Kenwood TS-890S vs. Icom IC-7610 Comparison of Internal Speaker Audio, SSB Filter, RX Quality Review

Quick demo video of a QSO on 20m & 40m comparing the audio quality, SSB filters and sound of the internal speakers of the Kenwood TS-890S and Icom IC-7610. After using both radios for a couple weeks, both are great but I do prefer the built-in speaker and audio filters of the TS-890. Having been an audio engineer for many years the Kenwood to me has a warmer, more "analog" sound. The SSB filters on the 7610, 7300 and 7100 have somewhat more of a harsher "digital" sound at the default 2.3KHz bandwidth, thus I usually reduce the filter bandwidth to 2.0-2.2KHz on these Icom models. On the TS-890 anywhere from 2.5-3KHz sounds great, sometimes even 4-5KHz in better band conditions.

Both of these radios have a huge feature set, of which this video shows very little. Some of the advantages of the 7610 are its dual receivers and flexible scope options, allowing simultaneous reception and viewing the spectrums on 2 bands. (Coincidentally one of the hams in this QSO talks about how nice that feature is on the Flex, to see how propagation is on one band while talking on another eg. when 20m is fading out in the evening and 40m is becoming stronger.) This is not possible to do on the 890S since it can only receive one band at a time, you'd either have to switch bands to check conditions or hook up a 2nd receiver or SDR. This feature on the 7610 can also be used to show a close-in spectrum on one spectrum scope in addition to the wide range spectrum/waterfall scope, similar to how the 890 shows the audio band spectrum at top right.