thezak said:
Are the stereo speakers audio quality of the Insignia Narrator hybrid digital HD radio excellent, good, so so or ...? for opera?... orchestra music?...
Specifications page 46 User Manual
at
http://www.insigniaproducts.com/products/portable-audio-players/ns-clhd01.html
I've been saying this for years - you aren't going to get high fidelity out of 4 or 5 inch speakers!!! I don't care if it is Insignia, Bose, Boston Acoustics, or even Dr. Dre - you can get pleasant, room filling sound. But if you want the deepest bass, good clarity on high frequencies - which is critical for classical music - you will be disappointed. This looks like a decent radio, but it probably lacks tuned RF stages in the radio which would really help with HD reception. The thin case is another tip-off that bass will be lacking. Deep bass requires cabinet depth directly behind the speaker. You can overpower the speaker and get around that limitation to an extent, but that is not going to happen in this small radio. Deep speaker cabinets, or at least speaker cabinet with tuned ducts or folded horns, don't look "cool enough" to be manufactured today, so it is build your own or buy an overpowered amplifier. I usually don't bother with the math associated with speaker enclosures - volume, resonant frequency of the woofer, etc. The portable radio manufacturers sure don't. They just rely on the type of enclosure known as "infinite baffle", where you waste the energy from the back of the speaker and rely completely on the motion from the front (the other types delay the rear motion in time so it comes out in phase with the front motion, re-enforcing it. Still, I embed woofers behind the rear seat in my car, and in walls and attics in my house, and bass absolutely thunders even at low volumes and low powers.
If you want, or have to go small, I'd recommend the Dr. Dre headphones. You will get plenty of musical quality to spare. The thing is, they will cost 2 1/2 times what the radio costs. But once you have them, you can use them with any audio source. They will bring out the compression deficits in music from sources like satellite, MP3 players, and HD-2, though, as much as a high end audio system will.
4 inch speakers make adequate midrange speakers, maybe bass to 200 Hz will be audible at a low level. Don't expect too much from a $100 radio. Good for background listening while you do other tasks, maybe. Remember that if a piece of audio gear costs $100 in stores, it probably has ten dollars of parts inside. The rest is mark-ups, fuel to ship from China and truck across the US, etc.
