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Without the box, I would have never known the model number, WM-0202B. It’s not on the device or the User Manual. The box is rather informative, adding manufacturer information on the back.

The box opens from the end and so it was a task pulling out the tightly foam enclosed device from the box, but I coaxed it out.

Included are the Cassette/Radio, warranty card, User Manual, earbuds, USB cable and stereo audio cable with 3.5mm phone plugs on each end. The USB cable is unusual because one end is terminated with a USB-A plug and the other is a round, cylindrical plug that fits in the jack labeled “DC 5V.” That cable is important to hang onto since the batteries cannot be removed for external charging.

One surprise is that there was no MicroSD socket on the device, although there is a USB-A jack suitable for a flash drive. In addition there is an earphone jack, a telescopic antenna about 38 cm long, a small digital display and some controls.

But let’s skip over the BS and get to the real question:

Is It Stereo?

This is what it displayed when I plugged in the USB flash drive, actually indicating no USB flash drive. When I plugged it in a little more firmly, it began playing my Right/Left audio file, which through headphones proved to be stereo!

The purpose of buying the device was to digitize stereo cassette tapes. Unfortunately I don’t have a cassette version of my Right/Left audio file. Even though I have cassette tapes labeled “Stereo,” that is no absolute assurance that they are stereo. If I detect stereo, the question is answered, but if I don’t the question might still be open.

The cassette selected for the first test is a Windham Hill release, titled A Winter’s Solstice, catalog number WT-1045 dated 1985. It’s labeled stereo on the liner, but not the cassette. Phase 1 is just listening through monitor headphones (Audio Technica ATH-M50), noting that my hearing isn’t equal between my two ears. The first selection on the cassette was a guitar solo where one might not expect much channel separation. It sounded OK, but I couldn’t say it was stereo.

I tried a different tape, something less intimate. Midnight in Moscow, Musikfest, 413257-4, a large choral recording. Maybe stereo? The way to be sure there are separate channels is to record it to the USB drive and then examine the waveforms.

In Phase 2 I imported the MP3 file created by the WM-0202B into the Audacity software where I can actually look at the waveforms. When I tried this before on another converter that was not stereo, the waveforms were absolutely the same.

It looks like this one isn’t stereo either.

The tape head is divided into an upper and lower section, but I think that it to handle the auto reverse.

How about FM? No, FM is not stereo. That’s not a surprise after my SM-126 multimedia player with stereo everything else didn’t have FM stereo.

Mysteries

So what’s the audio cable for? There is no AUX jack, only one labeled with a headphone symbol. My best guess would be to play a cassette connected to some other audio device, perhaps even as input to some audio processing software on the computer.

And what is PHON? When pressed, the Mode button cycles through what the manual calls:

• CASS (Cassette Mode)
• PHON (Recording Mode)
• rAd (FM radio Mode
• —- (USB Mode)

There is a separate REC button for recording. The manual explains how to use the PHON mode:

1. Switch to Recording mode and insert the U disk into the USB port
2. Long press the Rec button to start recording and long press to stop recording.
3. After the recording is completed, the recording file will be stored in the form of an MP3 fil on the U disk. (The player supports play the recording file, please switch the mode of the player to the USB mode.)

The diagram doesn’t show anything plugged into the radio. The product description doesn’t mention an internal microphone.

The answer is that there is an internal microphone hidden somewhere, since it picked up my speech and recorded it, albeit into the CASS folder, and not one named PHON. It does not record a signal from the earphone jack, nor from the FM radio.

I have a number of FM radios, including ones that can play MP3 files from media. Some are also Bluetooth speakers. But are they stereo? Only one has stereo speakers, but most have headphone jacks. In this article, I’m testing my radios’ stereo capability .

Methodology

How does one know whether something is stereo or not? It’s easy with MP3 files since one can make a simple audio file that has sound on one channel and then on the other, like this recording I made myself:

For FM, I’m using an inexpensive FM transmitter hooked up to a known stereo device playing the MP3 file. I verified that this Beinhome FM Transmitter I bought in 2022 transmits stereo. My Degen DE23 radio is stereo for both FM and MP3. Because it will play an MP3 file over and over, I selected it to supply signal to the FM transmitter. The pair makes a potent broadcaster.

Special care was taken to make sure radios with the ability to switch off FM stereo will be set appropriately on.

For Bluetooth, I just play the test file from my Windows computer paired to the device.

Expectations

My expectation is that most of the devices, both FM, MP3 and Bluetooth, will reproduce stereo.

Results

The result is one huge table. Radios that do not have headphone jacks will be obviously excluded.

Radio	FM Stereo	MP3 Stereo	Bluetooth Stereo
AMNVOLT ATS Mini	Reversed	n/a	n/a
Degen DE1131	Y	Y	n/a
Degen DE15	Y	n/a	n/a
Degen DE23	Y	Y	n/a
Eton Elite Executive	Y	n/a	n/a
HanRongDa HRD-908	Note 2	Note 2	Note 2
HanRongDa HRD-757	Y	Y	Y
Jazmm 213	N	Y	Y
Kaide KK-MP903	Reversed	Y	n/a
Kaito KA29	Y	Y	n/a
LiJiANi Rd239	Y	Y	Y
LiJiANi Rd908	N	n/a	n/a
Mesqool CR1015	N	n/a	n/a
Prunus J-429SW	Note 1	Y	n/a
Qodosen DX-286	Y	n/a	n/a
Qodosen SR-286	Y	n/a	n/a
Raddy RF75A	N	Y	Y
Raddy RF760	Y	n/a	n/a
Sansui F50	N	Y	Y
Sihuadon R-108	Y	n/a	n/a
SM-616	N	Y	Y
Tecsun PL-118	Y	n/a	n/a
Tecsun PL-330	Y	n/a	n/a
Tecsun PL-660	Y	n/a	n/a
Tecsun PL-990	Y	Y	n/a
Tecsun Q3	Y	Y	n/a
XHDATA D-109	Reversed	Y	n/a
XHDATA D-109WB	Reversed	Y	n/a
XHDATA D-219	N	n/a	n/a
XHDATA D-608WB	Note 1	Y	Y
XHDATA D-808	Y	n/a	n/a
Zhiwhis ZWS-603	Y	Reversed	Reversed

Notes:

1. While there seemed to be some channel difference, the crosstalk between the channels was extreme and the main impression is that the two channels appeared nearly the same.
2. Left channel has very low volume.

Observations and Conclusions

I was surprised that some of the devices reverse left and right channels for stereo FM and in one case even reversed it on MP3 play. I cannot explain the handful of devices that seemed to drop a significant portion of the left channel. It was always the left channel, never the right.

I was disappointed by the SM-616, the big fancy multimedia player. It handled stereo for media, but not for FM radio; similar to its smaller cousin, the Sansui F50. The Zhiwhis ZWS-2415 doesn’t have a headphone jack.

The ATS Mini channel reversal applies to V1, V2 and V3, according to a post on GitHub that someone sent me, in addition to the V3S I tested.

The Degen 1131 was rather expensive when it first came out, not the bargain blow out price under $20 I paid for mine. I didn’t know how good this one sounded with quality headphones. As Dan Akroyd once said: “Wow, that’s terrific bass!”

I did not generally test the ability for a radio to record FM stereo, but I did try the HanRongDa HRD-757 and the LiJiANi Rd239; both recorded stereo onto the MicroSD card. I’m confident the Tecsun Q3 would also capture FM stereo. To my knowledge, the ZWS-603 is the only radio in the collection with the capability to record from Bluetooth.

Afterword

This exercise grew out of another project, to convert some stereo cassette tapes to digital. I found that some (most?) converters on the market don’t convert stereo. So far I haven’t found a product that works.