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CCRadioPlus vs. Superadio

Evaluation of the C. Crane CCRadioPlus and the Superadio

By Rob Sherwood President, Sherwood Engineering Inc.

I was asked to evaluate two table top portable radios that cover the standard AM broadcast band, in addition to other frequencies. Usually my reviews of desktop receivers for Passport to Worldband Radio encompass both laboratory measurements and hands-on evaluations. In this case, however, portable radios with loopstick antennas do not lend themselves well to connections to test equipment. What really matters to the listener is how a radio performs on a desk, or on a picnic table out in the woods. The CCRadioPlus and the Superadio could not be more different in their performance. If what you want is basically a “boom box” for a local station ten miles away, the Superadio's larger woofer and additional tweeter provides a wider range of fidelity. If, on the other hand, you want to tune in stations at greater distances, especially on the high end of the AM band, the CCRadioPlus is the clear winner.

To start with, the Superadio uses an old fashioned analog dial with very poor calibration. While doing extensive listening from the low end to the high end of the band, I found that I had to tune in a station on the CCRadioPlus, and then “look for it” on the Superadio, since I had little idea what frequency the Superadio was tuned to. The CCRadioPlus provides a modern digital readout, fine tunable in 1 kHz steps, plus jog buttons for 10 kHz steps.

Tuning in weak signals on the low end of the broadcast band showed the CCRadioPlus ahead by a nose, but the obvious superiority was on the crowded high end of the band where the Superadio often overloaded. The Superadio tended to have spurious tweets and whistles where the CCRadioPlus had none.

The Superadio offers two bandwidths, but this feature was found to be basically useless. Unless one was listening to a station virtually next door, the wide position often picked up two stations at once. After a few attempts at using the optional bandwidth on the Superadio, I gave up and left the radio on narrow.

The CCRadioPlus is more tailored to voice reception for news and sports, rather than music, with a reasonable balance between lows and highs from its single speaker element. While the radio has tone controls, I tended to leave them at mid scale for best reception.

As with either the Superadio or the CCRadioPlus, one must rotate the radio at times to get the best reception on weaker signals due to the directivity of the built-in loop stick. You can also hook up an additional wire antenna, should one be inside a building with lots of metal, which would block the signal. At my listening location in the Rocky Mountain Foothills, I did not find the need for any additional antenna enhancement.

While one can instantly tune in a specific station on the CCRadioPlus due to its digital readout, it is interesting to note the Superadio has not only its crude analog dial, but a logging scale. This was common in the 1940s and 50s on such radios as the famous HRO line, which had no direct frequency readout. Having to revert to such a scheme to return to a station is a bit passé in 2006!

The Superadio has been around for a long time, but compared to the CCRadioPlus for voice reception, it has easily met its match. Both radios cover the FM band, but additionally the CCRadioPlus offers reception of the weather channels above the FM frequencies. This can be particularly important if you are away from shelter on a trip or camping. Five presets can be programmed per band for you convenience.

The only area where I could wish for improvement in the CCRadioPlus was using the jog buttons. One cannot push the “up” or “down” buttons and hear the radio tune. Instead the radio stays muted until a jog button is released, and the synthesizer locks. One can scan tune, however, with the fine tuning knob, albeit a bit slowly, in 1 kHz steps.

Rob Sherwood
President, Sherwood Engineering Inc.

Sherwood Engineering is a respected radio engineering business in Denver, Colorado. This test was conducted in 2006 to help with some confusion between the CCRadioPlus and the Superadio. In 2009 the CCRadio-2 was released with a bit better (2db) AM performance than previous models and the addition of the 2-meter Ham band.