Signal Strength Indication

[rmp]

My Hafler 330 (digital) has 5 LEDs for signal strength indication. It works well. Weak, but listenable, stations show one light; while strong, or very local, stations show all five. Most stations are in between.



My 3 analog tuners have traditional signal strength meters. The needles move through a more or less limited range on these meters and don't provide much usable info. The worst is a Sansui 517; the best is a Scott LT-112B.



My question is this: Do most digital tuners provide better signal strength indication than analog tuners?

 

[dewdude]

Yes/No. Some digital tuners provide signal strength...some don't even bother to tell you anything.

There's also the scale and units they are using...and how well the meter is calibrated. Typically modern radios are using dBm...which can tell you a little if you really understand it.

I haven't used many of the ultra-modern DSP based radios other than maybe in a car. They didn't give much of a signal strength indicator. My software-defined-radio box gives me all kinds of signal strengths...but without being properly calibrated it's useless. They can also be thrown off by things like AGC in the tuner circuits.

 

[rcs16]

It depends on how the level detection is done and where/how it is sampled. AGC and IF limiting will throw it off as said above.
I have a Si4735 DSP radio it reads out in dBuV,( you access a 16-bit register) I did not check its accuracy, but I found it to be very good compared to the old analog ways.
A lot of old tuners use the quad detector as the RSSI, it usually has all kinds of signal limiting in front of the IC, so that compresses the readings. I know some old Sansui's, like G-9000 used a trick to linearize it a bit.
Think of it as a relative means rather than something to be accurate.

 

[orsen]

not much of a tuner user anymore
but i did notice often that the peak strength readings often did not match the best best stereo indicator reading

 

[Punker X]

not much of a tuner user anymore
but i did notice often that the peak strength readings often did not match the best best stereo indicator reading

An indication that an alignment is in order.