Which is your favorite? The HDT-1X or the HDT-1? Are they worth the price?
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Sangean Radios
- Thread starter RadioStarOne
- Start date
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Radioman100
Guest
RadioStarOne said:
According to Sangean's website, the HDT-1X is a deluxe model of the HDT-1. It gives you a digital output and a force analog mode.
The reviews I've seen for the tuner (posted by real users, not anti-HD kooks anyway) say it offers great analog performance and good HD performance.
Considering a good analog only tuner like the Denon TU1500RD will cost you about twice as much and a cheap, crappy analog tuner like the ones Rolls makes will cost you about the same, I'd say it's an excellent value.
I bought an Accurian HD Radio from Radio Shack yesterday and finally got to mess around with it today. I must say that KFBK 1530 AM Sacramento in HD sounds great in stereo while they were playing X-mas music! I wasn't aware that they were in HD it just popped on while I was listening. The FM HD stations sounded quite nice too.
Glad to hear that your AM HD stations actually took the time to broadcast in stereo, while WJR was too lazy to actually have their program switched to stereo - only their TOH ID was stereo, the music was mono - what a waste during their HD hours, and they didn't fire-up their CQuam at night like WLS did; meanwhile, WLS sounded sweet in stereo!
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Mike Walker
Guest
Hell since HD Radios can receive C-Quam, and since both HD and C-Quam are licensed modes, HD days, and analog C-Quam stereo nights seems like a damn good idea to me! Stereo all the time. Noise-free reception close-in during the day.
What I would like to know is how much the IBOC advocates here make off of these sangean radios that seem to always get brought up here every other day. :
Are there no other makers of these? Or does sangean subsidize this forum? Seems like anti-Sangean posts disappear quite rapidly from here.
Are there no other makers of these? Or does sangean subsidize this forum? Seems like anti-Sangean posts disappear quite rapidly from here.KB1OKL said:What I would like to know is how much the IBOC advocates here make off of these sangean radios that seem to always get brought up here every other day. :
Well Master Thesis makes his living from Sangean. He's been very honest and open about that. I think other than that, you're just barking up that "Black Helicopter" tree.
What is it that would drive someone to be so bitter they infer anyone who likes HD radio on this forum is somehow getting paid off?
Really, now. Doesn't that sound a little silly?
Clouseau
KB1OKL - in my opinion, Sagnean isn't the best, but they are much BETTER than the other manufacturers, because they actually LISTEN to the USERS of their hardware. We bitched and moaned about needed features that were missing on their HDT-1, so they issed their HDT-1X - it's still not perfect but better. Most of us are using these for analog reception anyhow, and the FM selectivity is quite good. Now if we could just have control over the AM bandwidth and I'd be happy.
JohnnyElectron said:
Sangean probably deserves credit for making the first “decent” HD radios. They have a long time reputation of making quality products.
Although I've said nice things about Sangean, I think the Sony HD table radio is a good piece of equipment too. I was in my local Best Buy this afternoon buying a TV and had time to play with it some more. The controls are very intuitive, and these days I think that is a plus. I hate reading instruction manuals, just to figure out how to do something that should be obvious.
This radio was connected up via RG-6 cable to an external antenna. I did a "HD Scan" with no results, although there are two stations in the area that broadcast in HD. Their analog signals worked perfectly. It also had no problem with a 45-watt translator located about 8 miles away. It produced good stereo with full quieting. It also worked well with a 250-watt translator located about 15 miles away. To me, that is a sign of a good radio. It even sounds "nice." If it happens to be able to decode HD or C-Quam,so much the better. I wouldn't mind owning one.
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Radioman100
Guest
KB1OKL said:What I would like to know is how much the IBOC advocates here make off of these sangean radios that seem to always get brought up here every other day. :
Maybe the posts that are just made to be "anti" anything and serve no other purpose are what get deleted? I personally have no idea, but I'm glad the Radio Info people have decided to moderate the forum. For a while, it degenerated from a discussion board into a totally useless collection of links to anti-HD propaganda.
Radioman100 said:KB1OKL said:What I would like to know is how much the IBOC advocates here make off of these sangean radios that seem to always get brought up here every other day. :
Maybe the posts that are just made to be "anti" anything and serve no other purpose are what get deleted? I personally have no idea, but I'm glad the Radio Info people have decided to moderate the forum. For a while, it degenerated from a discussion board into a totally useless collection of links to anti-HD propaganda.
To you, pro-HD propaganda is much better.
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Radioman100
Guest
SUPERCASTER said:
If you'd actually read, instead of just posting snarky comments, you'd see I said it degenerated into a "useless collection of links to anti-HD propaganda." At least these days we discuss propaganda, whether it's pro or anti-HD. Since this is a discussion board, and not a useless link board, yeah, I prefer that.
Mike Walker said:
I have a Sangean HDT-1, and unfortunately, the AM C-Quam reception is not wideband. There's full stereo separation, but the audio is as muffled and muddy as any of today's typical narrowband AM mono tuners. To listen to the one C-Quam station still operating in the Boston area (740 WJIB Cambridge, MA), I use a mid-'80s Sony wideband AM stereo receiver. It sounds great!
Has anyone seen a schematic for the Sangean HD receivers?
Narrowband can usually be widened a lot more easily than narrrowing a wide receiver.
Tap off at some point after the superhet mixer has a 455 khz signal before the first stage of IF, then run it through a different IF strip.
There is a lot of extra room in there. Maybe something as simple caps or resistors at IF coupling.
Maybe replacing silly ceramic filters with real IF xfmrs.
I bet the existing detector would do fine with a wider IF signal.
Even if audio has been filtered down after the detector, this is ususally just a cap or two which can be removed.
If Sangean would just make this selectable, they might sell 3 times better.
If they made it with a tuned RF loop, it might sell 4 times better.
If they made the AM tuning continuous, so analog reception could choose the cleaner sideband, it might sell 5 times better.
Of course, they could just keep it the way it is, shrug their shoulders and say "enhh, that good enough".
I'm not interested in a tuner that only does FM. "Selecting" at 10 khz presets with no bandwidth choice is NOT tuning.
From my engineering perspective, they shouldn't have even bothered to put AM on there unless it sounds at least as good as what was
available everywhere 40 to 50 years ago.
What other areas of tech are we willing to go back over 50 years in performance levels?
Narrowband can usually be widened a lot more easily than narrrowing a wide receiver.
Tap off at some point after the superhet mixer has a 455 khz signal before the first stage of IF, then run it through a different IF strip.
There is a lot of extra room in there. Maybe something as simple caps or resistors at IF coupling.
Maybe replacing silly ceramic filters with real IF xfmrs.
I bet the existing detector would do fine with a wider IF signal.
Even if audio has been filtered down after the detector, this is ususally just a cap or two which can be removed.
If Sangean would just make this selectable, they might sell 3 times better.
If they made it with a tuned RF loop, it might sell 4 times better.
If they made the AM tuning continuous, so analog reception could choose the cleaner sideband, it might sell 5 times better.
Of course, they could just keep it the way it is, shrug their shoulders and say "enhh, that good enough".
I'm not interested in a tuner that only does FM. "Selecting" at 10 khz presets with no bandwidth choice is NOT tuning.
From my engineering perspective, they shouldn't have even bothered to put AM on there unless it sounds at least as good as what was
available everywhere 40 to 50 years ago.
What other areas of tech are we willing to go back over 50 years in performance levels?
Tom Wells said:
In another thread, RBruceCarter posted links to the TI spec sheets that are pretty representative of what is inside the HDT-1. (Thanks for posting!)
I wanted to try to pick off a composite (MPX) signal if I could, but so far haven't had a lot of luck. I spent about an hour probing around with a 100 MHz scope and did not find anything that looked hopeful. Things appear to happen pretty much in the digital domain and the traces on the PC board are incredibly tiny. It would be easy to short something out while just probing around, and render the tuner into a smoldering piece of junk. I won't say you couldn't modify one, but it does not appear to me that it is a job for someone like me who is basically a hobbyist with a soldering iron.
If any of you do figure it out, please let me know. I did come up with a simple $20 modification that turns the tuner back on to its previous state in the event of a power failure. Without the modification, you have to manually turn the tuner back on by pushing the "power" button. I'd be happy to share the details if anyone needs such a modification. In fact, I was thinking of writing a short tech tip for Radio-Guide with the details. I owe Barry an article anyway...
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countrylistener
Guest
Hmm.. Sounds like a good modification. When are you going to publish it?
If anybody figures out how to 'force' any of the HD tuners into a 10KHz wide AM bandwidth (at least 7500Hz wide) for decent sounding analog AM, please post it here; like you mentioned, it's nice to be able to hear stereo AM from CFCO in Canada, but the audio bandwidth isn't full-width like it should be.
AM stereo is DEAD. It's a failed technology. No new radios are being manufactured by any of the well known manufacturers. AM stereo can be equated to the old RCA needle in disc Video discs
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