Kenwood KT3080 Tuner

The order of testing devices was completely random, and after the most compact tuner was the largest and "thickest", but also the cheapest, nevertheless immediately gives the impression of solidity. Kenwood is known for good radio equipment and this bias has affected the design of the tuner. The tuning is not done with buttons, but with a big round knob, which is much more convenient and reminds you of the tuning of old analogue radios. Truth to say, the resemblance is purely optical - the knob controls the microprocessor and the tuning is done in 9 kHz steps in AM and 50 kHz in FM with muted sound during the tuning. The design of the tuner is great and the features are good. There is an S meter and input attenuator. Another distinguishing feature is the ability to select the FM bandwidth. With a narrow band the sensitivity increases, which increases the reception range and the selectivity to the neighboring channel is very useful with the abundance of stations in the range. Thus, the FM tuner path can be rated as good or very good. The only limitation is that the signal to noise ratio is a bit lower than the other units. The AM path of the KT3080 cannot be singled out in any way. Although the reception of local powerful stations is good and clear, weak stations are masked by noise and interference. Measurements showed a lot of side channels of reception at frequencies up to 10 MHz, attenuated only by 13-20 dB, i.e. by less than 10 times. A surprising fact, indicating the absence of an elementary mid-wave bandpass filter at the input. So the MW band in the KT3080 can only be considered auxiliary. The tuner sound is good and clear, but subjectively inferior to the sound of other devices.