If the thought of hearing the same overplayed tunes again and again makes you want to trash-bin your run-of-the-mill radio, it may be time to go digital. Visteon's HD Pulse is one of the latest digital tabletop radios to come off the assembly line, and one of the more affordable ones. But in its efforts to drop the price, Visteon also dropped the ball in a couple of respects.
You may be asking: Why upgrade to digital? HD Radio offers several perks over analog AM/FM, namely cleaner, crisper sound and far more listening options. The latter is accomplished through multicasting, which enables stations to broadcast several audio streams on a single frequency. For instance, here in Seattle, my local National Public Radio station multicasts two additional channels, one for a second news stream and another for the BBC. Other local stations multicast specialty channels such as an all-blues station, an indie-rock stream, and a 1980s-hits channel. (To see a list of HD stations available in your area, check this station finder.)
The tissue-box-size Pulse is petite enough to fit on a nightstand, and with its wood finish, it's cute. The six-line display shows readable blue text on a black background; but unless you have superb vision, you'll probably need to move in closer to read smaller verbiage, such as the song and artist names (provided that the station you're listening to is streaming that info). The screen displays an HD logo whenever you've hit upon a digital radio station (if you're not on a digital station, it plays the analog AM or FM feed), and it also shows the signal strength in the form of a set of bars.
Controls are well organized, with a giant silver tuning knob occupying a good chunk of space. Pushing the knob seeks out the next station, pushing and holding it performs a fast seek, and turning it tunes manually. The knob is rather loose, though, so hitting the right mark can be a challenge; you may end up accidentally tuning in to Carrie Underwood instead of Kanye West.
But that's a minor grievance. I have bigger ones. First off, you can program only five FM and five AM channels, a pittance. Furthermore, if you set a multicast channel as a preset, the radio defaults to the main channel before tuning to the secondary one a few seconds later. (This occurs only with presets--you can tune in to the second or third channels as you would any other station, just by moving the dial, without any delay.) And once in a while it refused to flip at all. Visteon says both of these issues are a result of the way HD Radio technology works, not the radio itself.
Also, the Pulse comes with but a single speaker. Sure, that speaker offers great fidelity, but without stereo separation, the overall sound feels one-dimensional. (The company says it plans to sell a second speaker or subwoofer that you can purchase separately, but these were not available at press time.) At least you can tweak the bass and treble using the built-in EQ controls.
On the upside, the Pulse includes a handy sleep timer that will turn the radio off after 90 minutes or less, plus dual alarms with customizable snooze (1 to 60 minutes). You also get an aux-in port for connecting an MP3 player, as well as line-out and headphone jacks. The bubble-buttoned remote is kind of ugly, but since its controls mimic those on the unit, you can accomplish just about anything from a horizontal position.
All in all, the Pulse makes an adequate vehicle for digital radio, though you may get frustrated with some of its shortcomings.
Cathy Lu
