OK so I found out I won't be laid off this year, so I went ahead and bought another box on my wish-list......The RX-5500. It's an awesome box, clean-sounding, good highs, excellent control feel, and of course those awesome LED's. However, the problem I have is that the LED's max out and stay maxed out for many kinds of music. I like for the LED's to dance around, because for me that's one of the coolest things about boomboxes.

If I'm listening to jazz, or talk radio, then yes the lights dance around like they should, but as soon as there's a CONSTANT voice or guitar, like almost any rock music, the LED's stay maxed out permanently.

Note this only happens with the radio. When playing a tape, the lights dance around like they should. But I listen to radio a lot, so I want them to work the same.

Ahy other 5500 owners out there? Does yours behave like this? Just want to make sure it's not common to all these models, before I tear it apart and check for problems.

reli you have to remember some stations or all of them use compression in there audio, and some of the signals may be hotter on some stations than others so you will see that some stations tend to sound a lot louder than others we ran a radio station as we had a pretty hot signal compared to other stations the inportant thing was not to overdrive the audio to cause excessive spurious emissions bleeding to other stations there is only so much that the fcc considers safe

dont be disappointed reli mine does that too.

It's the Optimod (or equivelent) processor at the radio station; reduces the difference between loud and soft sounds and gives a perceived volume and loudness boost (at the expense of dynamics, hence the meters staying fairly constant). There are various levels of compression used depending on the station, some pop stations sound appalling and really tiresome to listen to compared to the more 'hifi' sound of FM stations in the 80's....

My Sharp 9696 does the same thing.....But not the Sharp HK-9000. Weird....

Well I found out that if I press Record, and fiddle with the record level knobs, I can get the LED's to my liking. But is it safe to keep the Record key down all the time? The tape motor isn't being used, so I think it's OK, right?