Last night, I received my Degen DE1123. My opinion of the radio follows.

For a small radio, it seems to do an adequate job of receiving the high
power SW stations. FM reception is just fair.

MW reception is interesting. It doesn't seem to handle high signal levels
very well. This could be content-related, though. It does do a fair job on
medium level signals. The strong signal issue relates to a locally generated
signal from a small AM transmitter here at my shop. The transmitter sounds
perfectly clear and good quality on most of my other radios (primary
exceptions are the 20's model TRF radios with no ALC), but on the Degen,
it's very choppy with audio levels changing constantly. This may, again, be
content related. The DSP may not be able to handle the relatively wider
dynamic range of my little transmitter over that of a commercial station.

Setup is not difficult, but not too intuitive, either. I like the 12/24 hour
clock and the switchable 9/10 KHz channel spacing on MW. SW tuning is not
fast, but is helped to a degree by being able to step through the
international SW broadcast bands with a push of the band button.

The internal recorder is handy, but they really should have added a built in
mic for the voice recorder, rather than having to plug in an external mic to
the headphone jack.

The audio quality with the internal speaker is, understandably, very poor.
With the stock ear buds, it's worse still. I received a pair of "upgrade"
ear buds with my radio, these are perhaps the worst sounding in-ear earbuds
that I have ever heard. I need to dig out the $3 cheapies that I got with
my Toshiba Gigabeat and see if they sound any better. ANY response under 500
Hz would be nice...

The radio comes with a USB cable that supposedly will allow recharging of
the included AAA NiMH batteries through the USB port on your computer. This
has so far not worked for me. The computer sees the device when plugged into
the USB port, and the AC/charge icon on the radio comes on, but after 18
hours, the battery level indicator remains unchanged. It does not come with
an AC adapter, though one is shown in the manaul, which is written in both
Chinese and English.

Overall, for such a small radio, which would fit very well into a shirt
pocket, it does fairly well, but don't expect it to perform like a Grundig
YB400 or equivalent radio. I kind of like it, for it's size and relative
utility, and for it's extended (64-108 MHz, which includes the Russian and
Japanese FM bands) FM band. Not so sure it wouldn't be a better radio
without the DSP, though.

--
Say no to institutionalized interference.
Just say NO to HD/IBOC!

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...
Last night, I received my Degen DE1123. My opinion of the radio follows.

Overall, for such a small radio, which would fit very well into a shirt
pocket, it does fairly well, but don't expect it to perform like a Grundig
YB400 or equivalent radio. I kind of like it, for it's size and relative
utility, and for it's extended (64-108 MHz, which includes the Russian and
Japanese FM bands) FM band. Not so sure it wouldn't be a better radio
without the DSP, though.

Sounds to me like the 1102 is still the best bang/buck in a small AM/FM/SW
radio. I have 2 (along with dozens of other radios) and still find them
handy for travel.

You should have sent your contribution to the Christian Childrens Fund
instead of the Chinese Communist Party.

On Nov 20, 6:42*am, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
Not so sure it wouldn't be a better radio
without the DSP, though.

Without the DSP it wouldn't be a radio! After the mixer is one DSP
chip that digitises the IF signal, does all the filtering,
demodulating, audio frequency shaping, and conversion to analog audio.

Tom

wrote in message
...
You should have sent your contribution to the Christian Childrens Fund
instead of the Chinese Communist Party.

Just about impossible to buy a radio of any type anymore that doesn't
"contribute to the Chinese Communist Party"

"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
You should have sent your contribution to the Christian Childrens Fund
instead of the Chinese Communist Party.

Just about impossible to buy a radio of any type anymore that doesn't
"contribute to the Chinese Communist Party"

Besides, the "Christian Childrens Fund" doesn't make radios, so screw em!
:-)

On Nov 20, 7:42*pm, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
Last night, I received my Degen DE1123. My opinion of the radio follows.

For a small radio, it seems to do an adequate job of receiving the high
power SW stations.

Ann, does that mean in comparison to DE1102 / 03, SW reception of the
DE1123 is not satisfactory?...

wrote in message
...
On Nov 20, 7:42 pm, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
Last night, I received my Degen DE1123. My opinion of the radio follows.

For a small radio, it seems to do an adequate job of receiving the high
power SW stations.

Ann, does that mean in comparison to DE1102 / 03, SW reception of the
DE1123 is not satisfactory?...

I don't have experience with those radios, so can't venture an opinion of
those vs. the DE1123. Once I have more time in on this one, I can give a
better idea of reception. Basically what I am saying is, vs. a larger,
better featured radio, this one seems to be lacking. But this isn't a big
surprise, really, as one can't expect a tiny shirt pocket sized radio to
perform up to big radio specs. I'll try some decent headphones/earphones
later today to see if the audio improves. As it sits, the audio is not
pleasant to listen to.

Headphones Always help;
-- How is it with some random wire hooked to teh Antenna ?

Thanks,

Chester



On Nov 20, 7:37*pm, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
wrote in message

...
On Nov 20, 7:42 pm, "Brenda Ann" wrote:

Last night, I received my Degen DE1123. My opinion of the radio follows..

For a small radio, it seems to do an adequate job of receiving the high
power SW stations.

Ann, does that mean in comparison to DE1102 / 03, SW reception of the
DE1123 is not satisfactory?...

I don't have experience with those radios, so can't venture an opinion of
those vs. the DE1123. *Once I have more time in on this one, I can give a
better idea of reception. Basically what I am saying is, vs. a larger,
better featured radio, this one seems to be lacking. But this isn't a big
surprise, really, as one can't expect a tiny shirt pocket sized radio to
perform up to big radio specs. I'll try some decent headphones/earphones
later today to see if the audio improves. As it sits, the audio is not
pleasant to listen to.

On 22 Nov, 09:04, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
"Duncan" wrote in message

...

Ann, does that mean in comparison to DE1102 / 03, SW reception of the
DE1123 is not satisfactory?...

Alan, I have both and the DE1123 is nowhere near as sensitive. My full
review is at:

...but I will happily include it here if anyone is interested.

Please do.

Ok here's my 1000 words!

===============

It is the triumph of the digital revolution. For years, photographers
sought nothing short of excellence. Then along came digital and turned
the process on its head; shoot any old crap and clean it up in
Photoshop. While purists gazed at the heavens in dismay, the great
unwashed abandoned their tripods and focussed instead on the
exhilaration of pixelling-out Uncle Jim's wandering hands. A whole
shelfload of magazines sprung up bringing digital manipulation to the
masses, and worst of all, the masses seemed to be having all the fun.

However, things don't end there. Digital jiggery-pokery can clean up
more than Uncle Jim's act. From old movies to crackly vinyl, faded
prints to cheap stereos, digital signal processing (DSP) is the
electronic washing machine that makes things look and sound the way
they should, rather than how they actually do. At best DSP allows
missing or obscured content to be assembled from the remaining data.
At worst it enables manufacturers to pedal third-rate crap, using DSP
to hide the evidence of their cutbacks.

Now, the idea of using DSP to clean up the audio from a shortwave
radio is certainly not new. Many high-end receivers have built-in DSP
to reduce noise, fading and generally cleanse overcrowded bands, and
there is no shortage of standalone processors for the rest of us. But
they are expensive. Expect to add £150 to the price of a good receiver
for the privilege.

Then along comes Degen with the DE1123, a shirt-pocket shortwave radio
with built-in DSP for about £60. Is it another gem from Degen, or
cheap rubbish that needs DSP to make it listenable?

Now I am glossing over the fact that the DE1123 is also a 1GB mp3
player, after all your mobile phone is probably more capable. And also
that it can record from the radio and it's a voice recorder too. What
really matters is the simple question, is it any good for listening to
the radio with?

First the best bit, opening the box! Let's not deny it…

Before getting even that far the side panel entices us with 1gb, 2gb
and 4gb options! Nestling inside was the radio, a soft pouch,
batteries, strap, instructions, strange poster, USB cable and
USB-simulating power supply.

Supplied AAA rechargeables were only 650mah, and they were sneakily
hidden, presumably not to offend Americans. But then again Americans
don't buy Chinese stuff anyway because they ain't made from Milwaukee
pig-iron and hell, they like their radios expensive. Buy some 1000mah
ones instead. Earplugs are typical Degen ones.

So now to the radio.

It's thin, really thin. Much thinner than you expect it to be. Build
is reasonably solid, but the band selector switch looks likely to fail
first, even before the skinny unrotatable aerial gets bent. The lack
of a backstand makes things worse; listen to shortwave with the radio
teetering upright or have the radio and aerial flat against the table.
Try it in your shirtpocket and you'll spear yourself in the chin. Hold
it in your hand and the reception jumps around, and the back vibrates
so much your fingers tingle.

FM is poor with fizzy audio, insensitive reception and no mono/stereo
option. This is the first Degen radio I have ever owned that needed
its aerial extended for FM. The DSP seems to add an accompaniment of
thumps and thuds to every station, noises that in no way sound like
interference, more like a large book being leafed through. Remember
those strange pops during mp3 recordings on the DE1121? That's them,
but bigger! However there is one good point. The search tuning is
really fast, much faster than the display can keep up with. It rockets
through the entire FM band in seconds.

Now for AM, which is awful. The sea of clicks, crackles, bangs and
fizzing is almost overwhelming and even the most powerful stations
succumb to some extent, nothing escapes completely from the din. At
least the ferrite is aligned across the radio, but rotating the radio
does not seem to improve the reception until a very sharp insensitive
point is reached, and then the racket is back. It seems the job
assigned to the DSP is to make all AM stations sound equally loud
regardless of actual level, whilst trying to knock out hiss at the
same time. However turning down volume on this hullabaloo uncovers a
strange flaw. For some reason all the digital stuff happens after the
analogue signal has gone through the volume control. So when the
volume is low the DSP doesn't have very much data to work with and
audio gets very crunchy.

SW is much the same with weak stations leaping from non-existence to
muffled and noisy and then gone again. The DSP feels like a `squelch',
boosting any remnants of fading stations until they become too distant
and then muting them. It is especially horrid with rapidly fading
stations, the pulsing effect is impossible to follow. But occasionally
there is a small surprise. Switching between the DE1121 and DE1123
both tuned to Vatican City 7250, at one point the former lost the
station completely while the latter grimly hung onto it. For a brief
moment the DE1123 was pulling in a station that its older brother
couldn't hear! And when you do get a reasonably strong station the
reception is rock steady.

The compliment of six very multi-functional buttons makes operation a
bit of a challenge. There is plenty of room for a numeric keypad below
the speaker but then it wouldn't look quite so similar to an IPod
would it? A big IPod. That resembles an IPod in the way that Speak and
Spell resembles a Blackberry. Instead there is a combination of short
and long presses for almost everything. For example the difference
between deleting a memory and deleting all the memories is how long
you hold the button for. Don't expect much guidance from the display,
which can't even display the frequency without resorting to different
sized digits as the designers felt it was more useful as a clock.

It's not a good in-bed radio as you need lots of volume to escape the
low bit-depth distortion, and in the dark you will bend that aerial.
Using it as - literally - a shirt-pocket radio will eventually lead to
a chin-aerial-juxtaposition because you must extend it, unless you
bravely stick to medium wave. The minimalist awkward interface with
segmented display and silly buttons makes you really want to slap the
designer. And again for no longwave, no stereo/mono switch,
unbypassable DSP, no keypad, dire audio, everything. Recording from
the radio is an afterthought and not seriously implemented, nor the
MP3 player.

I really wanted to give the DE1123 a great review but from switch on
it was immediately apparent that this would not be the case. Despite
being of the DE112x family, it seems closer to the DE108 in
performance. The DSP adds the ambience of a blind man in a furniture
shop and an omnipresent digital fizz makes you yearn for old-fashioned
hiss.

As more and more hybrid radios arrive it is strange to reflect how
sensible the DE1121 is, despite panning it for being so weird such a
short time ago. The DE1121 was a slow seller for Degen, the DE1122
even worse and now we have the DE1123, suggesting that Degen attribute
commercial unpopularity to insufficient styling, not capability and
usability.

Maybe digital manipulation isn't the liberation of the digital era
after all, it's the necessity. And the DE1123 needs it more than most.