If you haven’t had a chance to weigh in on the Tecsun PL-660/PL-680 comparison surveys, you will need to do so by 23:00 UTC today.
I’m working on the Tecsun PL-680 review and need completed surveys for graphs/charts. The review should be posted this weekend.
If you haven’t voted yet, here are links to each receiver survey with comparative audio samples:
Responses for these surveys has been, quite frankly, amazing! At time of publishing this post, we’ve received 367 individual survey responses! Thank you!
The ideal test for evaluating synchronous detector performance was using, the former VOA Feeder transmitters, such as on 6.873, or 7.651. Each sideband carried a different program, with reduced carrier, of about 16 DB compared to the sidebands
My Sony ICF 2010, when properly calibrated, could maintain almost perfect lock even in deep fades. But only had fair sideband separation
Can we have a little hint?
I can’t endorse either set’s SYNC detector performance, as your testing parameters may need to be revised.
It is impossible to evaluate the actual effectiveness of the SYNC detector in either radio, unless A-B’ed with the AM detector during the same program recording session. For all we know, the demodulated SYNC could be better or worse on either or both sets, than when using of the AM diode detector circuitry.
Hi, Tom,
This is certainly not a controlled bench test–just a quick test where I pulled the best (to my ear) representative recordings. For example, one of the receivers struggles to maintain the sync lock when QSB is fast and deep, so you will hear this in the recording. All of the recordings are within 1 minute of each other–meaning, they were sampled within a 2.5 minute time-frame in most cases. I might invest in another digital recorder someday so that I can make simultaneous recordings.
Thanks for your comment!
Cheers,
Thomas
I’m missing a FM survey as well…
Hi, Pedro,
I did not perform surveys for FM, AIR band nor SSB due to a lack of time. It takes me the better part of one day to put together each survey.
Cheers,
Thomas