Wanted to point out that myself too! I actually owned a phone with that exact model number (BL-5C), a Nokia 3120 (a cosmetic upgrade to the somewhat better known 3100 model).
Sdttn I thought maybe the plastic piece was for removing the battery cover or something; I’ve never heard of a stand being done that way, it seemed incredulous to me.
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No, your English is fine. I think Fixy was just amazed that they would tie the stand on like that, haha
The sensitivity/reception of this little gem can be GREATLY improved with a little work. I removed the stock am ferrite bar antenna and replaced it with an am ferrite antenna pulled from the legendary Sony SRF-39. Some plastic whittling was necessary for a snug fit, but it WILL fit. After re-soldering the litz wire leads to the circuit board I proceeded to replace the flimsy wire attached to the fm telescopic antenna. After putting this radio back together the difference in am and fm sensitivity is amazing. (Radio enciclopedia 530 am in Habanna Cuba-1100 miles!
Really nice, i like the feature of this radio. In en other comment, someone said that he replace the wire from antenna to board with a shilded one and the elecric static dissapear.
I followed your method and it does improve AM reception a bit. However, we do not gain much because the LCD screen parasitizes the waves anyway as soon as we bring it closer to reassemble the radio. As for improving FM, I didn't quite understand your method.
Kinda funny. Has China made too many Nokia batteries so they are now getting used in other devices also? Maybe it is cheaper to buy that radio than battery to old Nokia.
by the way, there's been a hardware improvement/revision to this radio. it's the "PRUNUS J-401" (or equivalent) it's basically the same innards with less interference and better and easier controls, including dedicated tuning and separate preset buttons. no need to worry with clip on antennas either because the AUX port doubles as an antenna jack. it's also just built better in general, and is a little larger and heavier in the hands. also rn it's $18 on amazon rn.
Beware that the Prunus J-401 is subject to its volume control wheel breaking off! Prunus will gladly make things right usually by replacing the radio. Apparently this problem has been corrected...
I Googled the shortwave station on 5.92 MHz, and it's the Angel 2 service from World Harvest Radio International (part of LeSEA) out of South Carolina.
First of all the sound of the one I got was amazing for its size, good full bass from a tiny radio. Second after I connected a long wire it picked up over a dozen short wave stations from around the globe. The radio will work via usb even if there is no battery but that easy to replace battery is cheap to get. The only downside to it is that the line in seems to record in mono but if you want to record talkshows that is ok. I was so taken with this radio that I bought a second one for use with audiobooks because it remembers where you left off. This is a fantastic little radio.
I recently learned the MicroSD card slot on many china-made products are labeled as TF card instead of MIcroSD for reasons of licensing. so while they will likely work with any MicroSDHC card or whatever, they're not licensed to use the MicroSD name. that's basically it. there is no other reason-- it's because the license for the name costs a fortune... I think.
TF is short for TransFlash which was the original name for microSD cards. I guess the Chinese use it to avoid having to pay the SD Association to get certified.
It’s more than licensing. It’s certification and payment for use of the technology specifications they did not design. In other words, they are stealing.
That BL-5C is a bloody copy of the old Li-Ion batteries that were used in the old mobile phones made by Nokia. They even kept its model name, that's absolutely fantastic…
Not that surprising actually, since you can find bulk unbranded replacement batteries for really old phones even today. Just enter that model name in the ebay search field and you'll find hundreds of results.
The 128kbps, 96kbps, and 64kbps recordings didn't sound any different LOL. The first song by the Police in 128k sounded like the old dial-up online radio stations from 15-20 years ago.
When used with the right earphones with the correct impendence, it actually performs good for playing MP3s and recording some samples off the radio/line in, which is what I do (the correct impedance is important, since the amp is very low stock). This machine is probably the modern equivalent of a 90's kitchen radio tape recorder, but with alot more functionality, which is a start if you're right at the base of what you can afford. For professional or higher incomes, of course you're not gonna go for this and there is alot more out there. If enough of us write to the Tividio manufacturers (and that of the other identical versions like the Audiomax SRW-710S) then they may well improve the features and the quality. If a western manufacturer decides to make one at an affordable price with higher specs, then I'd go for that one in a bat of an eye, but as the saying goes 'beggers can't be chosers'. This does incredibly well for the price, so I'm not gonna knock this and have planned to buy more.
That battery's common and dirt cheap, it's a knockoff copy of the Nokia BL-5C type battery, probably one of the few older mobile phone style batteries that's still popular due to its' size and capacity... :)
Yep, I use to work for Dollar General a few years back, and a lot of the cheap junk Chinese Mp3/media players, and digital video cameras we sold used them if they did not use either a soldered in battery, or AA/AAA batteries.
Yep that cell is in all kinds of comercial devices, costs like £3 on eBay or Amazon. The radio is great for the price £14 I paid and then £6 for 2 extra cells and £2.50 for a retractable clip on antenna.
the wire from the board to the telescop-antenna is not shielded. I changed this wire with a shielded one an the problem with the poor reception disappeard.
That BL-5C battery used to be popular in Nokia phones, but pretty much is the standard for many Chinese Bluetooth speakers, although I guess it's logical for radios to include them instead of the usual 2xAA or AAA. Luckily with the battery's popularity, they're easy to find
"There's nothing in there about your best life now. Somebody made that up. It's a little bitty slogan they come up with." -Random guy on shortwave radio
Just grabbed one of these to have. Also got 2 spare barriers and a charger for like $18 because I've heard issues with the charging cable and I can charge batteries while using it with another battery. Just arrived today. So we will see
3:37 That's a Nokia BL-5C clone, those are rather easy to find. In fact, back in around 2010 or so, when I had a different radio (from another Chinese company), I could just swap the batteries between that and my Nokia 1112 (which used a BL-5CA battery, which is similar) that I had at the time.
Wow! The BL-5C is the Nokia Battery type that was used in the late 2000's towards 2007-2010. I had a Nokia 1600 phone with this exact same battery. This battery was also used in other Nokia phones like the Nokia 1100 if I can recall correctly.
I purchased one of these about a year ago and I agree about the radio side of it but the line in records in stereo and gives decent results on the set when recording straight from say a CD player it is also good for D/L free podcasts from radio stations on your computer via the SD card and playing them back through the radio. Also good for recording from a digital radio source such as DAB via the line in as well,the sound is excellent for the size of the speaker and the battery as given no problems and lasts well...........I paid £12.00 for mine and keep meaning to take a peek inside to see if I can improve the poor radio interference with better shielding or putting in a better Ariel...........You could even copy your cassettes over to the it.
Thank you for the review. I find my Tecsun PL-310ET very useful though, especially for shortwave, but it's very good for FM as well. Granted it's a bit more expensive.
The headphone jack output is extra crappy because it's taken directly from the DSP chip and it's not exactly suited for that. The speaker output is better because it has a separate amplifier. For faster direct tuning entry and also for skipping the wait for the volume prompt to go away you can use the play/pause button. As you have stated in another comment, the mp3 files are dual channel mp3, so the highest quality 128k is basically 2x64k.
the biggest problem with this radio is actually the display. if you search "v115 mod" you'll see someone put copper foil tape over the back of the display(and tie the tape to ground) and it cuts down the interference a LOT and makes it a decent radio. the only problem is that the ribbon is fragile and I broke mine trying to mod it(I opened it too many times but I did see a noticeable improvement on noise), I was able to return it because amazon, but keep that in mind. I assume the new prunus j-401 version is pre-shielded or something.
This is probably the best radio, if you want to use it as a dedicated Mp3 player. It has an extended display, EQ, and decent, well-balanced sound. I have the Retekess 115 reincarnation for several months and am very pleased and surprised how a radio that currently is selling at 17 USD at Amazon can provide so many useful features at such a low price. The built quality is solid and it has a nice feel to it. It is compact, sleek and amazing little thing. Just amazing!
I noticed when you were showing the stations you probably didn't notice but you had the antenna down you do have to pull the antenna up LOL it's all good I happen to love this radio and I do recommend buying it because of all the extra features you get with it
I've seen those on eBay and I was considering getting it. I'm glad I didn't! Also, I briefly had an MP3 player from China that had that same volume slider display; I bet this radio has the same thing but in a different cabinet. half the time, the MP3 file would stop half way through and then skip to the next song... and even with bassy headphones, it sounded absolutely horrible and tinny. Shortly afterwards, the thing stopped working entirely, so don't expect the MP3 functionality to be any good either. At least the unit isn't a total waste though; you helped to save a lot of people from buying this junk!
Your MP3 player had built in flash memory which was probably no good, whereas this takes a MicroSD card. The volume slider design is probably either copied (hey, if they can copy products designed by non-Chinese or high quality companies, who says the low-end brands can't copy from each other?), designed by the same UI team, or (from) some kind of generic firmware many of the low-end manufacturers use.
Doubt you will get same decent sound from such a small package. Unless you go 150$ versions of tecsun or forgo sw can and take sangean You can see the reviewer is elitist and asshat
the MP3 player in this one is actually really good. like actually good enough to say for $18 it's worth it as a MP3 player with a speaker built in. everything else about it is okay to bad, but the MP3 player is not one of them. I also know that youtuber 12voltvids basically uses his v115 as an MP3 player shop radio and he has no complaints with the MP3 player portion
Yep, and many Chinese makers copied them because they where cheap/easy to produce, and had a high capacity for their size so they where used in many cheap electronics not just phones. just beware of the really super cheap ones on eBay that claim something like 5000MaH as I got one for one of my Nokia flip phones years back, and it got really hot, and swelled after only a handful of charges.
Only one bad thing I discovered using this radio is that it depends on a battery with a built-in battery protection circuit, it doesn't have battery protection from over discharge, or over charge built into the radio circuit. So if you use a replacement BL-5C battery, make sure that the replacement battery has a protection circuit.
The thing on the lanyard is to open the battery compartment. The battery is a BL-5C which is a very common Nokia phone battery and they're pretty cheap. In my experience the radio can go >12 hours on AM on one charge. Also if you were doing this at night remember that AM stations switch to highly directional antennae unless they are clear channel. I have a hard time picking up local AM stations at night except for the big clear channel in my area. I purchased the same radio for weather alerts during power outages and for that it works just fine.
"Nobody is going to use this for playing MP3s" ...hmm, that's mainly what I use mine for, listening to MP3s at the pool or at the beach. :-) It has some useful features for mp3 playing and the speaker sounds great. Recording from the radio is helpful too.
10:10 Doesn't help a lot of SW broadcasters have completely shut down their signals in recent years due to newer ways to listen to them online, leaving these religious channels to be the standouts nowadays.
I bet, at least those two managed to stick around if they feel their voice is necessary to get out there. I'm still sad for Radio Canada International.
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It's possibly not using Join Stereo at 128kbps, but discrete Stereo. People made these mistake back in the days, when they didn't understand the different mp3 modes, and went with "Stereo" blindly. Even high quality encoders are struggling to represent discrete stereo at 128kbps correctly. The 64kbps setting sounded the best, even though the heavy lowpassing.
Even worse -- it's using "dual channel" encoding, which means there is no sharing of bitrate between the channels (which even simple stereo does a little bit). MP3GUESS said the files it recorded were made using an Xing encoder, which was infamous for its very poor quality (but fast encoding speed).
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Oh, that's even worse then :| I guess if you could bump up the bitrate to at least 192kbps it would sound okay though. I wonder what encoder IC is in there, somehow I doubt 128kbps is the max. quality. It's more like a limitation of the control firmware to me.
Mine works great on shortwave when linked to a decent antenna. Am is good out to several thousand miles. I live in a rural area and this radio performs well for what it is. I don't have any over whelming A.M. signals to make this radio over load. This radio is perfect if you live rural and can string up a 10-20' wire antenna for shortwave. I use this radio in my basement to hear broadcasts from all over the world.
At least DAB+ uses AAC+ as its encoder which, given a decent bandwidth, gives it a fighting chance of sounding OK. Here in the UK the majority of the DAB radio is still legacy MP2, and to fit more stations in they've made many of them mono and only at 64kbits/s MP2 (which is about the same as 48kbits/s MP3 - i.e. horrific). There are some DAB+ stations which are mainly in stereo but less than 5 out of maybe 25-30 stations. It must be purely a money thing rather than a music thing - and thus most of them sound dire because of it. Their argument is that many people only use single speaker radios for DAB. That's complete tosh, as many cars now have DAB fitted as standard. However, many people still use FM because of this problem :( When you push the bandwidth up on DAB and DAB+ it sounds great. For example - BBC Radio 3 - the classical station in the UK - runs at 192kbits/s MP2 and sounds just about OK. Back at the beginning of DAB I remember Virgin Radio running at 192kbits/s and it sounded great - and I'm sure some of the BBC test stations ran at 256kbits/s.
Geeez 256kbits would be a milestone over here in Germany. But most DAB+ Stations only broadcast at 96kbits, some even less (56kbits or 64kbits) and they use the same output for the FM transmission, which comes with a boost in the high frequencies and make you hear the compression artifacts and aliasing even more. In a car, with the engine sounds around you, you can hear nothing else but the high frequency aliasing chirping that destroys your ears. That means unless you actually receive something and n ot just silence or broken digital mess. That makes you switch back to FM instantly that simply works and sounds heaps better. I pity the swiss who get forced DAB+ by 2019 when they turn off FM in Switzerland completely because the DAB lobby demands it and the money suitcases have found new owners.
05:00 The one that connects to the back and is used to place the radio diagonally on the table. This radio appears on eBay in lots of names. The sound is great. I'm not sure about the real capacity of the battery. I bought 4 such units, and when the battery drains, the display on the device fades and it turns off. The marking of our 4 units battery bar indication shows that it has been drained up to about half and not to up the end (which is a malfunction). It is not an ideal as a radio receiver (because it does not seem to be sensitive enough to clean reception in a crowded urban area), but it is good for listening to files from the memory card. I do not know what the maximum size for the card is. The battery lasts for several hours. Slightly than I expected for a capacity of 1 ampere-hour.
I've put a 64GB card in it and it seems to work just fine. I don't see the need to go much higher, especially considering it can only play and record MP3s up to 320kbps (no flacs)
My cheap Radio Shack Pocket AM/FM Shortwave radio (Cat No, 2000125) blows that thing out of the water in terms of reception. I just tuned WWV 10 MHz no problem with mine with the telescopic antenna alone. I’m also not surprised that the DX-397 totally embarrassed that thing either; I owned one back in the 1990s.
The Radioshack DX-397 is what started it all for me in shortwave listening way back in May of 1998. I got that for my 10th birthday and have since gotten other shortwave radios which have been good and bad. The worst I personally tested is this GPX one you find at department stores and it is just as bad as that Tivdio on shortwave. About the best description I can give is almost completely deaf while my current shortwave portable of choice, a Grundig (Eaton) Satellit Executive has pulled in stuff from China, Turkey and the UK directly in the midwestern US.
A SanDisk Sansa Clip+ has all of these features except the speaker and AM radio, the headphone cord is the antenna, and you can put rockbox on it to play just about any sound file.
The static problem, caused by the radios internal components, reminds me a bit of another little worldreceiver radio that i have. An "ok. ORF 210" model (a model being sold as one of the cheapest radios in the electronic stores Media Markt and Saturn, who both are pretty much the same) and it's quartz crystal (for the digital clock) can be herd ticking on AM and SW on some frequencies. Every second can be literally heard. It's a PLL radio with FM, AM and SW. It runs on 2x AA batteries and is actually a lot more sensitive than the Tividio V-115 you showed here. However even the LED backlight on the ok. ORF210 doesn't really create any static. Not sure under what name this particular model is sold outside of Germany. it seems to be a generic chinese-made radio that can get any label from any franchiser. Who knows, maybe Radio Shack has such a model under their brand.
I'm from Italy. I have a damaged - but still going strong - "ok." ORF 200 bought at my local Media World (the same as Media Markt, only a slight different name). It works fine for me. When I walk to the nearest village with my mom on the morning without school, I always tune to Austria on 6155 kHz: good classical music 😊
I would reckon the little plastic thing on the strap is a stand. If you notice when you flipped it over to check the battery, there seemed to be a slot that it fitted in on the battery cover. I recently got a Tecsun PL380 and although it's a bit more expensive, it's a great little world band radio - similar size but much more sensitive, can change between stereo and mono on FM to allow you to DX, uses regular AA batteries and even can put NiMH batteries in and charge them in the radio via mini USB.
I used my Olympus voice recorder to record music from TuneIn on my iPad and iPhone with the mic input. And also, I used to have my Radio Shack AM/FM/SW Radio from the late 1990's and it's not working anymore. I ended up in the trash and no longer using it. I missed the radio a lot when it was static. Thanks to the stream, I can listen to it via stream without static and AM reception from distance, and TuneIn is a way to go.
I believe the passive radiator is not as much for outputting bass itself, but rather allowing them to seal up the cabinet and not lose bass. these "high efficiency" speakers move a lot of air for their size. if you put on a bassy, thumpy song like moe shop or something you can feel it, it's not much but it's there. also the vibration of the stereo is not caused by the passive radiator I don't think. high efficiency speakers vibrate a lot.
Does that plastic tab on the lanyard fit in that slot on the battery cover? I know it is so you can open it, but if that fit it would hold it at a 45 degree angle on a table and you might get more bass.
Nice looking Grundig. What model is it? I think you definitely have a bad copy of the V115. Mine is actually pretty good on shortwave. I was surprised. FM is poor. The speaker is outstanding. If only Tecsun put it in the 310ET. The user interface is awful. Enter a station into memory and you instantly lose the ability to manually tune with the buttons as they now become the memory backward forwards function. So to get that functionality back you have to delete all your memories. Bizarre! If you have a Mac and copy over MP3 files then you have the added joy of the radio listing all the Mac's hidden files. This makes navigating your files a nightmare. A firmware update is needed to fix this. The only solution is to use an app to remove the hidden files. The aerial is very flimsy. Ability to record on the fly is great. It's decent if you get a good one but I fail to see why it excites so many people on YT.
I have the exact same thing, except it's branded as Audiomax. I basically only use it to listen to mp3's now, and occasionally for FM radio, when I'm in the kitchen or the bathroom. As someone else said, the plastic thing on the lanyard is for you to put it in the slot on the back, so it can be used as a tilt stand. Took me a while to figure that out, too... The battery won't last very long, and start to degrade in about 2 years. But since this is a widely used old Nokia battery, you can get it in higher capacity versions, like 2200 mAh. And if you charge it too many times, the USB port will probably snap off from the PCB like mine did... but you can get an external charging cradle for this exact battery. All in all, not bad for the price, but obviously the Chinese quality will shine through... ah yes, and mine has Chinese menu, which I couldn't change.
The V115 receiver, is very insensitive on the shortwave band. To overcome this I added an external JFET RF preamp. The story is here: www.vk6fh.com/vk6fh/V115receiver.htm
Actually, at least on my computer the recordings don't sound bad at all. I'm listening to Jamie's Cryin' at the 15 min odd mark - what are you hearing that I'm missing? The AM and SW recordings sound as bad as AM and SW broadcasts normally do. I think the thing that you pointed out in the review that kills the product is the poor reception - though it honestly sounds like the radio is picking up a lot of RFI. I wonder if it would work better near a window or in another room.
An MP3 recorder on a shortwave radio, neat little idea. The overall look of the radio is rather nice, shame that is all it had going for it. Otherwise I would have considered getting one. Shortwave radios seem to be a bit of a rarity these days, unless you know where to look. My current is a thrift find, Grundig YB-208 (Yatchboy, analog,) which has a similar tuning face as your Radioshack DX-397. Its recently gotten me looking back into shortwave bands again. After seeing this, now my mind is arguing over analog vs digital tuners.. arg. Oh, and great review!
I don't know if you've ever seen or if you remember the tailgater speakers that was sold at Walmart a couple of years ago I don't know if they still sell those or not. However the very first 2 Generations of that speaker had a very bad radio tuner I mean it would pick up baby just one or two local stations in my area and there are quite a few strong stations down here where I live. One of the strongest stations is 95.5 FM .added even had trouble picking that one up.
@ EastAngliaUK: Yea and also considerably more expensive. But yeah those TECSUN models are nice. Even DEGEN has some nice and sensitive radios in their line up. Albeit a little more cheaply made than the TECSUN models.
Agreed, and $15 max with shipping cost, otherwise this just pointless if you have a cell phone with unlimited data, and the tunein radio app that can stream many local stations, and much much more, and most cell phones like my Moto G5 plus can pick up FM radio with a 3.5mm cable plugged into the headphone jack as an antenna.
I got a little radio at Goodwill that has a plastic piece like that it goes in the slot above the battery cover and you use it to stand the radio at an angle or incase the radio falls ober backwards it stops it from hitting the table. I think it is a good idea mine has fallen over twice and having that in the back stopped it from hitting the table I just stand it on it at an angle now its more sturdy that way.
The radio is pretty cheap 20 dollars i think . It sounds great on fm and am at least where I am. The sound quality of the recordings on the sd card are fantastic. It can act as a speaker for anything with the audio in jack. It has a lit screen. It is a great little radio. Your review is very unfair in my opinion. You seem to have disliked it even before you took it out of the box
Interesting enough that mp3 encoding quality sounds like when, for whatever dumb reasons, the analog to digital streaming thing on our college radio station was changed to "MP3 64kpbs quality" mode, which sounds really, really too much bass. I was lucky to figure out how it worked and how to change it back to "Normalize" preset so there isn't any low sample rate audio coming out (it outputs at max 128kb/48kHz anyways). And yea, that's some early 00's mp3 encoder it's using, it's not LAME, not even an old version of it. I guess 128kbps is max since most radio stations broadcasts at 128kbps still, but with higher sample rates, and AAC or mp3 with a professional-grade encoder.
oh sweet! I've seen this model appearing in my ebay feed quite often now since at least a year or so.... and always wondered if it was worth it. Even thou i actually prefer non DSP-Radios. I often don't like the big frequency steps of the digital radios. Even thou the scanning and Channel presets are often very helpful. Especially on Shortwave.
I have one of these and they are pretty decent for the price. Like how when you turn it off it says 'bye bye'. The battery is actually the same as they used in the old nokias, so very common. What you didn't do is try playing existing MP3 music files from a computer though it ,and output them. I hooked it up to my amp and speakers and it has pretty good sound. I couldn't tell it was froma cheap radio like this. But it is what it is, and it was only about $20 which is great for what it is. At least it is a decent MP3 player, with expandable memory, which beats apple ipods.
The Radio Shack radio was made by same company as the legendary Art Bell CC Radio I think? On another critical issue thew "Mega Bass" diaphragm thingies are 180 degrees out of phase with sounds coming from front of speaker so despite looking like a functioning feature if they do anything at all it would be bass canceling
3:45 Thats a battery commonly used on Nokia phones, especially during the heydays of Symbian.
I was about to comment on that
Even my mini wireless keyboard uses one of these BL 5C
Even my mini wireless keyboard uses one of these BL 5C
Is the battery from the Nokia 3310 as I recall
Wanted to point out that myself too! I actually owned a phone with that exact model number (BL-5C), a Nokia 3120 (a cosmetic upgrade to the somewhat better known 3100 model).
The plastic piece serves as stand for the radio when you put it in the slot (Just under the antenna) at back of the radio.
Sdttn You *have* to be kidding.
Did I miss something or I've made a grammer mistake? English is not my native language.
Sdttn I thought maybe the plastic piece was for removing the battery cover or something; I’ve never heard of a stand being done that way, it seemed incredulous to me.
No, your English is fine. I think Fixy was just amazed that they would tie the stand on like that, haha
Fixy Clary He's not kidding, another of my subs reviewed this radio and that is what the piece is for. Kinda clever actually.
The sensitivity/reception of this little gem can be GREATLY improved with a little work. I removed the stock am ferrite bar antenna and replaced it with an am ferrite antenna pulled from the legendary Sony SRF-39. Some plastic whittling was necessary for a snug fit, but it WILL fit. After re-soldering the litz wire leads to the circuit board I proceeded to replace the flimsy wire attached to the fm telescopic antenna. After putting this radio back together the difference in am and fm sensitivity is amazing. (Radio enciclopedia 530 am in Habanna Cuba-1100 miles!
Really nice, i like the feature of this radio. In en other comment, someone said that he replace the wire from antenna to board with a shilded one and the elecric static dissapear.
Wow 1100 miles is pretty damn nice.
I followed your method and it does improve AM reception a bit.
However, we do not gain much because the LCD screen parasitizes the waves anyway as soon as we bring it closer to reassemble the radio. As for improving FM, I didn't quite understand your method.
BL-5C is Nokia standard battery.
Kinda funny. Has China made too many Nokia batteries so they are now getting used in other devices also? Maybe it is cheaper to buy that radio than battery to old Nokia.
BL-5C has become a standard for China-direct devices that don't require a lot of battery.
I’d much rather have the Nokia battery than a built in non replaceable battery!
One of main reasons I purchased it.
I was going to say that
by the way, there's been a hardware improvement/revision to this radio. it's the "PRUNUS J-401" (or equivalent) it's basically the same innards with less interference and better and easier controls, including dedicated tuning and separate preset buttons. no need to worry with clip on antennas either because the AUX port doubles as an antenna jack.
it's also just built better in general, and is a little larger and heavier in the hands.
also rn it's $18 on amazon rn.
I should also say that the new one comes with a proper flipout stand instead of the crappy key looking thing the v115 comes with.
Beware that the Prunus J-401 is subject to its volume control wheel breaking off! Prunus will gladly make things right usually by replacing the radio. Apparently this problem has been corrected...
I Googled the shortwave station on 5.92 MHz, and it's the Angel 2 service from World Harvest Radio International (part of LeSEA) out of South Carolina.
The plastic piece you weren't sure of, is the kickstand, insert it in the slot on the battery door. ~Jack, VEG
First of all the sound of the one I got was amazing for its size, good full bass from a tiny radio. Second after I connected a long wire it picked up over a dozen short wave stations from around the globe. The radio will work via usb even if there is no battery but that easy to replace battery is cheap to get. The only downside to it is that the line in seems to record in mono but if you want to record talkshows that is ok. I was so taken with this radio that I bought a second one for use with audiobooks because it remembers where you left off. This is a fantastic little radio.
I recently learned the MicroSD card slot on many china-made products are labeled as TF card instead of MIcroSD for reasons of licensing. so while they will likely work with any MicroSDHC card or whatever, they're not licensed to use the MicroSD name. that's basically it. there is no other reason-- it's because the license for the name costs a fortune... I think.
T-Flash, TransFlash, TF, MicroSD they are all the same.
And what about "U-disk" for USB sticks?
TF is short for TransFlash which was the original name for microSD cards. I guess the Chinese use it to avoid having to pay the SD Association to get certified.
It’s more than licensing. It’s certification and payment for use of the technology specifications they did not design. In other words, they are stealing.
Sudos 7for
The 64kbps recording reminds me of Satellite radio I had 13 or so years ago.
That BL-5C is a bloody copy of the old Li-Ion batteries that were used in the old mobile phones made by Nokia. They even kept its model name, that's absolutely fantastic…
Not that surprising actually, since you can find bulk unbranded replacement batteries for really old phones even today. Just enter that model name in the ebay search field and you'll find hundreds of results.
The 128kbps, 96kbps, and 64kbps recordings didn't sound any different LOL. The first song by the Police in 128k sounded like the old dial-up online radio stations from 15-20 years ago.
You got mentioned on linus tech tips. Well done
When used with the right earphones with the correct impendence, it actually performs good for playing MP3s and recording some samples off the radio/line in, which is what I do (the correct impedance is important, since the amp is very low stock). This machine is probably the modern equivalent of a 90's kitchen radio tape recorder, but with alot more functionality, which is a start if you're right at the base of what you can afford. For professional or higher incomes, of course you're not gonna go for this and there is alot more out there. If enough of us write to the Tividio manufacturers (and that of the other identical versions like the Audiomax SRW-710S) then they may well improve the features and the quality. If a western manufacturer decides to make one at an affordable price with higher specs, then I'd go for that one in a bat of an eye, but as the saying goes 'beggers can't be chosers'. This does incredibly well for the price, so I'm not gonna knock this and have planned to buy more.
That battery's common and dirt cheap, it's a knockoff copy of the Nokia BL-5C type battery, probably one of the few older mobile phone style batteries that's still popular due to its' size and capacity... :)
Yep, I use to work for Dollar General a few years back, and a lot of the cheap junk Chinese Mp3/media players, and digital video cameras we sold used them if they did not use either a soldered in battery, or AA/AAA batteries.
i still have a nokia battery from 2010 and still working on my nokia
Yep that cell is in all kinds of comercial devices, costs like £3 on eBay or Amazon.
The radio is great for the price £14 I paid and then £6 for 2 extra cells and £2.50 for a retractable clip on antenna.
Well, I'm happy with mine. As a music player it has better speaker than my smartphone. And it's also great as external speaker for phone or laptop.
So, it has taken you this long to realize that using a phone through its built in speaker as a music player is an aberration?
the wire from the board to the telescop-antenna is not shielded. I changed this wire with a shielded one an the problem with the poor reception disappeard.
Hello, have you made a comparison with other radio?
That BL-5C battery used to be popular in Nokia phones, but pretty much is the standard for many Chinese Bluetooth speakers, although I guess it's logical for radios to include them instead of the usual 2xAA or AAA. Luckily with the battery's popularity, they're easy to find
I can get 880 WCBS on clear nights in Michigan. This radio has no excuse not to pick it up if you are only 25 miles away.
"There's nothing in there about your best life now. Somebody made that up. It's a little bitty slogan they come up with."
-Random guy on shortwave radio
The Little tab on the strap slots into the groove on the rear battery cover and serves as a stand to prop the unit up at about 30-40 degrees.
Just grabbed one of these to have. Also got 2 spare barriers and a charger for like $18 because I've heard issues with the charging cable and I can charge batteries while using it with another battery. Just arrived today. So we will see
Very good sound with this radio but unfortunately constant buzzing noise on AM really let's it down...and yes it's rather deaf on all bands :(
The thingie helps open the battery hatch and it's an easel. Noise is from the LCD not shielded from the rest of the circuitry.
3:37 That's a Nokia BL-5C clone, those are rather easy to find. In fact, back in around 2010 or so, when I had a different radio (from another Chinese company), I could just swap the batteries between that and my Nokia 1112 (which used a BL-5CA battery, which is similar) that I had at the time.
Wow! The BL-5C is the Nokia Battery type that was used in the late 2000's towards 2007-2010. I had a Nokia 1600 phone with this exact same battery. This battery was also used in other Nokia phones like the Nokia 1100 if I can recall correctly.
I purchased one of these about a year ago and I agree about the radio side of it but the line in records in stereo and gives decent results on the set when recording straight from say a CD player it is also good for D/L free podcasts from radio stations on your computer via the SD card and playing them back through the radio. Also good for recording from a digital radio source such as DAB via the line in as well,the sound is excellent for the size of the speaker and the battery as given no problems and lasts well...........I paid £12.00 for mine and keep meaning to take a peek inside to see if I can improve the poor radio interference with better shielding or putting in a better Ariel...........You could even copy your cassettes over to the it.
Thank you very much for the sharing of our Retekess(TIVDIO) V115 radio
kuntian wang Yes sure I can take advice from someone
dx397 was one of my dream radios when I was a teenager in the 80s 😊 so glad to see it here again 😊
Thank you for the review. I find my Tecsun PL-310ET very useful though, especially for shortwave, but it's very good for FM as well. Granted it's a bit more expensive.
I have the tecsun, going to be getting the tiv radio and see how it is.
Sangean makes very nice radios, I have a HDR18 radio from them and it’s awesome.
Jacob's Channel Or Tecsun (same thing).
....not bad, if I had this back in 2004 when I rocked a FM Radio than a CD Player, I would have been a happy pre-teen.
The headphone jack output is extra crappy because it's taken directly from the DSP chip and it's not exactly suited for that. The speaker output is better because it has a separate amplifier.
For faster direct tuning entry and also for skipping the wait for the volume prompt to go away you can use the play/pause button.
As you have stated in another comment, the mp3 files are dual channel mp3, so the highest quality 128k is basically 2x64k.
the biggest problem with this radio is actually the display. if you search "v115 mod" you'll see someone put copper foil tape over the back of the display(and tie the tape to ground) and it cuts down the interference a LOT and makes it a decent radio. the only problem is that the ribbon is fragile and I broke mine trying to mod it(I opened it too many times but I did see a noticeable improvement on noise), I was able to return it because amazon, but keep that in mind.
I assume the new prunus j-401 version is pre-shielded or something.
This is probably the best radio, if you want to use it as a dedicated Mp3 player. It has an extended display, EQ, and decent, well-balanced sound. I have the Retekess 115 reincarnation for several months and am very pleased and surprised how a radio that currently is selling at 17 USD at Amazon can provide so many useful features at such a low price. The built quality is solid and it has a nice feel to it. It is compact, sleek and amazing little thing. Just amazing!
You can press the "Play" button to enter a frequency instead of waiting for the radio to change to the frequency that you manually input.
I noticed when you were showing the stations you probably didn't notice but you had the antenna down you do have to pull the antenna up LOL it's all good I happen to love this radio and I do recommend buying it because of all the extra features you get with it
That's just a picture. When making those recordings I had the antenna fully extended.
I've seen those on eBay and I was considering getting it. I'm glad I didn't! Also, I briefly had an MP3 player from China that had that same volume slider display; I bet this radio has the same thing but in a different cabinet. half the time, the MP3 file would stop half way through and then skip to the next song... and even with bassy headphones, it sounded absolutely horrible and tinny. Shortly afterwards, the thing stopped working entirely, so don't expect the MP3 functionality to be any good either. At least the unit isn't a total waste though; you helped to save a lot of people from buying this junk!
Your MP3 player had built in flash memory which was probably no good, whereas this takes a MicroSD card. The volume slider design is probably either copied (hey, if they can copy products designed by non-Chinese or high quality companies, who says the low-end brands can't copy from each other?), designed by the same UI team, or (from) some kind of generic firmware many of the low-end manufacturers use.
The MP3 player I was talking about didn't have internal memory, it had a microSD slot.
Doubt you will get same decent sound from such a small package. Unless you go 150$ versions of tecsun or forgo sw can and take sangean
You can see the reviewer is elitist and asshat
the MP3 player in this one is actually really good. like actually good enough to say for $18 it's worth it as a MP3 player with a speaker built in. everything else about it is okay to bad, but the MP3 player is not one of them.
I also know that youtuber 12voltvids basically uses his v115 as an MP3 player shop radio and he has no complaints with the MP3 player portion
If I remember correctly, those BL-5C batteries were used in Nokia phones back in the day (and also other phones as well).
Yep, and many Chinese makers copied them because they where cheap/easy to produce, and had a high capacity for their size so they where used in many cheap electronics not just phones. just beware of the really super cheap ones on eBay that claim something like 5000MaH as I got one for one of my Nokia flip phones years back, and it got really hot, and swelled after only a handful of charges.
Only one bad thing I discovered using this radio is that it depends on a battery with a built-in battery protection circuit, it doesn't have battery protection from over discharge, or over charge built into the radio circuit.
So if you use a replacement BL-5C battery, make sure that the replacement battery has a protection circuit.
It sounds to me like it's not rejecting interference from the fluorescent lights.
The fluorescent lights I use have a magnetic ballast and don't generate any radio interference that I've received on any radio.
The thing on the lanyard is to open the battery compartment. The battery is a BL-5C which is a very common Nokia phone battery and they're pretty cheap. In my experience the radio can go >12 hours on AM on one charge. Also if you were doing this at night remember that AM stations switch to highly directional antennae unless they are clear channel. I have a hard time picking up local AM stations at night except for the big clear channel in my area. I purchased the same radio for weather alerts during power outages and for that it works just fine.
880 WCBS is non-directional 24 hours a day.
11:08 "This thing's picking up virtually nothing"..... _THERE'S NOTHING IN THERE_
Tudor Rotaru When the radio trolls you
"Nobody is going to use this for playing MP3s" ...hmm, that's mainly what I use mine for, listening to MP3s at the pool or at the beach. :-) It has some useful features for mp3 playing and the speaker sounds great. Recording from the radio is helpful too.
10:10 Doesn't help a lot of SW broadcasters have completely shut down their signals in recent years due to newer ways to listen to them online, leaving these religious channels to be the standouts nowadays.
You can still get China Radio International and the BBC. Plus all those number stations. Fun hunting down those :D
I bet, at least those two managed to stick around if they feel their voice is necessary to get out there. I'm still sad for Radio Canada International.
It's possibly not using Join Stereo at 128kbps, but discrete Stereo. People made these mistake back in the days, when they didn't understand the different mp3 modes, and went with "Stereo" blindly. Even high quality encoders are struggling to represent discrete stereo at 128kbps correctly. The 64kbps setting sounded the best, even though the heavy lowpassing.
Even worse -- it's using "dual channel" encoding, which means there is no sharing of bitrate between the channels (which even simple stereo does a little bit). MP3GUESS said the files it recorded were made using an Xing encoder, which was infamous for its very poor quality (but fast encoding speed).
Oh, that's even worse then :| I guess if you could bump up the bitrate to at least 192kbps it would sound okay though. I wonder what encoder IC is in there, somehow I doubt 128kbps is the max. quality. It's more like a limitation of the control firmware to me.
880 kHz is so strong I can get here in Nova Scotia at night with my car radio
7:03 Track Title:Havana
Josh Lewin doing the Mets broadcast on WOR 710 AM
Mine works great on shortwave when linked to a decent antenna. Am is good out to several thousand miles. I live in a rural area and this radio performs well for what it is. I don't have any over whelming A.M. signals to make this radio over load. This radio is perfect if you live rural and can string up a 10-20' wire antenna for shortwave. I use this radio in my basement to hear broadcasts from all over the world.
I think it’s a great radio, love it !
It also allows you to record broadcast signal and play mp3 and Wma formats, can any Grundig do it?
16:04 this is actually how bad DAB+ sounds over here in Germany. The broadcast "quality" of digital radio sounds just like that. Like a shitty MP3.
At least DAB+ uses AAC+ as its encoder which, given a decent bandwidth, gives it a fighting chance of sounding OK.
Here in the UK the majority of the DAB radio is still legacy MP2, and to fit more stations in they've made many of them mono and only at 64kbits/s MP2 (which is about the same as 48kbits/s MP3 - i.e. horrific). There are some DAB+ stations which are mainly in stereo but less than 5 out of maybe 25-30 stations.
It must be purely a money thing rather than a music thing - and thus most of them sound dire because of it. Their argument is that many people only use single speaker radios for DAB. That's complete tosh, as many cars now have DAB fitted as standard. However, many people still use FM because of this problem :(
When you push the bandwidth up on DAB and DAB+ it sounds great. For example - BBC Radio 3 - the classical station in the UK - runs at 192kbits/s MP2 and sounds just about OK. Back at the beginning of DAB I remember Virgin Radio running at 192kbits/s and it sounded great - and I'm sure some of the BBC test stations ran at 256kbits/s.
Geeez 256kbits would be a milestone over here in Germany. But most DAB+ Stations only broadcast at 96kbits, some even less (56kbits or 64kbits) and they use the same output for the FM transmission, which comes with a boost in the high frequencies and make you hear the compression artifacts and aliasing even more. In a car, with the engine sounds around you, you can hear nothing else but the high frequency aliasing chirping that destroys your ears. That means unless you actually receive something and n ot just silence or broken digital mess. That makes you switch back to FM instantly that simply works and sounds heaps better. I pity the swiss who get forced DAB+ by 2019 when they turn off FM in Switzerland completely because the DAB lobby demands it and the money suitcases have found new owners.
05:00
The one that connects to the back and is used to place the radio diagonally on the table.
This radio appears on eBay in lots of names.
The sound is great.
I'm not sure about the real capacity of the battery.
I bought 4 such units, and when the battery drains, the display on the device fades and it turns off.
The marking of our 4 units battery bar indication shows that it has been drained up to about half and not to up the end (which is a malfunction).
It is not an ideal as a radio receiver (because it does not seem to be sensitive enough to clean reception in a crowded urban area), but it is good for listening to files from the memory card. I do not know what the maximum size for the card is.
The battery lasts for several hours. Slightly than I expected for a capacity of 1 ampere-hour.
I've put a 64GB card in it and it seems to work just fine. I don't see the need to go much higher, especially considering it can only play and record MP3s up to 320kbps (no flacs)
My cheap Radio Shack Pocket AM/FM Shortwave radio (Cat No, 2000125) blows that thing out of the water in terms of reception. I just tuned WWV 10 MHz no problem with mine with the telescopic antenna alone. I’m also not surprised that the DX-397 totally embarrassed that thing either; I owned one back in the 1990s.
I had this model!
www.ebay.com/itm/Radio-Shack-DX-375-AM-SW-FM-Stereo-PLL-Synthesized-Receiver/263622380977?hash=item3d611e4db1:g:oKIAAOSw-sZa2m4v
The Radioshack DX-397 is what started it all for me in shortwave listening way back in May of 1998. I got that for my 10th birthday and have since gotten other shortwave radios which have been good and bad. The worst I personally tested is this GPX one you find at department stores and it is just as bad as that Tivdio on shortwave. About the best description I can give is almost completely deaf while my current shortwave portable of choice, a Grundig (Eaton) Satellit Executive has pulled in stuff from China, Turkey and the UK directly in the midwestern US.
A SanDisk Sansa Clip+ has all of these features except the speaker and AM radio, the headphone cord is the antenna, and you can put rockbox on it to play just about any sound file.
The static problem, caused by the radios internal components, reminds me a bit of another little worldreceiver radio that i have. An "ok. ORF 210" model (a model being sold as one of the cheapest radios in the electronic stores Media Markt and Saturn, who both are pretty much the same) and it's quartz crystal (for the digital clock) can be herd ticking on AM and SW on some frequencies. Every second can be literally heard. It's a PLL radio with FM, AM and SW. It runs on 2x AA batteries and is actually a lot more sensitive than the Tividio V-115 you showed here. However even the LED backlight on the ok. ORF210 doesn't really create any static. Not sure under what name this particular model is sold outside of Germany. it seems to be a generic chinese-made radio that can get any label from any franchiser. Who knows, maybe Radio Shack has such a model under their brand.
Yeah same with RCA... :( And Rolei.... and Atari,.... all just empty brandname shells.
I'm from Italy. I have a damaged - but still going strong - "ok." ORF 200 bought at my local Media World (the same as Media Markt, only a slight different name). It works fine for me. When I walk to the nearest village with my mom on the morning without school, I always tune to Austria on 6155 kHz: good classical music 😊
I would reckon the little plastic thing on the strap is a stand. If you notice when you flipped it over to check the battery, there seemed to be a slot that it fitted in on the battery cover.
I recently got a Tecsun PL380 and although it's a bit more expensive, it's a great little world band radio - similar size but much more sensitive, can change between stereo and mono on FM to allow you to DX, uses regular AA batteries and even can put NiMH batteries in and charge them in the radio via mini USB.
Oh man, is that Bauhaus on the shutdown screen? YOW
It's a shame!
I used my Olympus voice recorder to record music from TuneIn on my iPad and iPhone with the mic input. And also, I used to have my Radio Shack AM/FM/SW Radio from the late 1990's and it's not working anymore. I ended up in the trash and no longer using it. I missed the radio a lot when it was static. Thanks to the stream, I can listen to it via stream without static and AM reception from distance, and TuneIn is a way to go.
I believe the passive radiator is not as much for outputting bass itself, but rather allowing them to seal up the cabinet and not lose bass. these "high efficiency" speakers move a lot of air for their size. if you put on a bassy, thumpy song like moe shop or something you can feel it, it's not much but it's there.
also the vibration of the stereo is not caused by the passive radiator I don't think. high efficiency speakers vibrate a lot.
Great video like always
Thanks!
Does that plastic tab on the lanyard fit in that slot on the battery cover? I know it is so you can open it, but if that fit it would hold it at a 45 degree angle on a table and you might get more bass.
The plastic thingee at the lanyard is a kickstand. There's a slot at the back where you would insert the narrow part of the plastic thing.
kenshinflyer yes but?.
Nice looking Grundig. What model is it? I think you definitely have a bad copy of the V115. Mine is actually pretty good on shortwave. I was surprised. FM is poor. The speaker is outstanding. If only Tecsun put it in the 310ET.
The user interface is awful. Enter a station into memory and you instantly lose the ability to manually tune with the buttons as they now become the memory backward forwards function. So to get that functionality back you have to delete all your memories. Bizarre!
If you have a Mac and copy over MP3 files then you have the added joy of the radio listing all the Mac's hidden files. This makes navigating your files a nightmare. A firmware update is needed to fix this. The only solution is to use an app to remove the hidden files.
The aerial is very flimsy.
Ability to record on the fly is great.
It's decent if you get a good one but I fail to see why it excites so many people on YT.
I have the exact same thing, except it's branded as Audiomax. I basically only use it to listen to mp3's now, and occasionally for FM radio, when I'm in the kitchen or the bathroom. As someone else said, the plastic thing on the lanyard is for you to put it in the slot on the back, so it can be used as a tilt stand. Took me a while to figure that out, too...
The battery won't last very long, and start to degrade in about 2 years. But since this is a widely used old Nokia battery, you can get it in higher capacity versions, like 2200 mAh. And if you charge it too many times, the USB port will probably snap off from the PCB like mine did... but you can get an external charging cradle for this exact battery.
All in all, not bad for the price, but obviously the Chinese quality will shine through... ah yes, and mine has Chinese menu, which I couldn't change.
Those MP3 recordings aren't actually that bad. I've heard WAY worse MP3s from Chinese gadgets.
Not that bad? Get your ears checked mate 😅
I'm a complex man, I see a VWestlife upload, I click.
I'd be tempted to open this set up and adjust the slugs. If any.
5:26 That kinda sucks if you wanted to extend the SW reception out.
Dude it's a 15 dollar radio why are you reviewing it like if it costs 200$
BL-5C (Nokia) is so common that you can easily order them online.
The V115 receiver, is very insensitive on the shortwave band.
To overcome this I added an external JFET RF preamp.
The story is here: www.vk6fh.com/vk6fh/V115receiver.htm
I have the exact same radio but its Retekess brand.
Actually, at least on my computer the recordings don't sound bad at all. I'm listening to Jamie's Cryin' at the 15 min odd mark - what are you hearing that I'm missing? The AM and SW recordings sound as bad as AM and SW broadcasts normally do. I think the thing that you pointed out in the review that kills the product is the poor reception - though it honestly sounds like the radio is picking up a lot of RFI. I wonder if it would work better near a window or in another room.
The font it uses for 'Bye Bye' is in Bauhaus 93
An MP3 recorder on a shortwave radio, neat little idea. The overall look of the radio is rather nice, shame that is all it had going for it. Otherwise I would have considered getting one. Shortwave radios seem to be a bit of a rarity these days, unless you know where to look. My current is a thrift find, Grundig YB-208 (Yatchboy, analog,) which has a similar tuning face as your Radioshack DX-397. Its recently gotten me looking back into shortwave bands again. After seeing this, now my mind is arguing over analog vs digital tuners.. arg. Oh, and great review!
The battery is one if main reasons I bought this
I don't know if you've ever seen or if you remember the tailgater speakers that was sold at Walmart a couple of years ago I don't know if they still sell those or not. However the very first 2 Generations of that speaker had a very bad radio tuner I mean it would pick up baby just one or two local stations in my area and there are quite a few strong stations down here where I live. One of the strongest stations is 95.5 FM .added even had trouble picking that one up.
you should buy a tecsun radio. I have the TECSUN PL-398MP its most sensitive radio ever.
EastAngliaUK Agreed. Actually as soon as he opened the box this radio looked like a ripoff of the design of my Tecsun PL-380.
@ EastAngliaUK: Yea and also considerably more expensive. But yeah those TECSUN models are nice. Even DEGEN has some nice and sensitive radios in their line up. Albeit a little more cheaply made than the TECSUN models.
Tecsun radios are awesome, I have the PL-880 and it is a fantastic radio and brilliant on all FM and SW,MW bands.
BL-5c is Standard Nokia feature phone battery , widely available .
You should do more shortwave radio reviews.
Whether SSB is there in it?
No.
hello friend does it pause and resume on recording the radio fm
The radio would get four stars if it was $10.
Agreed, and $15 max with shipping cost, otherwise this just pointless if you have a cell phone with unlimited data, and the tunein radio app that can stream many local stations, and much much more, and most cell phones like my Moto G5 plus can pick up FM radio with a 3.5mm cable plugged into the headphone jack as an antenna.
I do it the way you said, let Amazon take the responsibility. It's well worth it for the return option, but I'm okay with Tivdio Radios.
Well...Is it at least a somewhat decent paperweight?
I got a little radio at Goodwill that has a plastic piece like that it goes in the slot above the battery cover and you use it to stand the radio at an angle or incase the radio falls ober backwards it stops it from hitting the table. I think it is a good idea mine has fallen over twice and having that in the back stopped it from hitting the table I just stand it on it at an angle now its more sturdy that way.
The radio is pretty cheap 20 dollars i think . It sounds great on fm and am at least where I am. The sound quality of the recordings on the sd card are fantastic. It can act as a speaker for anything with the audio in jack. It has a lit screen. It is a great little radio. Your review is very unfair in my opinion. You seem to have disliked it even before you took it out of the box
The BL5C is an old Nokia(!) battery. It was used on many popular mobile phones.
This is a very popular radio and really seems to be a bargain.
"Terse? I can be terse. One time in flight school they called me laconic."
Interesting enough that mp3 encoding quality sounds like when, for whatever dumb reasons, the analog to digital streaming thing on our college radio station was changed to "MP3 64kpbs quality" mode, which sounds really, really too much bass. I was lucky to figure out how it worked and how to change it back to "Normalize" preset so there isn't any low sample rate audio coming out (it outputs at max 128kb/48kHz anyways).
And yea, that's some early 00's mp3 encoder it's using, it's not LAME, not even an old version of it. I guess 128kbps is max since most radio stations broadcasts at 128kbps still, but with higher sample rates, and AAC or mp3 with a professional-grade encoder.
FFS
"How can Jesus not be ashamed to call me his brother?... Even I'm ashamed of me." - some random minister.
Nice review, also it will great if you had put a link where to buy.
oh sweet! I've seen this model appearing in my ebay feed quite often now since at least a year or so.... and always wondered if it was worth it. Even thou i actually prefer non DSP-Radios. I often don't like the big frequency steps of the digital radios. Even thou the scanning and Channel presets are often very helpful. Especially on Shortwave.
I have one of these and they are pretty decent for the price. Like how when you turn it off it says 'bye bye'. The battery is actually the same as they used in the old nokias, so very common.
What you didn't do is try playing existing MP3 music files from a computer though it ,and output them. I hooked it up to my amp and speakers and it has pretty good sound. I couldn't tell it was froma cheap radio like this. But it is what it is, and it was only about $20 which is great for what it is. At least it is a decent MP3 player, with expandable memory, which beats apple ipods.
What did you expect for 18 dollars?
That's the thing all those portable radios have such terrible tinny sound, this does not. Good City radio. Antenna extender helps
5:18. I was thinking that thing on the lanyard is to take the battery out
If you need more of those batteries, they are easy to find because Nokia also used them in some of there phones.
The Radio Shack radio was made by same company as the legendary Art Bell CC Radio I think? On another critical issue thew "Mega Bass" diaphragm thingies are 180 degrees out of phase with sounds coming from front of speaker so despite looking like a functioning feature if they do anything at all it would be bass canceling
Yes.