Sangean HDT-1 HD Radio Component Tuner
 | Average Customer Rating: Recommend The latest technological innovation is HD-Radio for AM/FM sound that is above and beyond anything you've heard. HD uses a digital signal instead of analog and more stations are using it. It provides static free, crystal clear sound, allows simultaneous multi-casts from a single station, and data services giving you audio on demand, traffic and news updates and more! Did you spend hundreds of dollars on your stereo system and… Product details and pricing info |
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64 Customer Reviews Posted
- HDT-1 is AWESOME!
- I recently purchased two of these units, one for my basement & one for my office. The office unit gets better recerption than the basement unit, but both are nice additions to the components I hooked them up with. I use the office unit with a Bose Wave Radio and the basement unit with a Yamaha Shelf System. AM radio sounds just like FM, and FM sounds just like listening to a CD! The sound quality & clarity are outstanding and I look forward to seeing this technology mature and new products come to market that incorporate it!
- 2006-12-24, 8 of 11 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Sangean HDT-1 is a winner
- I like the HDT-1, it's easy to set up and use, I like it's high tech industrial design, I love the blue display, it looks like my satellite receiver. On stations that are not using the Ibiquity format (HD Radio), it will read the RDS data employed by many broadcasters. It's conventional AM and FM reception is good compared to other AM/FM tuners in it's price range, but it's HD reception is only adequate, at this juncture, there are no other HD tuners in this price range. I tested the HDT-1 tuner in a metropolitan area and it quickly located dozens of HD stations on the FM band and a few in the AM band. Not every market has a lot of HD station, check before buying an HD tuner. If you do not live in a metropolitan area, near the HD station, reception will be spotty and will require a roof top antenna, the included AM and FM antennae are for local reception only. When the HD signal is weak, the tuner switches to regular analog demodulation, where I live, 65 miles away from most of the transmitters, I only get four stations solidly in HD, and I have a good attic antenna system.
Please don't consider HD Radio High Definition, it is NOT high definition, it is a digital format that means terrestrial radio broadcasters may employ multi-casting, more than one program stream on the same frequency, and that's very cool. HD radio may provide a cleaner signal with no hiss on moderately weak stations. The audio is not CD quality but it's quite good, it employs MPEG encoding, it sounds like an iPod, if that's all you've heard, HD Radio is fine. MPEG is also used on satellite radio, it's the reason they can cram so much in a narrow band.
The following is an addendum to my original review.
The following contains some techno gibberish, don't sweat it, it won't hurt. The HDT-1 outperforms all my previous FM tuners, it hears stations my other tuners can't. Buried in the Info menu is a Signal Strength Indicator ( helps aiming your antenna! ), a Bit Error Rate display and a Carrier to Noise display all very interesting. I have found reception varies day to day, I now receive as many as 10 HD FM signals, on bad days only 4, HD Radio propagation is a very complex issue that taxes many Engineers, NPR's engineering department has posted some interesting data on that topic.
Some folks are suggesting things they want to add, though a TOSLINK output would be nice, I believe it is an imperative that Sangean add the ability to manually toggle HD demodulation since marginal signals bounce between the HD stream and analog, very annoying sometimes. End of dweeb rant.
Bottom line, this is a fine product, the Sangean HDT-1 is a winner. - 2006-12-20, 90 of 90 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Sounds good and works very well
- I recently bought the Sangean at a local store. So far I am very pleased. The Sangean sounds surprisingly good, considering the modest price. Using the supplied dipole antenna, I am able to cleanly tune 27 of the 31 HD channels available in the Houston area.
What I am hearing on the HD channels is a definite improvement over standard FM, although it falls significantly short of "CD quality". I don't have satellite radio, but suspect the quality of HD radio may be comparable. I hear significant differences in sound quality among the various HD stations. The bottom line is that I find HD radio fine for background listening, and I appreciate having classical music available at almost any time. The Sangean tuner has good sound quality and works well, but I would not use it for serious listening at higher volume levels. When you turn up the volume, the shortcomings of the format become evident. - 2006-12-20, 12 of 12 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Makes FM enjoyable again..
- Awesome sound - as stated, FM HD broadcasts rival cd quality. The only down falls are the poorly designed card sized remote; and so far I have not see any way to dim the bright display. I would have given a 4 1/2 if it was an option.
- 2006-12-10, 4 of 8 people found this review helpful, Rated:
