FREQUENCY RESPONSES OF RADIOS

Enough times people in several radio groups in the Internet make open debates on which radio sounds
better or not and there are often that they start flames based on their totally subjective opinions.

Considering this lack of possibly technical expertise (?) based on the `aforementioned’ contributors’ opin-
ions as most of them are totally orally based
I made a series of clearly technical computer analysis of several of the most popular models of the company
Degen that I also have in my radio collection namely the 1102 , the 1103 and the less known pocket 108
and two of the models of its manufacturer Tecsun with 200 and 550 and some other radios I have including
Bolong transistor radio an Aiwa walkman and testd ONLY in the FM band for their full audio response

Radio freq responses

All these radios stated n the next two pages are of my collection last two years and are referred in the
FM band only in order to analyze their full audio response. Surely on MW and SW bands audio is quite
filtered out from the local IF filters offering much lower than 16 kHz audio band and I think is out of the
scope of this article.

MY methodology:
- All radios were ON during the recording session and tuned to a preset station which offered good qual-
ity audio. Though I tried to find the strongest station , nearly all stations suffered from some local noise
(QRN) , that s why I kept to the best possible signal that could be Rxable to all radios
- I tried to do recording session during a whole song , so that 20 secs at max could be recorded per radio
- The results were then scanned for RMS and captured .
- The response curve is adjusted to logarithmic (`natural’) for all models
- For 1102 and 1103 i.e. for the most flamed models I have made a special mixing in order to show the
curve differences . Both models are used for this analysis : logarithmic and linear

Two main problems occurred during this analysis :

? My point is a crossover of 4 transmitter points , Thessaloniki, Katerini, Naousa and Veria. A

total of abt 90 radio stations are in conclusion received in my point. Many stations are intermixed with
others. In my site on the FM list you will find also a map of all these points. It can be found on http://
www.geocities.com/zliangas/ thesfm.htm
? Strangely , though my computer is quite noiseless in the HF bands , seems somehow noisy in the
VHF bands and inhibits many of the lower power signals.
? As in result only very few signals are totally noiseless in my radio computer shack

Once again , the printing result is optimized for the highest detail.

Zacharias

This article has been created on mid-2006 and printed at the end of 2006 !!!
 DE 1102
This is the log response curve of 1102 As you will see
with other curves below the 19000 kHz carrier is always
apparent at a 18 db level from the highest audio point and
has _vacant points from 16 to 22 kHz ( see also the pic
at bottom of pg 3 with a linear diagram )
You may also notice the abrupt fall on 1000 Hz by 8 db
down

DEGEN - DE1103

The first peculiar with this radio of the nearly first produc-
tion is that there is a 4 db mean , separation level be-
tween both channels . A second glance shows a diference
int he 300 HZ
For more analysis please look at the 02 vs 03 pics at the
end of the 3rd page

PL200 Tecsun

Here we can see:

Less bassy and trebly than 1103 Same also for 1102 with
differences occurring below 400 Hz and above 4Khz
Same question also for the 19 kHz carrier making

PL550

This radio has better responses than 200 :

-20 db difference of stereo carrier
-The smoothest response curve.
-Most balanced audio between channels
-Bassier than 1102 by 3-4 db and nearly same curve
above
 Bolong

This is the only analog radio from my collection and has the
‘trebliest’ radio with extended audio over all others using the
UR-20 Koss headphones
There is some presence of higher tones in the other channel
Making comparison between it and 1102 shows a basier
and treblier radio

AIWA Jx704

This is a typical high class walkman from Aiwa , possibly

their latest model featuring auto-reverse recording , remote
control , 30 memories and FM recording. Bought in Spore
on 2000
As it seems it loses in basses ( below 110 HZ) and has
lower trebles than Bolong
A short comaprison between 02 curves shows a lacking
adio ( less basses , less trebles)

Degen 108A

This is a very small - casete sized- radio from Degen with a

small speaker built in. However its sensitivity and perform-
ance is very bad in FM . Many signals clear in other radios
are heard with noise
As for its audio he curve goes some better to 1102 on the
middle tones and lower to higher tones ie lacks from trebles

RESULTS between 1102 and 1103

2
02

03

And here is the results (picture multiplication) between 1102 and 03 using after a normalization of both audio clips occured. From the left picture it is clear that
1103 is bassier by 2-3 db than 1102 but also lacks a bit of middle tones but the higher tones curve is nearly the same. Also there is a small fallout on the
15600 Khz leaving just the19000 carrier clear