Hi Folks! I trust you're all having a Happy Christmas, most of you are still enjoying the day whereas we in Australia are readying ourselves for the great day which is Boxing day.
I hope Santa, brought you everything you asked for as he did in my case, he brought me a Bose Wave 2 Radio which I'd like to review below. I've been wanting one of these things for the last 16 years but every time I've planned to buy one the price has shot up so my joy was unmistakable yesterday when I unwrapped the box and then opened it to reveal The Bose Wave 2 Radio. I think it worth mentioning the box and packaging before I talk about what the radio has to offer. Initial impressions of the box lead me to believe that perhaps 2 people were going to be needed to unpack the radio as the box is huge! compared to the actual radio itself, no amount of packing and other stuff inside. The radio is clearly a world wide model as connecting cords are supplied for various countries including the U.S., England etc so that goes part of the way to explain the large box. A patch cord is supplied to enable the radio to be connected to your Hifi system or whatever. A manual which looks utterly superb sitting on a coffee table is part of the package though I suspect that its size is more to do with the fact that the manual is in multiple languages. Then there's the card type remote controller which in itself looks elligant sitting on a bedside table or whatever next to the radio. Now to the radio itself and here's the phrase you'll utter as I did, "Its small!" and that it is exactly, quite a bit smaller than the Yamaha desktop Audio systems we've been discussing over the last few weeks. The second thing which is immediately apparent is the total lack of controls, knobs, buttons, dials or any other function on the front or the top of the radio, on the front is a big display in the middle of 2 rather large speakers, the speakers actually take up most of the area of the front of the system so if you wish to control this system then you must! have the remote control handy. There is a multi pin connector at the back of the radio for connection to other devices so it may be that there is a way of controlling the radio through that somehow. On the back of the radio are 5 sockets, the AC mains connection, the aforementioned multi pin accessaries socket, an external antenna socket, an aux-in socket and a headphones jack. Setting up the radio is easy enough, plug in, turn on, select the band and start scanning for stations. Unfortunately I couldn't do much with the AM broadcast band when I tried out the radio late last night due to the severe Thunderstorm activity we had so I was initially disappointed though by this morning much of the thunderstorm activity had died out so I did manage to get to test the radio on AM after all so I'm very glad I delayed sending this review off. FM sounds absolutely brilliant! I submit that this radio actually sounds a little better than the Yamaha Desktop Audio systems, and its just as rich in sound and probably quite a bit louder! Unless I'm missing something this radio doesn't appear to have a "Seek" function so you must tune up and down the bands manually. Setting presets is easy enough, just tune to the desired station and hold down one of the 6 preset buttons, radio mutes for a second or so and then a beep is heard to confirm to you that the preset is set. To recall a preset you just press the appropriate preset button, the radio has 12 presets, 6 for FM and 6 for AM. Radio tuning on the FM band is done in 50KHZ steps. The radio uses the AC mains lead as an antenna which seems to work quite affectively here and I'm a good way out of the metro area. I was initially somewhat disappointed with the performance of the radio on the AM band but after playing with the radio here for a while I accidentally discovered that this radio is extremely picky about where it is placed. I had the radio placed on the top of my fridge but decided to move it to the kitchen table where I could easily access the thing, I'm tall and can easily reach the top of my fridge but I'd rather sit down and play with a radio thanks than stand up all the time. When I moved the radio from the top of the fridge to the kitchen table the AM band sprang to life and I started receiving stations from over 500 miles away so I can only conclude that the built-in antenna for this radio resides in its bottom somewhere and the metal top of my fridge was shielding it. Not sure of the actual frequency ranges of both bands yet, will have to see if an online manual is available. Will have to set the clock at some stage though I'm told this is easily done. The radio has a dual alarm function. Be warned! when the radio is turned off at the mains and then turned on again the radio tuner resets itself, that is the station you were last listening to is not remembered however the presets seem to remain in tact. ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
