A radio receiver includes a communication interface, a mixing module, an analog to digital converter, a digital gain block, and a gain setting block. The communication interface receives a continuous time radio signal. The mixing module down converts the continuous time radio signal to a continuous time analog signal. The analog to digital converter converts the continuous time analog signal to a sequence of input digital samples. The digital gain block receives the sequence of input digital samples and gain adjusts the sequence of input digital samples based upon a gain setting to produce a sequence of output digital samples. The gain setting block produces the gain setting at any time as one of a first fixed gain setting, a second fixed gain setting, and a filtered time varying gain when transitioning between the first fixed gain setting and the second fixed gain setting.