I brought along my Sangean HDR-14 on my present Denver trip - and have noticed that the audio bandwidth on AM seems to vary with the strength of the signal. This is true whether or not an HD signal is detected for the station. Weaker signals get less audio bandwidth; stronger signals get more. I an test this easily, of course, by orienting the radio toward or away from a given signal. The effect seems to be subtle, with a range of approximately 2.5 to 3.5 kHz - just judging by ears as I have no way of taking measurements here. I know that the Sangean HD home tuners (I have an HDR-1 and an HDR-1X) have adaptive AM bandwidth, going up to 5 kHz and then dropping off like a brick wall. Does anyone know - or have measured - adaptive bandwidth capabilities in the HDR-14? Up to this point I haven't been particularly impressed with the AM section of this radio, but I might need to change my mind.
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Sangean HDR-14 - adaptive bandwidth?
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
I have an HDR-16 (the two speaker version) and I like the radio for FM, HD FM, and it's OK on locals on AM. The AM performance has potential, but the LCD readout makes noise on AM. As for adaptive bandwidth, the adaptive bandwidth is there. It's an OK feature, I guess, but not my preference. I'd rather hear just one bandwidth.
As for the HDR-14, there must be some literature somewhere that goes into the bandwidth capabilities. Maybe a datasheet for the chip used, although I'm not sure which chip(s) are used in Sangean's HD radios.
You could email Sangean and ask. They are generally very helpful to radio owners when they have questions about their Sangean radios. They've answered my questions at least twice.
As for the HDR-14, there must be some literature somewhere that goes into the bandwidth capabilities. Maybe a datasheet for the chip used, although I'm not sure which chip(s) are used in Sangean's HD radios.
You could email Sangean and ask. They are generally very helpful to radio owners when they have questions about their Sangean radios. They've answered my questions at least twice.
Adaptive bandwidth is nonsense. I, the listener, should be able to make the decision on how much noise I might tolerate.
My Kenwood car radio is a case in point. All the stations sound the same-BAD! I spoke about this in another thread a while back. The IF bandpass is so narrow that you can barely hear "S's at the end of words! Ah...but there's no noise!, and there is near absolute adjacent channel separation! SO WHAT! There should be bandwidth settings that represent a reasonable compromise so that I, the listener, can choose between a wider bandwidth for strong and medium signals, and a narrow bandwidth for weak stations. But a product's USER should be able to make that decision!
The HDR-14 also doesn't give you a choice on whether to listen to an HD broadcast or not. If it's available, and if the signal is strong enough, it will switch over the HD. On AM, the effect is particularly jarring and that's even before accounting for the severe digital compression artifacts.
Last week in Denver, I had it on KPOF (yeah, I know, but I wanted to see what would happen at night with an HD signal of somewhat reasonable if not perfect strength) and found that just about any electrical interference will kill the HD signal on AM.
You got that right. Imagine trying to listen to a digital AM signal if you live in an apartment bldg and your neighbor next door fires up a hair dryer. You may remember in the days of analog TV that those devices and others would put those little white blips across the screen particularly on channels 2 thru 6. That's why there are practically no digital TV signals using low-band VHF. Lightning, BTW does the same thing. Electrical noise is an enemy of digital. Selective fading distortion on AM is another.
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