Gary Makes the Case for Not Getting a Bedside Analog Radio

 

Regarding my enthusiasm for the future release of the Sangean WR-15 as a bedside radio, Gary writes:

I don't like using analog radios for bedside use, for a couple of reasons:

1) Lack of presets. I like being able to easily change among several stations. Radios with dedicated presets are the best for this, and one can learn to operate them without even seeing the radio. Among currently-available radios, the Sangean WR-2, PR-D5, PR-D15, PR-D7 and the C. Crane CCRadio-2E come to mind as having this feature. My bedside radio is a Sony ICF-2010 from around 1986. I think it has 32 dedicated preset buttons.

2) Frequency drift. All of my analog radios exhibit drift that increases with time and the amount of temperature change. Use for eight hours overnight in a room where the temperature is probably dropping is a good test of frequency drift. My GE Superadio (original version), GE Superadio 3, CCRadio-EP and Tecsun R-308 all exhibit noticeable drift.

So I'll stick with a digital radio with dedicated presets as my bedside radio. If you only listen to one station all the time and you can find an analog radio with no drift, then a digital radio with dedicated presets might not be needed.

Related articles

State of the Radio Collection 2015: "I've Got What I Want"

A Radio to Get Excited About? The Sangean WR-15 Analog Tabletop Radio

Comments

[Drive-In-Freak]

Bed....side? You mean you don't just sleep with them in the bed?..lol
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/12/15/ed/1215eda39ac4cae9d76833679ab9c132.jpg
Well, at least I'm not as bad as I used to be beck when I was driving a truck..
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/57/80/4a/57804ad58bdb561298512d35d2b9dd19.jpg
Cant tell I'm a bachelor or anything, can you?

[Drive-In-Freak]

Seriously, though...good point. I don't want to have to re-tune in my sleep either.
But..there's something kinda nice about the glow of tubes and the dial lamp I used to like..though perhaps it's a bit suicidal to sleep with a 50+ year old radio lit up next to you. It's nice to be able to not have to find the lamp for those middle of the nights runs.

My bedside radio now? I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's a laptop. Joey Reynolds isn't on in the middle of the night to lull me to sleep with mimes and slight of hand magicians (yes, on the radio), and I really don't want to hear crazy people and charlatans talk about u.f.o.s and ghosts all night even if it's on every other station on the dial. On the other hand, maybe I should switch over to FM and tune down into the land of the lost below 92. Maybe something down there will lull me into dreamland.

[Ulysses]

I wonder why analogue domestic radios with presets never took off, considering pretty much every analogue car radio had those push-button presets.

[Gary]

Ulysses,

I'm sure it could be done, but today it's all about minimum parts count and minimum mechanical complexity, which translate into minimum production cost. It's so much easier to implement presets in software on a digital radio than it would be to do it mechanically on an analog radio.

[Drive-In-Freak]

There were quite a few in the 30s and 40s.

[Angelo]

Also, on the older mechanical car radio pre-sets, I recall having to push pretty hard to get the dial indicator to move and change stations. Of course, you were pushing against the radio that was locked in the dash of the car. If you had to push that hard on a pre-set of a table top radio, it would probably move the radio backward as you pushed.

[Scooby214]

My two Sangean table radios, the WR-1 and WR-11, do not show drift when used for hours at at time. I can see one possible benefit to using a digital radio for bedside purposes: a sleep timer.

I can say that both my WR-1 and WR-11 have less-than-spectacular AM performance. They are great on FM, but suffer from interference when tuning in weaker AM stations. My Tivoli Model One, which in my opinion is inferior to the Sangean radios in many ways, does outperform my Sangeans in regard to weaker AM station reception.

[herculodge]

I don't need a sleeper timer and I listen mostly to FM. I had a Tivoli Model One about 10 years ago but too much FM drift and weak on FM so it had to go. If I were to keep a Tivoli Model One, I would have to hook it up to a roof antenna.

[Gary]

I think that, for most people, a sleep timer is a useful feature, and another advantage of a digital radio.

A problem with many Sangeans -- the PR-D5 being one example -- is artificially boosted bass, even at the headphone jack. Without a bass control, there is no way to fix it without modifying the radio. If you listen to high quality headphones on a PR-D5, the bass is unbelievably bloated. The frequency response at a headphone jack should be flat, not boosted 10 dB in the bass.

[Gary]

Gary DeBock's 2015 Ultralight Radio Shootout:

http://swling.com/blog/2015/03/gary-debocks-2015-ultralight-radio-shootout-review/