Three Must-Hear Gadgets for Radio Lovers

Editor's Note: Gary Krakow is an award-winning journalist whose columns help feed his personal passion for playing with gadgets of all types, shapes and sizes. Today we bring you part two of Gary's high-end holiday buying guide. Stay tuned to this space for more and click here for part one, here for part two and here for part three.

For millions of people, radio is still a daily part of their lives. Whether portable, stationary or mobile, radio is still a major force in entertaining and informing listeners everywhere.

Radios Reviewed: A Sound Salvation

Like everything else, radio is changing. No longer relegated to the "airwaves," radios now use satellites and the Internet to "broadcast" their signals. There's also HD technology, which permits U.S. AM and FM stations to broadcast digital signals. More about this in a minute.

You need to know about three wonderful, new radio receivers: a standard AM/FM/shortwave model, an AF/FM/HD device and one of the new Wi-Fi Internet radio receivers, which isn't really a radio in the strict sense but could be the wave of the future.

C. Crane is a company that lives and breathes radio. You name it, C. Crane has it. It sells all different kinds of radio receivers and antennas and everything else you need to listen to radio broadcasts -- even in difficult reception situations.

It also sells radio under its own name, including the new CCRadio-SW. Think of it as a modern-day Zenith Trans-Oceanic -- shrunk down to about one-quarter size.

The CCRadio-SW is a portable AM/FM/Shortwave world-band receiver. It lets you listen to FM stereo broadcasts through headphones or external speakers. The large, internal 5-inch speaker has separate bass and treble controls. For the record, it sounds terrific!