Searching for the last true analog radio - Panasonic & 5 Core

do you know how some old car designs are kept in production in developing nations many years after they're discontinued in Western markets for example the original rear-engine air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle which was manufactured in Mexico for 25 years after production ended in Germany, well, I was hoping the same would be true with radios, because many of the radios these days that are manufactured in China even though they have what looks like an analog tuning dial they're actually based on a digital signal processor so when you tune this dial it's actually just telling that digital chip in it to retune itself to whatever frequency you're tuning it to and because the refresh rate of that system is not instantaneous you get an annoying choppiness when tuning across the dial so I was hoping somewhere in the world they're still making true analog radios just like they used to make back in the '80s and '90s where you get perfectly smooth tuning across the dial so with that in mind I found these two radios you see here first is this Panasonic RF-562DD2 their so-called retro design radio made in indonesia and this 5 Core T-22 radio made in India. First let's look at this Panasonic radio it comes with this nice brown vinyl carrying case which you can unsnap and remove. If you take the radio out it has a chrome finish grille and knobs on the front so indeed it's rather late 1960s / early 1970s kind of design aesthetic. It does come with a carrying strap as well which would attach here and here. It covers AM, FM, and shortwave from 6 to 18 MHz. It claims to have a big speaker on the side it has a mono earphone jack and a 3.6 volt DC power input. On the back is the band switch which is a rather inconvenient location for it and it runs on two D-cell batteries and there you can see Made in Indonesia and you can tell this is not primarily meant for Western markets because the only two languages on the box are English and Arabic. So is this a true analog radio? Let's turn it on and find out uh-oh, I'm hearing that telltale choppiness as I tune across the dial so I'm afraid this is also based on a digital signal processor chip -- it is not a true analog radio and also this so-called big speaker doesn't really sound that good. It's rather shrill and tinny and there's no tone control to improve it. Now I'll switch over to AM and it still has the same choppiness as we tune and it has a very rough and scratchy sound on AM that almost sounds like digital aliasing it's like the kind of sound I used to get when I would record audio on my old Sound Blaster card at a very low sampling rate. So clearly that's another artifact of the digital signal processor chip in this thing so unfortunately I think this Panasonic retro design radio is a fail. It looks nice, the build quality seems decent but it has that annoying digital tuner choppiness to it and although the AM reception is pretty good it has that aliasing effect which makes it very unpleasant to listen to so unfortunately I cannot recommend this radio and also I don't know what Amazon was thinking because they shipped it to me in this box -- they just slapped a shipping label on it they didn't even seal the flap; they just send it to me like this in the mail and somehow it arrived in one piece. And that leaves this 5 Core radio whose box somehow got smooshed even though it was shipped in an outer box which was not damaged this is the Pro Series 5 Core Sound of India multiband portable radio model T-22 with FM, AM -- also known as medium wave -- and shortwave established since 1984 and certified by electronics engineers and they even promote Yoga on the box it says "Yoga for harmony and peace" Made in India, "climbing the heights of quality, performance, trust, and reliability" it claims to have a high-range antenna with high sensitivity and it's more the size that I was expecting the Panasonic to be with its claim of having a big speaker but it's quite a bit smaller than the 5 Core radio and the first thing I notice is the low quality of the plastics they use to make this you can see the handle is not even put on straight and it has loose flashing at the edges. It looks like there's bubbles in the finish here. Overall, just a cheap, cheap feeling radio and it was originally designed to have an AC 220 volt and a DC 4.5 volt input but neither of them are provided they're just knockout plugs so you can only run this on batteries. It runs on two D-cell batteries. It looks like it might have originally run on three but for some reason now they only use two and there near the band switch which is also on the back on this one you can see the low quality of the plastic moldings but it was OK tested and they're proud of their ISO 9001 certification with this sticker here nonetheless maybe its reception and sound quality will exceed my expectations based on the quality of its cabinet so let's give it a try it has a nice clicky power switch on the volume control so the radio sounds very good on FM very nice rich sound; it's not shrill and tinny like that Panasonic radio let's try tuning see if this is a true analog tuner yes, no choppiness! This is a true analog radio tuner it gets the classical music station perfectly clear and that's not even with the FM antenna extended so very good reception on FM -- very good sound quality even though it doesn't have a tone control. So the FM works very well; let's try AM or medium wave it sounds excellent on AM as well and since it's appropriate here's our local Indian music station being played on this Indian-made radio just listen to how this digital tuner tunes in this weaker AM signal now compare it to this true analog tuner I think that proves it right there that the analog tuner is better than the digital tuner I discovered that the shortwave works a lot better if you leave the antenna folded up so it's not like other radios where it uses this as a shortwave antenna I think it's only using the internal ferrite coil antenna for shortwave so the shortwave reception is not that great; it only really picks up the stronger signals and the tuning is rather touchy because it doesn't have fine tuning but if you can get a signal turned in on shortwave it sounds pretty good and I looked on YouTube and nobody has reviewed one of these before so this is the very first review of one of these Indian-made 5 Core analog radios and I think they do have a right to be proud of their Indian-made "incredible sound" radio even though the quality of their plastic moldings could certainly use improvement. And if you want one of these 5 Core radios you can get them on eBay they cost about 25 dollars with free shipping from a U.S. seller

Channel: VWestlife

Views: 258,840

Keywords: radio, tuner, receiver, am, fm, sw, mw, shortwave, dx, dxing, analog, digital, dsp, tuning, dial, panasonic, retro, rf-562d, rf562d, vintage, 5core, 5 core, t22, t-22, india, indonesia, review, test, comparison, tc-22, tc22

Id: t1thDa4zeog

Length: 10min 58sec (658 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SamBorgman]

Is that really the last analog radio? I've been searching for a while but seriously, there has to be something better.