I was recently out driving to and from a small city out in the south county (Buckley, in SE King County) when I passed my favorite thrift store, a Goodwill located out in the exurbs (an area that used to be waaaaay out in the sticks). This Goodwill is one where I've gotten great deals on Sony Walkmen before -- including my Sports Walkman (pictured in another article here).
I went in to check out their books and electronics. Imagine my surprise when I saw a Sony HD Radio for sale there for $12.99!
The radio itself looks like a rounded, plug-in boombox, or massive clock radio. It has stereo speakers and apparently pushes them at a maximum of 4 Watts. It has no provision for batteries, and comes with a long AC cord with a large wall-wart attached.
Just seeing the words "SONY" and "HD RADIO" -- along with the low price, made me want to buy it.
A local HD AM station, KFNQ 1090, which is a CBS Sports Radio station. The little 'HD' icon (in the upper left part of the LCD display) shows that the radio was decoding and playing the station in HD, which sounded very much like FM, or a clean online stream.
A BIT ABOUT HD RADIO FOR OVERSEAS READERS
For those overseas who don't know about HD Radio, it is the version of digital radio broadcasting in the U.S. Overseas, DAB is the digital broadcasting method, and it is fairly popular in some countries (Norway, Denmark, and the UK being examples). In other countries DAB is still in the building stages. No one knows if it will truly replace FM in those countries.Here in the U.S. DAB was considered but rejected as a digital radio delivery system. There are just too many commercial broadcasters for DAB to work fairly. So they came up with HD Radio instead, a digital means of broadcasting using FM and AM analog subchannels -- the digital signals would share the same channel as the analog broadcast. It is also known as IBOC: In Band On Channel.
It seemed at the time to be the 'best of both worlds' -- Digital Radio would be available, but the regular analog FM and AM broadcasts would be mostly unaffected.
I have been curious about HD radio for a while, as I see it as the ultimate future of over the air radio here in the U.S. The main problem with HD Radio, when it started, was that there weren't many radios available, and the few I saw in the early 2000's were very expensive. Recently Sangean has come out with an affordable model, the HDR-16, which seems to be a decent performer. I've held off on buying one, because, frankly, I need another radio like I need another hole in the head.
The top of the Sony XDR-S10HDiP, showing the control buttons. The power button is underneath the remote that is still taped to the radio. In the very center of the top of the radio is a dock for IPods (remember those?) and IPhones.
THE THRIFT STORE DELIVERS A SONY, YET AGAIN!
Even though I have enough radios, when I saw a SONY HD radio for $12 at the local thrift store, I couldn't pass that by! At the store, I plugged it in, and it worked. Of course, inside the store, there wasn't much FM or AM reception -- the radio needs an external antenna for both bands, and there wasn't any with the radio. But it worked, and that was enough reason for me to go ahead and buy it.
When I got it home, I set it on my makeshift workstand on the sunny front porch and plugged it in. The model number for this Sony is a long one: XDR-S10HDiP. According to the manual I found online, it is a radio Sony made in 2008.
So, now that we're in the second decade of the 21st Century, I have joined the first one, technologically.
As soon as the XDR radio switched on I tuned the FM band. Even without an external antenna, the XDR-S10HDiP received most of the local FM stations in standard FM -- I needed to rig up an antenna for it to get them better... Touching a 2 meter wire to the center conductor of the FM jack helped a lot. Then I switched over the AM band.
On the AM side a wire connected to the terminals on the back of the radio brought in all the local stations.
A picture of the back of the Sony HD radio. The radio is upside down in this picture. The FM antenna jack is a UHF one at the top; the AM antenna jack has a short piece of wire clipped to it (which I later replaced with 2 meters of hookup wire). I clipped the short length of wire just to see how the AM side works. There is apparently no internal antenna for the MW/AM band. The fan is to keep the radio cool -- the main chips apparently run a bit hot.
No sooner than I tuned to KKDZ 1250, which I knew broadcast in HD, it faded from mono analog AM to HD, and it sounded like an FM station! Then the call letters appeared on the display.
AND... SUDDENLY... BOOM! HIGH FIDELITY AM
I was trying to figure out how to get HD on the radio when I tuned to one of the local two AM stations that have it, 1250 KKDZ, a station that plays South Asian programming from India and Pakistan mainly. KKDZ 1250 came in well. As I was photographing the radio on my front porch all of a sudden the sound of the station went from AM's boomy mono to an FM-like, high fidelity sound!I was amazed. It doesn't sound 100 percent like FM -- you can tell there is some digital compression. But I was very impressed. The switch from analog to HD was like a quick fade, like fading from an AM station to an FM station.
Then I tuned the Sony to the other local HD AM station, 1090 KFNQ, which is CBS sports.
Once again, the radio was in standard AM mono for about 10 seconds, then all of a sudden it faded into high fidelity, FM-like sound. There wasn't any loss of programming, it was a clean fade. It was quite amazing to hear, at first. Whoever programmed the chips on this Sony knew what they were doing.
AMAZINGLY SENSITIVE RADIO ON MW/AM!!
A couple nights ago, I tuned around on the Sony, with just a six foot (two meters) wire off the back of the antenna terminal, and heard most of the regional AM stations I can get on most of my radios, including stations from Oregon, California, Canada, and the graveyard channels. I didn't have a chance to try to truly DX with it, saving that for the next night.The next night I tuned across the entire AM band with the XDR. To my surprise, with just the 2 meter wire connected to the AM antenna jack the XDR brought in DX stations like XERF and KCVR on 1570. 1570, like most of the X-band, is a DX test frequency here in the PNW U.S., as it is usually empty except for XERF down on the Mexican border.
To my surprise, XERF's oldies-ranchero music was audible on the Sony XDR, and some Spanish speech from KCVR Lodi, California's Deportes programming was also audible.
At night the XDR detected HD from stations like KSL 1160, Salt Lake City (causing the 'HD' indicator on the display to blink) -- but the signals weren't strong enough for the XDR to actually decode the HD. The Sony XDR has very good selectivity -- there was minimal splash from strong adjacent channels, and good, full sound.
A picture of the Sony XDR-S10HDiP bringing in KBRE 1660 Merced, California during the late afternoon, August 9th. It was just before 7 p.m., but the sun was still in the sky for another hour and a half. You can see one bar of signal in the upper left corner of the LCD readout. This was on six feet (two meters) of wire. The XDR series are very good on MW/AM.
Finally, just this morning I did a quick, short side-by-side test between the Sony XDR-S10HDiP and my Sangean PR-D5. The antenna I used with the Sony was the 6 ft. / 2 meter wire. The PR-D5 was using its own 200 mm internal antenna. It was a poor DX night with typical summer conditions. 1660 KBRE Merced, California (the station is about 850 miles away from here) came in S1-S2 with some peaks of S3 on the Sony. It was S1 to S2 with some peaks at about S2 on the PR-D5. I think much of the difference is the sound: the Sony has a slightly wider bandwidth.
And this test was with the Sony using merely 6 feet of wire.
When I looped the 2 meters of wire and connected each end to the terminals on the back of the radio, the XDR pulled in even more signals, with a lower noise level. The chipset inside this radio is remarkable on MW/AM.
I'm amazed that more MW DXers don't use the Sony XDR series of radios!
THE SONY XDR IS ALSO VERY GOOD ON FM, TOO
I had a chance to tune through the FM band earlier during the afternoon, and the Sony XDR pulls in all the stations my best FM radios will pull in, including three stations from Victoria, Canada, which aren't audible daily -- Victoria is about 100 air miles away, with some hills and other terrain in between them and my location. With no external antenna only the strongest local FM stations came in. Then I pulled the 2 meter wire from the AM antenna terminal and pushed it into the center conductor of the FM antenna jack.
Bingo! The FM band was full of stations, including HD channels!
I got HD FM on many FM stations... Including 15 extra channels that aren't on the regular FM band. Kidz Bop radio, Radio Saigon, Radio Disney, an Oldies channel, a Jazz/Blues channel, a CBC channel (a Seattle station's HD-2), two extra Classical music channels, a Classic Country channel, and FMHD broadcasts of 5 Seattle area AM stations.
Overall I'm impressed with the Sony's performance.
When you tune into an FM station with HD, there is a 5-10 second lag as the radio tells you it is "Linking" -- then it comes in either in analog or HD. Sometimes the radio brings in the analog signal and then about 5 more seconds into hearing the station you hear a subtle difference in sound as the radio switches from analog FM to HD FM. The display changes from just showing the frequency to showing the call letters, as well as the HD channel number.
As you tune up and down the band on the Sony XDR you tune through the HD channels as well as analog. Tuning upwards you'll go through the station, then HD-2, then HD-3... and tuning downwards the radio will tune down through HD-3, HD-2, and then HD-1. HD-1 is always the FM station's main channel.
Unlike what I've read on the internet about some car radios that have HD, the transition from analog to HD on the Sony XDR is almost non-noticeable (except on HD AM, where there is a distinct change in sound, similar to switching from AM to FM). In fact, you have to listen for the transition to actually hear it.
Perhaps with car radios you can have dropouts, and the buffering causes a silence as the radio re-catches the HD signal. But with a stationary radio like the Sony XDR, there are no dropouts.
A BIT ABOUT THE SONY XDR-S10HDiP
After doing some research, I learned a bit about how the Sony XDR works. It apparently is a cousin of the famous FM/AM tuner XDR-F1HD, which is popular with FM DXers all over the world. I haven't taken apart my radio, but from looking in through the fan hole I can tell that the XDR-S10HDiP has basically the same guts as the XDR-F1HD, except it is in a different box, with a 4 Watt amplifier and two speakers attached. As several radios in the XDR series are reported to have the same circuitry, and my XDR came out the same year as the XDR-F1HD, it's certain that the chips used are probably the same.
A view of the inside of the Sony XDR S10HDiP. It's very similar to the board layout in the other Sony XDR inside-pictures found on the internet. The two large metal enclosed modules (left center of the pic) are the small boards containing the radio chips: one has the TEF6330 / SAF7730 RF DSP chips, and the other one has the HD Radio chips. The heat sinks (right center, sticking upwards) are large because the radio is capable of 4 watts output.
The heart of the tuner section of the XDR series of radios is the TEF6730 DSP IF chip, made by NXP. It is a very sensitive and selective chip, and it tunes itself to whatever antenna you have attached to the radio -- not unlike the famous SiLab's series of DSP IF chips in other radios, which also do this.
There is a large chip that works with it, which also has DSP. Apparently that chip, the SAF7730, further demodulates the stereo. Another tuner block in the XDR series of radios contains the HD Radio decoder. Both sets of chips apparently generate a lot of heat: hence, the fan in the back of my radio.
I can attest to the fact that the XDR series are DX radios: this XDR Just before posting this, I pulled in KBRE 1660 The Bear when the sun was still up (about 7:30 p.m.), during summer.
Like its XDR cousins, the Sony XDR-S10HDiP has 20 presets for each radio band, which are easy to program: you press the 'Enter' key for a couple seconds after tuning into your station. The radio beeps, a memory location will blink on the display, and you press 'Enter' again.
Tuning the radio is easy -- just use the up and down buttons. On AM you can hear the channels momentarily as it tunes up or down across the band. The volume is switched using the up and down Volume buttons. There are other buttons that are for IPod and IPhone users -- they are easy to ignore if needed. There also is an AUX IN (called "Audio In" on this Sony) that I haven't used yet, but like with the Sangean radios you can plug in a tablet or whatever using a mini stereo headphone jack.
The tone is adjustable, using the "Menu" button. I haven't messed with that yet.
There is a remote that came with the radio. It works. It has come in handy a couple times when I'm sitting at my writing desk and want to quickly adjust volume without getting up, going over to the radio, etc.
A view of the back of the XDR with the new mono jack installed. You can also see the MW single loop antenna (green wire -- both ends of a 2 meter loop of wire) and a stiff piece of wire shoved into the center terminal of the FM antenna jack (it still works well -- brings in all FM HD channels as well as regular analog FM).
ONE QUIRK: SOME 1-2 SECOND DROPOUTS ON AM/MW
There are no major 'quirks' to this radio I've noticed yet, aside from what appears to be a microprocessor glitch, or perhaps it is over-reactive noise reduction: the sound cuts out completely from time to time for a second or two, at least on the MW/AM band. When this happens, the LCD readout still shows operation as per normal, but the "HD" icon blinks. It does this on frequencies that have no HD at all. I think that there is some RFI or noise that must be tricking the radio into thinking there is HD when there really isn't. I haven't had the radio on FM for extended periods of time to see if it happens on FM also.
[EDIT, Nov. 2023: I have since read that this is a natural occurance for this radio, and other XDRs -- there will be slight cutouts in AM reception when the XDR 'sees' some HD somewhere.]
An online search revealed that at least one Sony XDR-F1HD user experienced dropouts on FM, but he never mentioned whether it was also occurring on AM also.
The smart electric meter to my place sometimes puts out a short burst of hash. On the PR-D5 it's reduced in volume -- the Sony XDR cuts it out completely. Whether the dropouts on my XDR were related to that or not, I just don't know.
So far, nothing else quirky has occurred with this radio.
I normally don't listen to KEXP, but this particular morning they were playing a huge block of 90's grunge-era and other 90's alternative music, celebrating the playlists of other major college alternative stations of the late 1980's-early 1990's, when rock music was very active with all kinds of alternative rock artists. It was like a blast from the past. As you can tell from the readout, the Smashing Pumpkins were playing when I took this photograph.
OVERSEAS DXers? Sony XDR's have 10 kHz Steps on MW
For those overseas, the Sony XDR series would make great FM and AM DX radios, but the main weakness of using a Sony XDR overseas on MW is that the MW/AM band is set to 10 kHz steps only. There doesn't appear to be any way of changing it to 9 kHz.Of course, the HD Radio features overseas would be useless, as no overseas country that I'm aware of has HD Radio -- overseas digital radio is DAB or DRM.
There are quite a few overseas FM DXers that use the Sony XDR-F1HD, my radio's cousin, which has the same basic circuitry.
A pic of the XDR-S10HDiP with a mono headphone jack installed for MW/AM band DXing and FM-mono listening (I don't listen to FM through headphones much). It was easy to do once I figured out how to get the wires around the speaker baffles, so that the case would close properly (I drilled tiny holes for the wires, as can be seen here). I used terminals off of each speaker because it was easier to get my solder gun/iron in there without messing up other wiring. As with my Sangean PR-D5 mono jack installation, I used silicone glue (and a tiny bit of super glue) to hold the mono jack in place.
NO HEADPHONE JACK -- So I Wired A Mono Jack for AM Only
One minor quirk with these radios is that there is no headphone jack. I remedied this for the AM band by wiring up a mono jack the same way I did with my Sangean PR-D5 -- I wired it in parallel with one of the speakers. In this case, I took the negative side off one speaker and the positive side off of the other (it was easier soldering that way without risking messing something up). For mono AM, there should be no difference. I never intend to use the headphone jack for FM stereo -- the speakers work perfectly fine for that. But for MW/AM DXing, sometimes headphones help.After testing out the headphones, I found that the wiring makes FM come out through the headphones in FM Mono.
I'm sure that someone with more time to spare and the need could just as easily wire a stereo headphone jack using the speakers... Just make sure in all cases you keep the volume down.
As I mentioned before -- this radio can put out 4 Watts of audio.
A grasshopper has decided to live in my house this summer.
The river is lower than I've seen it in years.
The local trail at dawn.
A 747 in the morning sun. Probably arriving from somewhere far away. A lot of flights to Asia and Europe fly in and out of Sea-Tac.
HD RADIO -- Possibly the Future of AM (and FM) Radio In The U.S.
I realise that a lot of AM and FM radio enthusiasts in the United States HATE HD radio. I am not one of those people.
I love DXing, but I don't despise hearing IBOC block a couple channels when HD may be the only remaining future for AM in a few years. AM radio is slowly fading in popularity, and HD may be the only thing keeping it alive in 20 years. A majority of modern car radios have HD AM capability, and after hearing the impressive sound of HD on AM I am more fully convinced that it may be the future of AM -- if AM really has any future aside from TIS Travellers information stations and government emergency broadcasts.
A local AM station north of Seattle ran a full-digital test a couple years ago, and apparently the results were promising. Any HD radio will also pull in full channel HD, even on AM. I can see where some day the only surviving broadcast stations on AM may be fully digital. Over-the-air radio and TV may ultimately disappear, but the fact that it is free is something that may keep over-the-air broadcasting alive.
A lot of FM DXers loathe HD radio, as it blocks some of their DX channels. What these guys forget is that HD Radio provides listeners with local programming that otherwise you wouldn't get on FM: Oldies, Blues, Jazz, etc. I know that the local FM stations here have Oldies, Blues, Radio Disney (which left the AM band two years ago), Jazz, and the BBC on their HD channels -- as well as a couple AM station's HDFM broadcasts, and even a 'dead' Seattle station still survives on HD ("Click 98.9", a decent alt-pop and rock station that flipped to Rock a year and a half ago).
HD isn't perfect, obviously, but it works. No radio is perfect: FM has terrain shadows, 'flip-flip' noises as you drive, dead spots, etc., and AM has lower fidelity than most people want, and there is always the coverage issue as well as RFI. HD radio has its issues, too.
But it's free. And overall, it sounds very good.
The moon at the end of August, 2017 (All pics taken on my Nikon L32 snapshot camera).
THRIFT STORES OFTEN PAY OFF FOR RADIO AFICIONADOS
In closing -- once again, a chance trip to a thrift store paid off. I'd suggest that any reader who is interested in checking out HD radio do not overlook one of the used Sony models -- if this XDR-S10HDiP is any indication, Sony's HD radios are very good performers. Some of them may be available used on the internet at decent prices.And for the MW DXers out there, don't overlook the Sony XDR series of radios!! If what I've seen is any indication, they are excellent performers on MW/AM, even with limited antennas.
I've included a few extra, non-radio photos in this post, most taken over the end of August.
Right now the nights are getting cold (49F) and Fall is in the air. Halloween will be here soon, as will MWDX season. Here's hoping you all are having a great September.
CC 8-2017 and 9-16-2017
ADDENDUM, November 10th, 2023:
A reader from India is wondering if there is any way to get the XDR-S10HDiP to receive MW in 9 kHz channel regions outside of North America. Sadly, after several searches, I have found no way that this can be done. The Sony XDRS10 series of radios seem to be 10 kHz stepped only on MW.
Here is a link to the manual, which only lists 10 kHz steps for MW.
Apologies to anyone overseas who has an XDR and can't DX MW with it... But FM is apparently so good that maybe FM DX could make up for that. :-)
RIP, Boots the Cat:
Also, the cat on the bumper of the blue car in the last pic in this post is Boots the Cat. She was a really good cat, and a great little pal. I first got her, as a small kitten, in March of 2007, and during mid-2023 she began to get ill, and she gradually got weaker and weaker. Giving her kitten formula helped extend her life for maybe 6 months. She finally died on the morning of my birthday, in October. It was a tough hit to take, but she did live a long life for a cat -- 16 years and 7 months. God rest my little kitty.
