#Great radios for your kitchen - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - Digital Life

Classic designs offer great quality for the price

By Gary Krakow Columnist

msnbc.com

updated 11/29/2005 12:42:57 PM ET 2005-11-29T17:42:57

Satellite radio use is growing and soon we'll have to deal with HD radio (digital versions of our local stations). But for now, despite decades of ownership by mega-companies and sound-alike bland programming, AM and FM are still what many of us rely on to get the latest news, traffic, sports scores and even entertainment.

Portable radios are easy to take along with you to every room in the house. For the most part they are terrific for AM and non-critical FM listening. But for great sounding music after approximately 100 years of broadcasting, it’s still a table radio that provides the best quality for the price.

Since the 1960s, when you think about quality table radios you think about the man responsible to updating the original design to 21st century standards. The late Henry Kloss designed amazing-sounding table radios first for KLH (he was the K), then Advent, Cambridge SoundWorks and finally Tivoli. All modern-day table radios owe allegiance to Mr. Kloss for their heart and soul, if not their exact layout.

Tivoli makes a number of table radios, ranging from a simple AM/FM design to two-box stereo versions with optional woofers, interesting battery-powered portables and even an AM/FM/Sirius satellite radio design. All sound pretty amazing in their own right, but it’s the basic AM/FM monophonic design that’s still my favorite. The Tivoli Model One is compact, beautifully designed and expertly finished in a number of colors and types of wood.

The Tivoli is smaller in real life than the pictures make it look and it sounds bigger in real life than it has any right to sound. It sounds full and rich and can fool many audiophiles into thinking that you have an expensive hi-fi system buried somewhere in a cabinet. The other great thing about a Model One is the price: $119.99 in a number of different colors to match its surroundings. There’s also a new Model One Platinum which sports a number of premium finishes for $169.99.

Cambridge Soundworks

CSW s stereo table radio comes with or without a built-in CD deck.

If your tastes are more modern, Cambridge SoundWorks sells an upgraded Kloss design called the SoundWorks Table Radio 730 for $199. (The 740 adds a CD player and sells for $349.)

Where Tivoli radios bring back memories of simple analog designs from the past, the Cambridge SoundWorks radios are totally modern: digital readouts of the time, stations and the songs being played and lots of cool buttons to press for station memories and other functions (especially in the version with a CD player.)