Joe Analssandrini wrote:

Hello.

My terminology may have been confusing and hard to understand. What I
meant was that the pitch of a sustained musical note will change while
using the Drake synchronous circuit. This happens when the signal is
subject to fading and the circuit attempts to maintain lock. It is most
noticeable on musical shows, naturally. The note sounds as though it's
being lowered a semitone or sometimes even more - in other words, the
music sounds as if it's going a bit flat or "sour."

That's what I thought you meant. I did hear this on an R8 but not on my
two R8B's.

Last night, I listened to VOR's "Jazz Show" on the Satellit 800 instead
of the AR7030 Plus. Naturally, during the show, the phenomenon never
occured at all. However, when, at 0258, I switched frequencies (from
9665 kHz to 9860 kHz), and VOR was broadcasting their interval signal
(The Great Gate of Kiev), you could hear the "note-flattening" effect
very easily! And, as I said, this sort of thing never occurs with the
AR7030 Plus.

I noticed this "warbling" (probably a bad term but I don't know what
else to call it) almost as soon as I bought the set back in 2000. When
I had occasion to call Drake, I queried their technician about it and
he said that performance was normal. A couple of years later, when I
had occasion to send the set to Drake for adjustment and repair, I
asked the technician if this could be corrected. He said Drake was
well-aware of the phenomenon but that it was inherent in the design of
their circuit. He told me most people do not notice it but those with
"perfect pitch" (something with which I have been blessed) will hear
it.

Are you sure you mean perfect (absolute) pitch? That's when you know the
musical letter assigned to any note you hear without a reference note.
It's quite rare. I have relative pitch. I can hear a very slight change
in the pitch of a tone. I also know when I'm hearing a song in it's
original key. For example, I can whistle a popular song in it's original
key but I couldn't tell you the actual letter of that key. That's why
it's called 'relative'.

To make myself as clear as I know how, I would rate the Drake
synchronous detection circuit as 4 5/8 "stars" out of 5 and AOR's as 4
7/8 out of 5. (The fault with AOR's sync circuit is the split-second
muting which occurs whenever the sync is engaged and you re-tune,
either with the knob or with the remote control. There is NO muting at
all when tuning or re-tuning via the RxWINGS program so, at least for
me, the point is generally moot.)

In any case, it is my opinion that during actual listening, the AOR
AR7030 Plus' synchronous detection circuit is "superb" and the Drake
circuit is "merely" excellent.

I can (and do!) live with both.

I don't think I could live with the ergonomics of the '7030'. I know I
couldn't live with the menu carousel on the original R8. I hate going
through menus to change a setting. I want buttons. The more the merrier.
I can change the most commonly used functions on my R8B in the dark.

I'd like to hear an audio file of the 'warbling' phenomena on your R8B.
Could you post one somewhere for us to hear?