In the many years that I have been interested in sound, I have hardly ever really gotten into radio listening. I'm not sure why this is, but I suspect it has been a lack of decent equipment. That's funny considering my long desire to have a decent music recording and composing studio in my house, and the many pieces of equipment that I have purchased over the years to make recording possible. It seems that the one thing that was lacking was a good radio. Or when I did have a radio, I would instantly try to connect it to all my audio gear, and then be disappointed with the sound. And with so much equipment all connected together, the idea of just turning on the radio meant a lot of buttons that needed to be pressed. Certainly not fun for casual late night listening.
So, this spring I finally got my first decent radio. It has a big enough speaker to not sound tinny, and it is all contained in one unit, making it easy to use anywhere. It can even run on batteries, but I haven't purchased the 4 D cells that it requires yet. I can listen to the FM and AM broadcast bands, but I can also tune short wave as well. The AM/SW bands have a selectable bandwidth filter that can help reduce interference, especially on distant stations. So now I am all equipped to listen to the radio at just about any time of day or night, and I do! There is so much to listen to on the radio. It's such a great medium. With television being so much more expensive and sophisticated to produce, radio is really simple enough that one person can produce their own show live. And they can do it with a very modest amount of equipment. I've been tempted to get some of my gear set up and do some sort of streaming talk show or something.
But I think I've finally realized why I now enjoy radio like I never have before. I think the main reason is that I purposely haven't connected my radio to any expensive audio equipment! Radio as a communication medium is like the telephone. It sounds bad but it works and can be very useful as a communication tool. In the past I've always treated the radio as another input on my mixer, and then been disappointed when I played it through good speakers. It's all about context. When I watch TV, I care that it's letting me see the news programming that has been produced that day. I know that if I went to a movie theatre and they projected the same TV signals I watch at home, everyone would be surprised at how bad it looks. Because in the context of a movie theatre, the presentation format requires a higher quality source. This is the same for many forms of media, but I don't think much of it occurred to me until recently.
When radio is enjoyed in context, on a semi-decent communications-style speaker, it's really quite nice. But when we put it up against CDs, we are bound to be disappointed by the poor sound quality. If we can respect a medium or technology for what it is, we can get a lot more out of it. This mindset is sometimes difficult for those of us so wrapped up in technology. It's easy to want the latest and greatest, and be totally uninterested in older technology. But radio, just like the telephone, has proven its place in society as a cheap, reliable and versatile medium. My receiver is the perfect gateway, and exactly what I needed to be able to enjoy it. Sometimes less is more!
