In article ,
carlos2007 wrote:

I have been thinking about buying a tabletop receiver for shortwave.
I am mainly interested in tropical bands and 49 mb SW stations, not
interested in ham bands.

I have already got a Drake R8b but it is not good for DXing in these
bands. I have been reading in some web pages that the Drake r7A
perfoms very well . What is your opinion about buying a R7A or a
similar receiver? Of course I would sell the R8B first. Any comments
are wellcomed. Thanks

I'm curious why you think the Drake R8B is not a good DX radio for 49
meters? What seems to be the problem? Overload from local MW
stations?

The problem I have with the Drake R8b it is that I cannnot hear,
understand, weak stations, because the audio it is too bassy and
muddy. Same happens on tropical bands. I have tried listening with
different headphones, audio filters but not improvement at all. I
think that this receiver has been made for generallistening not for
DXing. So, why did I spend a $1250 receiver if I cannot identify a
weak station? I have read in some groups that same thing happens in
many R8B,s and the R8 has much better audio.[/i][/color]

Everyones ears are different. I have trouble understanding audio when it
has been digitally processed with artifacts generated by psycho acoustic
algorithms.

I used to own a R8 and traded it in for an R8B. I have not noticed a
problem with the audio sound having to much base with either receiver.

The two things you can do is turn the tone control clockwise for
increased treble and the other is use the passband tuning to bring the
higher audio modulation frequencies into the received passband.

If you are trying to use the narrower filters with AM mode that can make
the sound muddy. Use the narrow filters in SSB mode when DXing AM
stations.

If this still does not work for you then I suggest buying a professional
grade radio with digital filters in software preferably in the IF chain.
You will pay a lot more for it than the Drake.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California