Pioneer F-204RDS Tuner

The tuner Pioneer F-204RDS turned out to be well equipped functionally and not only functionally - two antennas are attached into the box. There are long waves (LW), RDS, attenuator, auto-programming (but only for RDS-stations). There is a miss of S-meter for full equipping. The design is good, it could be perfect , if not the display, glowing digits and inscriptions with mosaic of blue points, what is very unusual in comparison with displays of many other tuners. The parameters of FM tract are very good, although the sensitivity is not high; the selectivity by adjacent channel is normal - 60 db, by image channel is high - 85 db and other side channels are almost absent - the selectivity by them achieve 100 db! This is a great success of the company. An original stereo decoder is used in the tuner, apparently with digital processingof signals, providing very high separation of stereo channels (65 db) and fantastically low distortion, even lower than in mono mode (0.05 %). We couldn't check these data due to the lack of appropriate equipment. We can only say that the sound at FM reception was very good as was noted by the appropriated assessment. Unfortunately, we didn't find the same laudatory words for AM tract, because although this tract can stand overloads up to 0.45 V by the input, its advantages are limited by this. A lot of reception side channels, weakened on average by 10 db, i.e. only by three times, and extending to the frequencies above 5 MHz, didn't allow us to give AM reception even a satisfactory evaluation. Although the sound of the most powerful radio stations, especially at long waves, is very good - their powerful signal "crushes" all interference!