/FM radios have pretty much kept the same design
for decades, with very little innovation unless you get a really expensive
radio. And since the "standard" design doesn't take into consideration
much beyond local stations, there's no incentive to change.

If this was for a non-portable use, the cheapest solution would be
to buy a car radio at a garage sale for a few dollars, power it up
with a power supply, and there you have it. A relatively decent
redio for a few dollars. I've had a Delco digitally tuned radio
next to my bed for a decade, and it's pretty much the best AM/FM
radio I've had. Certainly on FM, it beats anything I've tried.
(And if the need is semi-portable, get a speaker in a cabinet and
strap the car radio to the top.)

Most people never tune the bands to try for those distant stations,
so they don't get an idea of what might be better. Distant AM stations
at night are easy to receive, sensitivity isn't usually an issue. But
separating them out may require something better. On FM, distant stations
often require good radio conditions, so no matter what the radio, you
will need height to get a distant station on a regular basis. But an
FM receiver's ability to stand up to strong signals is important, because
too many low end radios (and the expensive units that don't spend much
on the FM radio) overload from strong signals. You can never hear the
weaker signals, even when they are receivable, because the local signals
overload the receivers and mask the weak signals. But here again, better
selectivity becomes important, so you can hear the distant station that's
adjacent to a local and far stronger signal. (And in the past, when
radio was more important, there were high end receivers that dealt with
this, having two selectivity positions, one for normal reception and
a narrower one for when a signal was weaker.)

Digitally tuned radios mean you are more likely to check those distant
stations. Keep the local stations on the memories, and then tune around
the band, knowing you can easily get back to the locals. Or when conditions
are good, when you find a station pop it into a memory, so you can tune
about while waiting for an identification on the first station. There
are some FM stations here that are just over the horizon, and are
receivable sporadically, and since I like the stations, I keep them
in memory. It's really easy to check them, so I am more likely to
check them. And digital readout makes it far easier to know what
frequency the station is on (which helps to identifiy it's location.)

Analog tuning has the advantage that when trying to deal with a weak
signal adjacent to a stronger signal, being able to tune around a bit
can sometimes help to separate the stations. You don't have that ability
with digital tuning. Again, some of the better stereo receivers in
the past included some odd (and I have no idea how successful) designs
that tried to compensate for this, trying to give the best of both
worlds). Or things like shortwave receivers allow for finer tuning
steps. They'd allow 1KHz steps on AM because that's needed for shortwave
tuning and the AM section is usually part of the shortwave section. And
if they include FM reception, they might have 50KHz steps instead of 200KHz
steps, to accomodate different standards around the world, but which
incidentally allows for finer tuning on FM.

Michael VE2BVW

Paul Ciszek wrote:
I realize that this is the wrong sort of "radio" newsgroup, but I
cannot find any newsgroup dedicated to consumer AM/FM receivers. I
figure you folks would have opinions on the relative merits of
digital vs. analog tuners.

Which is better for pulling in a weak, distant radio station: a
top-of-the-line analog tuner, or a digital tuner with quartz crystal
oscillator, phase locked loop, etc.?

I am seeking a "good portable radio". None of the portables that I
have owned have been able to pull in weak stations as well as my
no-name car radio. Now, according to what I was told in some courses
over a decade ago, I thought the "best" radio receivers used a quartz
crystal local oscillator and phase locked loop to "lock on" to the
received signal. However, the high end radios people have been
refering me to (like the Tivoli Portable Audio Lab) have analog
tuners. I have to admit that part of the charm of a digital tuner
is the laziness it allows: key up 1340kHZ or 91.5MHz and you're
there.

I doubt that my no-name car radio was expensive even when the car
was new. There should be a portable radio out there that works at
least as well. Any recommendations? It wouldn't necessarily have
to have a speaker; headphones would be fine.


One of the BEST things I have seen to improve AM radio reception is the
Select-a-Tenna (http://www.selectatenna.com/). Tune your portable radio
to the frequency, place the Select-a-Tenna next to the radio and adjust
the Select-a-Tenna for best reception. No wires to connect, no
batteries or power to plug in to. There are now other models of
Selectatenna that are powered or can connect with wires to you receiver
but I have been using one for years on a very inexpensive portable radio
and I can pick up stations loud and clear that I couldn't even hear
without it.

I am not affiliated with the company that makes them, nor do I sell
them. I just have one and am impressed with its performance.

Please note this is for the AM broadcast band only.

--
I have never met a liberal street cop.

Paul Ciszek wrote:
[SNIP]
Is there anything similar to the GE or Radio Shack that gets shortwave?
More to the point: In the middle of the continental US (Colorado), can
I pick up international news in English? Someone told me once that the
BBC was going to stop its shortwave broadcasts for the US because we
weren't offsetting the cost.

The RS-12-903 is discontinued according to this reviewer:
http://www.geocities.com/rbrucecarter/12_603.htm.
and the GE SuperRadio 3 is an underperfomer according to this one:
http://www.dobe.com/wts/funk/GESRIIIreview.html, but still available as
a Thomson Multimedia product from Amazon.com.

A high-value for money radio for MW, SW, and VHF-FM is the Kaito
KA-1103, or the same radio direct from China via eBay, the Degen
DE-1103. Highly sensitive, with good selectivity, digital display and
tuning (oodles of memories) and capable of SSB/CW reception. User group
at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/de1103/ . Many user reviews at
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/5071 with a 4.7/5 average rating
(that's a value rating not a performance rating). The Eton E5 is
similar electronically (same factory) but with a better user interface;
its price is in the range of the Sony 7600GR but latter has synchronous
AM detector for reduced distortion on fading signals - reviews
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/1534.

Tom