Radio Done Right
Written: Oct 02 '09 (Updated Oct 05 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good sensitivity and selectivity and fidelity
Cons: Large for a table radio
The Bottom Line: Radio Done Right. It fits the bill for what an AM/FM table radio is capable of and which other commercial brands fall short of.
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| topreviewerman's Full Review: Music Hall RDR-1 AM/FM Table Radio |
Why Another Radio
I purchased a Music Hall RDR-1 (stands for "radio done right") table radio for its warm bass from a horn loaded speaker. I'd gradually become dissatisfied with the cold adequacy of my transistor radio. I remembered the warmer sound from tube radios before transistors came on the scene. Tubes work by a low voltage filament heating a cathode boiling off electrons attracted by a high voltage plate, the flow regulated by a smaller signal on an intermediate grid, all enclosed in a vacuum. This results in amplification used in various circuits. The physics causes a minor delay between the voltage and a lagging current, called hysteresis—from a Greek word meaning to be late. This phase difference imparts a warm sound to voice and music. Transistors, however much their fidelity, lack such warmth, although it can be compensated for with bass, in my opinion. Hardly anyone knows about this, let alone cares, so the more efficient transistors were able to dominate the market having replaced tube radios.
Not that there wasn't any means of comparison before the age of the transistor. The crystal radio gives great fidelity—depending on the headphones—without any tubes in the circuit. I built one as a kid, and it was what I listened to in my room. Crystal radios need a long outside antenna and lack selectivity. They are very broad, unable to narrow their selection much. They were at first replaced by regenerative receivers—adding a little feedback/amplification—and tuned radio frequency (TRF) receivers cascading several tuned amplified circuits in series. An improvement, but what really did the job was the superhetrodyne receiver that mixed the incoming signal with a self generated variable frequency signal to produce a fixed intermediate frequency which lent itself to narrow filtering. It's been the king of AM radio receivers ever since.
Somebody got a bright idea to save money by eliminating the transformer needed to boost the voltage for the plates of the tubes and to knock it down for the filaments. They made tubes whose plates could run on straight rectified (and filtered) AC, designing the filaments so that five of them in series could be supplied by the AC mains. Voilà, so was born the five tube AC/DC radio which graced the tables of Americans from coast to coast. Since these superhet circuits were all the same, and since they all used the same five tubes, the performance of all those AM radios was identical no matter the brand and no matter the price. The FCC assigned AM frequencies so the radio stations wouldn't interfere with each other, and even then all the slots were hardly used. Consequently when transistor radios came on the scene, there was no real incentive to make them any, or much, better than their tube counterparts, so there's been the same blandness in AM reception ever since.
Radio Done Right
Enter technophile Roy Hall of Music Hall. He wanted better AM (and FM) reception in a table radio, and it just wasn't available, so he built and marketed his own, the RDR-1, Radio Done Right. He started with the platform for a Sangean WR2 and built his own radio on top of it. Looked good to me. I was prepared to go buy one from a local outlet ( http://www.musichallaudio.com/dealers.php ) but discovered one on ebay so saved a few bucks.
Drawbacks
Before I go lauding all its fine features, I want to mention three drawbacks I've discovered—at least they're drawbacks to me—and what I've done about them. (I'm a ham radio operator and am accustomed to treating my equipment as malleable to my purposes.) First is a safety feature. The RDR-1 comes with a two-pronged detachable line cord for AC. One of the prongs is wider than the other which goes to the "ground" side of an AC socket which is wider than the "hot" side—if your house is wired correctly. It can't fit the other way.
This probably makes little difference as there are no dangerous voltages exposed regardless. I don't have a schematic diagram for the RDR-1, but it is likely the 120 V. AC goes through a transformer to step down the voltage which is then filtered for DC for the semiconductor circuit. Safe low voltages. When I plugged it in, though, I could sense a minute tingling on the back of my hand moving it across the face plate. Most likely that comes from a little bit of capacitance coupling from the transformer to the ground side of the DC circuit. I tested my house plug against an earth ground and found that it was wired correctly, broad socket side to ground, narrow to AC voltage. What I did next was clip the edges of the flanges of the broad side of the plug to make them both the same size then plugged it in in the reverse direction. Lo and behold, no tingling when I ran the back of my hand across the face plate.
Of course, I'd want to repeat this test whenever I plug it into another socket, but I check that out routinely anyway, so that's not a problem. I wouldn't recommend clipping anything unless you know what you're doing. My radio may have been a fluke, the one in a million wired backwards, so don't "fix" yours unless you've tested it and got the same results, and still don't do it unless you are prepared to retest your setup every time you move your radio's location to a different plug. On the other hand it's easy enough to undo this mod by buying another plug-in cord. It's removable and uses standard connectors.
The second modification was to the on-off button. The one in the picture is orange, but mine is a sexy cobalt blue. It's good aesthetics but it gave off too much light when it was turned on, next to my bed at night. After considering and rejecting several options, I ended up putting a small circular smiley-face sticker on the button, just big enough to cover the light emitting flange. It cuts down the light to a tolerable amount, it doesn't hurt the aesthetics, and it is removable with a tiny yank.
The third mod has to do with the clock display. On an otherwise crafty LCD layout, the time and radio frequency are difficult to differentiate especially when viewed edgewise. While the frequency might say AM 1140 the time will read, say, AM 11:40 with the colon flashing with the seconds and sandwiched in there tight. If I need to read the clock in a hurry, and especially if I'm looking at it edgewise, depending on the time of day and the radio station I'm tuned to, I won't know whether I'm looking at the time or frequency. I don't want to have to stop and puzzle it out every time I look at the clock.
So I followed the procedure to change the time to a 24 hour format. That centers the time on the screen and eliminates the AM/PM designation. Much easier to tell time now. Of course, I'm used to 24 hour clocks, so I can make the conversion in my head easy enough. If you try this and don't like it, you can always set it back.
Performance
Now for the performance of the radio itself: In a nutshell it is easy on the ears, easy on the eyes, and easy on the hands. It was designed to improve selectivity and sensitivity, and it quits itself well in that regard. I couldn't detect any difference on AM connecting an outdoor antenna to it, so I've stuck with the internal ferrite one. The weird late night talk show I listen to sometimes doesn't start locally until after the first hour has gone by, so I had taken to listening to that first hour from a station in a neighboring state. (At night signals bounce off the ionosphere so one can get distant stations.) By neighboring state I mean one I've no call to go to, but we play their team at football.
Just 10 KHz up the dial is an AM station from a neighboring town. By neighboring town I mean one I would take the train to, but the conductor would chide me for getting off at the first stop. With my previous AM radio, a Sony "Dream Machine", I could hear the station I wanted so long as it was coming in strong, but when it faded, I was hearing to the other station. They were too close together to differentiate at times. With my RDR-1 I can tune in the distant station spot on with the PLL (phase locked loop) digital tuning, listen to it to my heart's content, and when it fades down real low, it's hard to make out, and I still hear some vestigial remnants of the other station in the background, but I don't miss much. On my short wave communications receiver which I have set on top of my RDR-1, and connected to an outdoor antenna, I just don't hear that other station no matter how weak my station gets, but said receiver is optimized for voice and doesn't have the fidelity to capture music well. If talk is all you ever listen to, then you might want to get a radio optimized for the (male) human voice, like the CC Radio; otherwise the RDR-1 will probably outclass everything else for this application. Tuning across the dial at night, I've come across that late night show on other distant stations I wasn't even aware of until I listened with an RDR-1.
The fidelity of the RDR-1 is better than that of my big fancy radio with equalizer and big speakers. I don't know why that is. That's just my subjective impression. The RDR-1 has both bass and treble controls which are numbered from -7 to +7 on the LCD. If you turn them too fast, you'll need two "clicks" to change it one digit. That way your ear has a chance to discern what is happening before you are committed. The bass does a wicked job picking up African drums on FM. I've taken to listening to FM more now that I have great fidelity. The volume can be plenty loud enough at 7 watts. The volume control has to be turned several times to go through the LCD range of 0 to 60. That way you don't end up blasting yourself when you crank it up but have a chance to savor the volume as it changes.
The display back lighting can be turned off or varied in three steps, which is useful for listening both indoors and out, daytime and night. The settings are separate for when the radio is off or on. To use the sleep timer, which cycles from 15 to 120 minutes, you have to first turn the radio off before you set it. That way you can adjust the LCD brightness for the state you want it in when the radio goes off. With it on, even in sleep mode, the brightness control is set separately.
The alarm—either a beep or radio or both—comes on gradually so you aren't blasted out of sleep. You can then either get up, turn it off, or hit "snooze" for another 5 minutes. Any button except brightness is a default snooze when the alarm comes on, but not the volume control, and the tuning knob is disabled, the alarm station having been preset with the alarm. Don't get faked out. If you want to change the display from frequency to time when the alarm comes on, you'll put yourself into snooze mode. Also any button on the small remote control seems to activate the snooze when it's sounding the alarm.
On some FM stations, the call letters are automatically displayed. This is a feature the European stations utilize more, so I'll just leave it to you to read about it in the manual ( http://www.musichallaudio.com/product_files/rdr-1_/rdr-1.pdf ) if you're interested. FM listening tip: through the speaker, set for MONO reception; through earphones STEREO depending on material.
The ergonomics of the radio are better than I expected for such complicated gear. The more frequently used the feature, the fewer steps to activate it. Infrequent operations may require you to read the manual again, but you won't need them often. The tuning knob and volume knob are different in size and feel, so you won't mistake them in the dark. There is some tactile feedback associated with them as you digitally change settings. I expected this radio to be more unwieldy than my Sony Dream Machine, but taking into consideration the greater complexity, they are about the same. There's an inset press control to reset the microprocessor if it freezes. That only happened to me once, and I turned the radio off and back on again to restore operation without losing time, preset, and frequency settings.
The little remote control is real handy. I put a small convex mirror looking at the front panel, and I can operate my radio from the rear.
Changeable Programming
If I haven't convinced you to upgrade your radio yet because your favorite shows are all local which you receive just fine, or well enough, then I might point out that radio is fickle: station format and even ownership can and does change at the drop of a hat, and favorite personalities have been known to leave for greener pastures. I saw enough of that when I worked in radio—as chief engineer. Having a radio capable of pulling in distant stations gives you more options. Permit me to illustrate the possibilities.
Have you heard of the "fairness doctrine"? Because radio frequencies are a scare and regulated resource, the FCC in the early days imposed this two-pronged doctrine by which broadcasters were "required to provide coverage of vitally important controversial issues of interest in the community … and to provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints on such issues," this despite the First Amendment not to "abridge freedom of speech, or of the press." Nobody knows exactly what that "fairness" meant, and it wasn't vigorously enforced, but in practice it resulted in some boring public service programming at late hours of the night when nobody was listening.
The FCC examined it in 1984-85, with a public proceeding, and quietly repealed it in 1987. Along about 1989 talk radio started coming into its own which sparked all kinds of discussion of vital issues making any fairness doctrine passé, except perhaps to my progressive Congressman who favors it to rein in conservative talk shows. The public at large knows better and the progressives have been unable to bring it back.
Now there is talk of using a back door approach. Mark Lloyd, Obama's diversity czar, wants to not renew licenses of targeted stations in order to give ownership to persons of color, gays, and others who are not white males. This would strike a blow at conservative talk shows who got their ratings by merit through legitimate market forces, and at any rate doesn't require governmental intervention as it is relatively easy and inexpensive to start up new stations.
It reminds me of riding the bus the other day. I was the last one who could fit on with my bags and umbrella. I was standing in the door. When we came to the main stop, everyone in the front was flowing past me to get out, while they had me blocking those behind me. One of the exiting passengers stopped next to me in the door to tell me I as blocking the ones in the rear. I explained to him that as soon as the ones in front got out, I'd move forward allowing the ones behind me to exit. That's exactly what we did once he exited. He was the one stopped in the door plugging everything up. That reminds me of that diversity czar blocking the dynamic free flow of ideas that's protected in our Constitution thinking he is helping the fairness. To quote from David Von Drehle's article "The Agitator" in Sept. 28, 2009 Time Magazine, page 36, "The more the [talk show] host is criticized, the more committed the original audience becomes. And the more committed the audience, the bigger target it presents to the rant industry on the other side of the spectrum." Free speech is fine without the interference of a diversity czar, but if the public doesn't get it, and the progressives have their way, "if that happens, Rush Limbaugh, the poster boy of free speech, will be gang-muzzled"—from Rush Limbaugh, See, I Told You So, (New York: Pocket Books, 1993) p. 324. If people's favorite talk show host starts disappearing from their dials, they may start looking to buy radios that can pick him up in a distant city. The supply of the RDR-1s diminishes, and you go to buy one for some reason only to discover they're all sold out. This is just one speculative scene, which may or may not ever happen, but if you were to own an RDR-1, then rediscovering a favorite show that suddenly disappeared locally might require nothing more than turning your tuning knob at night.
Final Recommendation
In my opinion this radio lives up to its expectations, and if you would like to upgrade your home audio equipment with a table radio that exploits modern technology, this is the one to get.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
topreviewerman
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Member: Earl Gosnell
Location: Eugene, OR
Reviews written: 81
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
BSEE, U. of Cincinnati. Ordained minister, United Congregation of Friends. Poet Laureate, Longfellow, Colorado.
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