I haven't had the opportunity to pull any of my tuners out in a very long time, but it's fair to say there are a lot of really good ones for very reasonable prices. At one point, tuners were a big hobby of mine, and I went through hundreds of them in my system and on the bench.
If you want a tuner for audiophile use, alignment is CRITICAL. There are usually 20-30 adjustments inside the box. And here's an ugly tip: Most people that do it can get it "okay" but not perfect unless the tuner is a piece of junk. My alignment gear was good to under .002% THD, whereas your average stereo shop was good to about .2%...
The so-called "high end" brands are generally not where you want to look, unless you believe that op-amps and capacitors can make up for car-radio grade circuitry.
The Marantz ST-17 looks really good, but the almost-new sample I had (and still have) was poorly aligned out of the box and didn't work as well as it could have. Might be over your budget, too.
The best digital tuners out of the box are going to be the Yamahas, and they are dirt, dirt cheap for what you get. I did a bunch of the write-ups over at the fmtunerinfo site a decade ago, and you can check it out for the technical overview of Yamaha's digital line. The T70, T80, T85, TX900, TX930, TX950, TX1000, and TX2000 are all superb tuners. For often only $25, T70 is an outrageous bargain. Here's a good review buried a long way down: http://www.fmtunerinfo.com/ricochets.html The guy who wrote those write-ups was supremely qualified--more so than virtually anyone else who could possibly comment on tuners. But all these years later, all the Yamahas are cheap.
Moral: If the tree took your money, spend $50 (or less) on a Yamaha T70. It will destroy almost anything else out of the box under $300.00, maybe more. A Magnum Dynalab can't even come close to it, even if it looks a lot better.
If you want a tuner for audiophile use, alignment is CRITICAL. There are usually 20-30 adjustments inside the box. And here's an ugly tip: Most people that do it can get it "okay" but not perfect unless the tuner is a piece of junk. My alignment gear was good to under .002% THD, whereas your average stereo shop was good to about .2%...
The so-called "high end" brands are generally not where you want to look, unless you believe that op-amps and capacitors can make up for car-radio grade circuitry.
The Marantz ST-17 looks really good, but the almost-new sample I had (and still have) was poorly aligned out of the box and didn't work as well as it could have. Might be over your budget, too.
The best digital tuners out of the box are going to be the Yamahas, and they are dirt, dirt cheap for what you get. I did a bunch of the write-ups over at the fmtunerinfo site a decade ago, and you can check it out for the technical overview of Yamaha's digital line. The T70, T80, T85, TX900, TX930, TX950, TX1000, and TX2000 are all superb tuners. For often only $25, T70 is an outrageous bargain. Here's a good review buried a long way down: http://www.fmtunerinfo.com/ricochets.html The guy who wrote those write-ups was supremely qualified--more so than virtually anyone else who could possibly comment on tuners. But all these years later, all the Yamahas are cheap.
Moral: If the tree took your money, spend $50 (or less) on a Yamaha T70. It will destroy almost anything else out of the box under $300.00, maybe more. A Magnum Dynalab can't even come close to it, even if it looks a lot better.