What You Need To Know About World Band Receivers
In order to appreciate this article fully, it is necessary to firstly define what is meant by a world band signal and then a world band receiver. A world band signal is a signal that may be picked up internationally by a receiver - such receivers are called world band receivers, or shortwave receivers. What the Reviews say
It appears that the world leaders in the production of world band receivers are indeed Sony (no surprise there then!), so it is necessary to browse the reviews and assess just how good (or bad) these world band receivers really are - and especially those made by the so-called world leaders. There are, in the main, two different types of world band receiver; the very powerful and quite big desktop receivers and the not so powerful, more compact, travel world band receivers. Having carried out a little research, a decent travel world band receiver would probably cost in the region of £54.00. This is indeed how much the Sony ICF-SW12S compact travel world band receiver would set you back. Pushing the boat out however, the Sony world band receiver, ICFSW7600G has an average rating of 4.2 out of 5 and retails at approximately $199.00. After reading the numerous reviews of this receiver, I have picked the best and worst features to highlight in this article. Some of the best features are as follows; it is well made (as would be expected from Sony), there is much attention paid to useful features, good sensitivity, good sound, definitely not as good as a desktop receiver but the performance is not sacrificed too much, it is built perfectly for use on the road, selectable SSB make it an excellent buy and finally, this model of receivers seems to compare favorably to competitors such as the Sangean 505 and 909 models. Sounds fantastic, but this world band receiver is not without its pitfalls. For instance, it will never compete with a desktop receiver, but then again it is not built for that and the general consensus appears to be that if you want more, pay more. Furthermore, it has been noted that when using an external antenna, the connector moves a mechanical switch inside the radio itself. A strange little annoyance that also came up was with the buttons - the letters printed on the buttons rubbed off after not much use. A further disadvantage to this receiver was the fact that although in general this receiver is good, the sound seriously suffers at frequencies over 15MHz in SSB mode - this diminished sound quality was referred to as "bird chirp" in one article I read. Also, if that wasn't disappointing enough, this receiver doesn't receive anything at all at frequencies over 28500 MHz. After a somewhat limited amount of research, it does at first glance appear that Sony are indeed the world leaders when it comes to the production of world band receivers, well at least the compact, traveling type and although there may be drawbacks and disadvantages to some models, it seems that the advantages of Sony's receivers will always out-weigh the very few disadvantages. |
