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I'm very happy with the Sangean WR-1 AM/FM radio I recently purchased. More importantly this radio brings in my favorite stations with excellent clarity, a clear warm tone and deep rich bass. Its metallic silver face and wood grain cabinet give it a high-quality stereo component appearance. which looks great on the table near my armchair. I didn't need an external antenna at all, and no more signal drift like I experienced with radios I've used before. An excellent buy.
Small footprint. Bought for family member who needed a simple dial for tuning. Great sound. It replaced an old Sony Boom box that had big speakers and poor tiny sound. Easy to tune, adjust volume, and turn off. You will not be disappointed if you only need AM-FM. Good price for a quality product. Bought other Sangean radios in the past and I believe the products are the BEST for reception, sound, & lasting quality.
I listen to NPR exclusively, so this radio is exactly right, small as a loaf of bread, simple to regulate, and good sound. At last I have found a radio that does not require an operating manual to set all kinds of gizmos that wake me up, put me to sleep, tell me the time, or make my coffee. The sound is perfect, and it is easy to tune. It was delivered in two days from the time I ordered it, and now has a spot on my desk to keep me company as I work at the computer. It replaces a Boston Acoustics which has developed a husky voice.
It's so simple to use. This is a very good looking radio. It's nice to have a product that doesn't come with a whole booklet full of directions. The sound is great and I don't notice all the bass that others have mentioned in reviews. I am very happy with this radio and would recmmend it to friends.
We have ours on the kitchen counter, and even at moderate volume, the junk on the counter resonates when somebody is just talking on the radio. In this case it seems poorly matched to the speaker, which is perhaps too much speaker for a cabinet this small. Amplification duties are handled by a single, unmarked IC in a heatsinked, single inline package. The only reason I kept this was that it's tuner is so good. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but the material is extremely dense and the cabinet is definitely resonating.
Aside from the compact transformer based power supply, the radio is contained on two circuit boards, one in front containing mostly radio stuff, one in back containing mostly power amp stuff and back connectors. A great radio should make it sound like people on the radio in the same room as you, not speaking over a PA system at the bottom of a well.In fact, the bass was so objectionable, it was almost unlistenable. I'd avoid this model, or any similar Sangean model unless it had a tone control.Update: my wife found the bass so objectionable, she went out and bought a cheap clock radio to replace it. It's just too much for this cabinet.Second update: I soldered in a 220 microfarad non-polarized capacitor in series with the speaker. The audio quality would be great, except it has waaay to much bass.
The more I think about this, the more I am convinced the best course of action would be to replace the speaker with a more appropriate one. Theoretically covering the resonsance port would make this worse, but it seems move the boom to a less objectionable frequency. It is a wood resin composite -- something like bakelite. To see if the radio could be salvaged, I opened up the box.
This is possibly a TDA1010 or similar, which is mainly targeted at the car audio market.There are two issues, I think, that cause the objectionable "boom" sound. The objectionable "boom" is actually subsonic; you can feel it in other parts of the house. I like the old school analog tuner, which is easy to use and pulls in stations really well. It might be possible to add weight to the case to shift the resonance lower.In any case, this case is certainly not "walnut", it is wrapped in tough synthetic sheeting with walnut grain printed onto it. She sheet is actually overlapped on the bottom of the cabinet, and if you actually look at the "wood grain" you see it twists around the corners in ways that wouldn't happen on a real wood cabinet.That said, the fact that this is not actually wood isn't necessarily a problem, it's a high quality plastic cabinet. It's not that the speaker is bad, far from it. Replacing this with a different unit might help, either a cheap unit with less bass capability, or a more expensive one with an aftermarket crossover.The second issue is the cabinet, and some people might find this important for different reasons. Although the radio is still bass heavy, the boom seems somewhat attenuated.
I took a piece of packing tape and put it over the resonance port in the back, which took enough of the edge of the bass to make it marginally acceptable. I've ordered a 7.0 mh inductor from Parts Express using Amazon. The first is the speaker, which is a rather massive 3.5" unit similar to those used in car audio. The cabinet is not "wood" except by the most liberal definition of the word. Given that the speaker is 4 ohms, this should result in a low pass filter with a loss of 3db at 180Hz, 9db at 90Hz, 15db at 45Hz etc. Putting this in parallel with the speaker should net no noticeable reduction above 200Hz, 3db at around 130 Hz, and 12db/octave thereafter, yielding a 15db reduction at 64Hz, a more dramatic reduction of subsonic boom.
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