Sangean HDT-1 HD Radio Component Tuner Review

After all the mumbo jumbo I read on this HD tuner I really had my doubts despite the low cost. I bought it on Amazon from Egroup. The unit came in perfect shape. I live in the Dallas area. I have the tuner hooked up to an Onkyo 606. I play the tuner through the 7.1 home theater speakers, and the secondary speakers for whole house sound. I use a Logitech Harmony 880 to control the whole system, Sangean an easy addition. The controls are well thought out. The remote is cheap, but stores nicely with my dozen other remotes.

The tuner sounds great and the reception is fantastic compared to normal FM. It is not CD, but the fidelity is several times better than normal FM. The quality leap you get going from FM to FM HD is about like the quality leap you get going from AM to FM.

In Dallas, I could get about 6 FM stations clearly. Now, I can get about 36 FM HD broadcasts clearly. I don't know how many regular FM stations in addition to that. I'm sort of snubbing them. There are about 6 AM HD stations in Dallas. The variety in HD is remarkable also. I have all 20 FM presets filled, plus the 6 AM stations loaded, and the remaining 14 AM presets empty. Who cares. Thank goodness it doesn't lose presets in a power loss. This is the first time ever I could get the local classical station without periodic multipath.

Dallas must be HD Disney World. Signal drop and switching to normal FM wasn't a problem. Look up the HD Radio website and see if you like what HD broadcasts are available in your area before buying.

Optical out on this unit gets you another type of out, but I doubt you could tell the difference over the RCA jacks. At the price the HDT-1 is going for, see Egroup, paying more may not get you enough.

The LCD doesn't turn off. It displays the time in fairly large numbers. It's not as bright as a 4 watt night light, more like an LCD alarm clock. Some people think those are too bright, but not bright enough to keep from tripping over things on the floor at night. The LED on my subwoofer is brighter, the red led on the Sangean is brighter, etc.

Somebody said they had a conventional FM tuner that sounded better than this. Really? What did they pay for it? Looking back at the reviews I read, if the reviewer sounds like a audio snob, or someone with an agenda, quit reading and move on to the next review.



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