{"id":35957,"date":"2019-02-07T08:49:45","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/?p=35957"},"modified":"2019-02-07T08:50:22","modified_gmt":"2019-02-07T12:50:22","slug":"radiwow-r-108-tracking-down-mediumwave-am-birdies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/swling.com\/blog\/2019\/02\/radiwow-r-108-tracking-down-mediumwave-am-birdies\/","title":{"rendered":"Radiwow R-108: Tracking down mediumwave\/AM birdies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As I mentioned in a post yesterday<\/a>, I’ve been spending time with the Radiwow R-108 in an effort to give it a proper evaluation.<\/p>\n

One quirk that has been a little hard to pin down is the occasional DSP birdie on the mediumwave band. [BTW: A “birdie” an unwanted internally-generated noise which, in this case, manifests itself as a variable squeal. Click here to learn more<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

When I first received the R-108, I noticed that each time I turned it on while tuned to the mediumwave (AM broadcast) band, I’d hear a temporary birdie\/squeal that would last anywhere from two to seven seconds. After the initial noise, the squeal would go away.<\/p>\n

During long (one hour plus) listening sessions, the squeal would sometimes reappear for a few seconds seemingly at random.<\/p>\n

Turns out, there’s a pattern that I overlooked.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, I turned on the R-108 and a birdie was present on 1600 kHz. Unlike previous listening sessions, the variable squeal was persistent–it didn’t go away after a few seconds. I pulled out my phone and took a quick video (moving quite far away to show that my phone wasn’t the source of noise):<\/p>\n