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De 1126 a possibly exhaustive analysis of this radio
Degen 1126 is my latest radio from Degen and will be possibly the last radio. I found it from a Chinese seller in eBay recently quite known from his reputation over the years. The packet has been received in just 2.5 weeks via registered email.
This mini gadget cannot be considered solely as a radio as this is much more. It can operate also as a voice and radio recorder , mp3 player with 4 GB memory , removable disc and e-text reader! Don’t forget it is a radio fully implementing DSP technology . Its cost from this seller is only $45 plus $15 for postage to Greece
Its packing design is very nice . It has the feel of a thick book , and once is opened the radio is pulled from its left part . On the right part of this ‘book’ all accessories are enclosed inside a slippable box.
That includes : earphones , USB cable , a pocket guide written in quite good English , an British mains adaptor and a BL5C battery. The seller offers also a mini CD with instruction guides for all Degen models an the related firmware where applicable
And here are several photos from the accessories:
the power adapter (using the English standard with short USB D plug )
These are the spare batteries of Nokia BL5C
The BL5C battery is a clone of the original Nokia. Included on my order were 2 more batteries. One piece costs only $5 comparing to the $35 of the original as found in the Amazon stores Its capacity is 800 mAh offering ca 10 hours of operation
The standard - classical - USB adaptor cable
Included on the packing there is also a CD with manuals and firmware of all models from Tecsun and degen
My model is shpiied under the A/N of ……..and version 1.8 firmware with 4 GB of memory
Appearance :
1126 has an excellent design . It is made with plastic case .Instead of the classical numerical keyboard it has a triple search function and most basic buttons for changing bands and frequencies (scan , band change )
During off operation or shut iff , th radio sown for ca 15 secs the time and the date
The loudspeaker is of 2 inch wide . It audio is fair with relatively good sound and quite strong for its size
ON the top you will find the D plug , the earphone socket and the microphone . Also there is space for comnnecting the strap
ON the rear there is a stand , a battery case and a reset button inside this battery case. But practically once you remoce te batter a reset is made.
And it seems this radio has also ROHS approval :
Using the stand : the stand is on the bottom ofthe radio using it practically upright. As ou may also see there is the tuning knob and the menu button on the irght side of this radio.
Earphones: One of the drawbacks of the company . I could expect a top class earphone as from this company the 929 earphones offered an excellent audio. I contrast to it these earphones offer medium quality audio with much lower volume level
All operations are menu and ‘explorer’ driven . The menu reminds the older MP3 players (USB stick type)of mid 2000s with thumbnail functions . The ‘explorer’ is activated form the menu button of the right side of the radio with frequency knob to explore among the menu .
Here are the results of much time of operation :
Radio :
Display:
Its display is near to the above , and dep3nding to the band used.
Tuning knob : Itis OK to tune slowly . faster tuning yield to no tuning as the radio drops up and down
FM has fair sensitivity similar to PL200 (but less than 1102etc )and quite clear FM audio (better than PL200 but less than 1102 /1103). -Radio zones can be changed form the settings menu and include American world China Japan campus (full bandwidth of 68-108 ,Hz ).
-Very good IF filter (selectivity ),better than any analogue receiver,also with 1103 . In my mountainous reception point crowded from 4-5 different transmission points it can better separate from any other radio from nearby stations.
-Signal indicator overestimates the real signal
-Stereo reception requires only strong signals or monophonic could be heard
-And earphone cable can also act as antenna
-But there is a tuning error by 100 kHz. A low signal station of 90.4 can be tuned properly in 90.5
AM filter : Very selective filter supposedly below 4 kHz that producing bad audio
MW : For to good sensitivity . tested to heard signals above S5 units on 16V /R75 . Frequency step is 9 and 10 kHz adjustable from the settings menu,but band is the same to 1710 kHz
Sensitivity in MW is nearly linear . Tested with PL360 signals in higher MW band are nearly the same ,but on freqs near to 500-600 kHz 1126 goes beyond 360’s sensitivity But I can be enhanced using the An200 loop . This loop can be connected directly to MW antenna input
The loop AN 20 tested to gewatly enhance reception . But due to radio’s high inernal noise , antenna tuning is quite triclky that requires first to test to another radio tand then using it.
SW: It has the feeling of the PL 200’s ACG , while jog or tuning ,. Very low signals can cause the radio to produce cracking sounds (signal dropouts ) that surely come due to the DSP technology . Not surprisingly the same happens while overloading (as for example to connect with an external antenna) . This happens die to a nearby strong signal in MW of 50 kW . See blow for more
Tuning Step is by 5 kHz
Several radio menu options
- ATS ie auto tuning system while I suddenly used it while listening to FM , I found that ATS stored all memories until I pressed stop. IN ca 5 seconds it has stored more than 25 more memories !
- FM regions From the menu operation there are 3 regions: World (88-108) Japan (76-90) Student . the last and more strange mode offer the full band on FM 68-108
- MW spacing : This menu option provides spacing between 9 and 10 kHz.
- recording with options to record either on 128 Wav or 40 kb MP3 ,look below
-delete memory or delete all memories
Testing with external antennas :
-Using the Tecsun reel antenna AN03 set to ca 2,5 m for SW , De 1126 highly overloadis across all bands In contrast PL360 , has some overload but reception is easier with better audio . But do not forget the ‘reception dropouts’ cause from near to marginal signals
-1 meter wire indoors does not overload the radio (on local afternoon )
Overloads : produced from the strongest signal , in my occasion from ERA Thesaloniki 1179 kHz of 50 kW with a distance of ca 10 km producing signal of S9+40 db Though it nearly covers all bands the strongest images are in the 6-9 mHz bands. This happenened also on Litohoron with the radio being as high as possible by hand
Its severe drawbacks :
“Signal Dropouts “ this is the most severe problem of this radio. Only strong signals in Am mode do not have signal dropouts that seem as very fast fading of signal that drops suddenly to marginal level . There is also some minor level of dropouts in FM especially if signals are close to signal threshold .This also happens to PL360 but in quite lesser level. Can happen also to MP3 players that have radio optiom .
-High self noise only in the AM mode
Recording :
There are two ways to record : from menu including selecting audio quality , or by pressing the rec button for 2-3 secs while listening to the radio .(the already set mode will be used )
From settings menu there are two options for recording audio quality : high quality (128) and low quality (96) that produce WAV files of 128 kbps and MP3 of 40 kbps respectively (????).
This photo shows a recording process on radio;s screen. After saving thee is a timestamp with time and date. (this can be found setting the windows explorer in detailed mode with creation date and time enabled )
Actually the WAV format is ADPCM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_differential_pulse-code_modulation) of 16 kHz with 16 kbit stereo as shown on VLC’s code analyzer, with moderate audio fidelity due to truncation /downsampling though audio is still quite pleasant
The picture below shows a spectrum screenshot from Aucdacity with the full available bandwidth. As you can see the spectrum is only 8 kHZ ie half of WAV’s bandwidth!!
I wonder why they used such formats and not directly a MP3 format of same biterate.
MP3
The MP3 format is a analyzed as mode generic MP format with 8 kHz and 40 kb. But really the audio is very bad ,less than telephonic. For me this format sounds as below 2 kHz of bandwidth. But strangely this format can offer much better audio than this model offres. For example 40 kHz can do perfect recording from older transistor radios!! As analyzed with Audacity this mode has only 1,5 kHz bandwidth!!!
In voice recording there are three options
A standard recording with WAV of 256.THis yields to a 16 kHz audio
A fine option with MP3 of 40
A remove silence( AMR ) option with WAV of 256 Wav
Radio recording drains faster the battery . Just 15 minutes of radio recording bar decrease the battery level by one bar from a fully charged battery (with the battery before any charge)! I found it imaginary level as after stopping recording and waiting a while the battery level returned to its ‘maximum’
Radio recording sets to a high preset output volume (for speaker of earphone )that cannot be adjusted. I found that the volume was set 20
The resulted files keep a creation timestamp (creation date and time) . It can be shown from the windows file explorer, set to the detailed mode and looking at date creation or modification.
Mp3 player
As audio player it supports Wav, MP3 and WMA with great sound similar to my Muvi;s .
And with ID 3 tags shown
Audio playback
It resumes the stopped song
WMA seems not distorted as in othermp3 players!
random playback: in two hours of playback i found 7 duplicates !!
ogg and mp4 does not play , same for WMA 64 . same happens for 48 kHz sampling.
Ogg seems to be supported but as far as i tested did not play . It just shows the format on the bottom of the screen
File sorting : no sorting (FIFO ) The files shown are as stored in the memory . New files are shown on the end.
There are several problems while playing with its built in speaker. There are some audio overloads causing very strong distortion and freezing the player . Just push the stop button or shut down the radio and the radio upside down with the speaker on the bottom . IN several seconds the radio will stop playing !! More recently I demonstrated saved music material to someone and luckily this did nt happen!
I found also that Greek ID3 tags can be shown correctly, as well as file names
Menu operations of mp3 playback :
When a song is played :
-equalizer modes: natural , rock, pop , classic , soft ,jazz wow and 3D sound.MOdes i am not interested since the natural soound works better for me
- repeat : once, all , random (ie shuffle ) As in above the shuffle mode plays many duplicates
- tempo rate /slow fast good for podcasts ,in order to listen them faster or slower!
- lyrics (on off )
- repeat time
-repeat gap (??)
When a song Is paused or stopped are the explorer functions
-local folder giving you the opportunity to look into 1126’s folders for audio files. Notie that the 'tuning' knob can explore files much faster than scan for frequencies!
-delete : ie delete the stopped song
-delete all
e-text reader
can play manually or automatically
IN manual mode the tuning knob can act as page changer but an also act in auto mode
in auto mode you have to set the interval time (in secs)
greek text in Dos type character set is shown as Chinese !!
Interfacing/ Charging
The radio can be charged with its main power adaptor , using a mini USB plug. Upload speeds can be up to 1.7 /7.5 MB (with extension cable /direct cable ) download speeds from 25 but lowering down. For unknown reason I found that the cable (extension and choke ) was very hot after 7 minutes of connection
Battery & system resets : The radio has been used for the first time ca 30 mins hour with some recordings of ca 15 mins , dropping the battery level by 1-1.5 bar.
About 2 months after the purchase and without any further use , the battery was exhausted , making the radio to lose the time and date indications and showing Chinese letters in the start up . It is quite nice that I know I few Chinese to adjust it back to English !!
As i read from other texts , this is true . and comes from the radio's circuitry . It can drain the batteries in ca 4 weeks
Reset can also happen if high moisture is present. I was in the bed using it over my body . Suddenly the radio stopped , and found that the radio was reset but shwing English text
As for result this mini radio is perfect for making live recordings (good for journalists ) as main operation although as Sw radio is also quite good Below you will find some tests with other radios
However i w could like to see these enhancements:
- 50 kHz step on FM
- 1 kHz step on MW /SW
- lower circuitry inner noise
- not crashing while playing music via the speaker
- correction of the ransom play
- and if possible to replace WAV with better class MP3 encoding at any modes .I Propose them to check the Creative Zen player which has line input and encodes in ral time in 96 and 128 kb
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Other tests with 1126 and comparison with PL360
In MW 1126 has been fond having signal threshold of S5 units on R75 with 2x16 m invertd
1126’s SW reception can be enhanced in between metallic frames ! possibly more than other radios
FM sensitivity comparing to 1102: 1126 is quite less sensitive than 1102 though it has better station separation. Many stations audible as stereo on 1102 can be heard as monophonic on 1126
360 /1126 audio : PL360 has better audio fidelity than de1126 in FM and AM. (SW and MW )
Comparison with PL 200 :
De1126 seems having better overall sensitivity to PL200 in shortwaves . but 200 has better in 9mHZ
As for MW the refurbished PL200 goes better in the upper MW band
Using 1.2 m external antenna SW sensitivity levels are nearly the above.15 mHz are same , 200 outperforms on 9 mHZ , but on 11 17 and 21, 1126 goes better
And here some spectrum mesurements :
This is a FM station linear audio plot :
this is a plot in a vacant frequency in FM :
This is a plot in a DRM station in shortwave . It seems that the AM filter abt 1.2 kHZ
And this is the reception on a MW station NO other comment !
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