Fm tuner

For those of us who prefer classical music and, like me, live within range of a good FM station that broadcasts such music, high quality FM reception is essential. And, while the advice that you’ve received is well intended and basically sound, it is certainly NOT technically current. To briefly appreciate this refer: http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web1.htm#sony.
Also here: https://www.cnet.com/products/sony-xdr-f1hd/review/
And here: https://www.cnet.com/products/sony-xdr-f1hd/review/

I acquired my own (new) Sony XDR-F1HD FM tuner in late 2008, for $50, in a closeout sale. Sony ceased production of this product at about that same time, presumably because too few consumers understood or appreciated the merits of high definition (HD) FM broadcasting. However, you are frequently able to find Sony XDR-F1HD tuners for sale in the used e-commerce marketplace. For me, finding this product was an important windfall because I live (on the central coast of CA) within range of a local repeater that transmits the HD FM signal from KUSC (Los Angeles), the last remaining full time, non-commercial, public radio station in the U.S. that’s dedicated exclusively (24/7) to classical music. And KUSC does this with live on-air program hosts, using the full 96 Kbps bandwidth of their HD allocation, assuring their listeners of the finest possible transmission fidelity. The result can be absolutely glorious audio, but that won’t persist for long unless you also do something about the serious internal heat rise that’s implicit when using this product. For full info, see: http://www.ham-radio.com/k6sti/xdr-f1hd.htm

As the above report cites, it’s vital to address the XDR-F1HD heat build-up problem. In addition, there are numerous other improvements that are well worth making on this tuner because its ultimate performance potential is so outstanding. And here’s the guy that can do that: http://www.xdrguy.com/sony-xdr-f1hd-audio-performance.html This man is truly a talented craftsman. For $300, he installed two hi-end fans (noiseless), replaced all of my fried electrolytic caps, provided an optional HD lockout, upgraded the output jacks, replaced the worn and erratic control buttons, replaced the dim LEDs on the LCD display board, provided a super-cap to prevent loss of memory during power outages, and optimally realigned the RF front end. In addition, he installed a new analog audio stage that eliminates the high frequency falloff that was previously inherent in the stock design. And now I own the finest FM tuner ever produced. There’s nothing better, at any price. The RF performance is amazing, and the audio quality of the classical music that I receive from the live KUSC broadcasts is superb, and completely free of any noise at all times. This is a course that’s well worth following.

My post of yesterday had some broken and duplicated links. I'll try to do better now, see below. In response to Cleeds' accurate comment, let me add that I merely intended to refer to "HD Radio" as hi-def because that is what it is named; the HD handle stands for hi def. And the implicit benefits of HD radio do work well FOR ME, but I'm located within 5.4 miles of my KUSC repeater, and I use a good antenna. If you are in a more distant reception area and find that conventional analog FM reception might work better than HD mode, the modification work performed by the cited source includes an optional HD lockout switch that gives you that option.

For those of us who prefer classical music and, like me, live within range of a good FM station that broadcasts such music, high quality FM reception is essential. And, while the advice that you’ve received is well intended and basically sound, it reflects “old school” design; it’s NOT technically current. To appreciate this see…
http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web1.htm#sony
Also here: https://www.cnet.com/products/sony-xdr-f1hd/review/


I acquired my own (new) Sony XDR-F1HD FM tuner in late 2008, for $50, in a closeout sale. Sony ceased production of this product at about that same time, presumably because too few consumers understood or appreciated the merits of high definition (HD) FM broadcasting. However, you are frequently able to find Sony XDR-F1HD tuners for sale in the used e-commerce marketplace. For me, finding this product was an important windfall because I live (on the central coast of CA) within range of a local repeater that transmits the HD FM signal from KUSC (Los Angeles), the last remaining full time, non-commercial, public radio station in the U.S. that’s dedicated exclusively (24/7) to classical music. And KUSC does this with live on-air program hosts, using the full 96 Kbps bandwidth of their HD allocation, assuring their listeners of the finest possible transmission fidelity. The result can be absolutely glorious audio, but that won’t persist for long unless you also do something about the serious internal heat rise that’s implicit when using this product. For full info, see: http://www.ham-radio.com/k6sti/xdr-f1hd.htm

As the above report cites, it’s vital to address the XDR-F1HD heat build-up problem. In addition, there are numerous other improvements that are well worth making on this tuner because its ultimate performance potential is so outstanding. And here’s the guy that can do that: http://www.xdrguy.com/sony-xdr-f1hd-audio-performance.html This man is truly a talented craftsman. For $300, he installed two hi-end fans (noiseless), replaced all of my fried electrolytic caps, provided an optional HD lockout, upgraded the output jacks, replaced the worn and erratic control buttons, replaced the dim LEDs on the LCD display board, provided a super-cap to prevent loss of memory during power outages, and optimally realigned the RF front end. In addition, he installed a new analog audio stage that eliminates the high frequency falloff that was previously inherent in the stock design. And now I own the finest FM tuner ever produced. There’s nothing better, at any price. The RF performance is now amazing (I use Terk's FM50-Pro antenna, wall-mounted near ceiling), and the audio quality of the classical music that I receive from the live KUSC broadcasts is superb—also completely free of any noise at all times. This is an FM tuner that’s well worth pursuing.

tablejockey, I based that conclusion on what was stated (and implied) by Peter Acxel, owner of the now defunct "The Audio Critic". It's in his post, see: http://www.biline.ca/audio_critic/audio_critic_web1.htm#sony

schubert, it's my understanding that the other stations that you allude to are NOT actual full time classical music broadcasters. I'm told that they carry other programming, too, like "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and related NPR format programming, as well as some pop and folk music. Is this truly not correct? 

cleeds - thanks for the lawyerly info. The iBiquity statement sounds a bit like a defensive disclaimer, doesn't it? And it still doesn't explain just what the label "HD" signifies. Who would ever be so inventive as to surmise that it implied hi-def? Maybe just me?

I think that the relevant focus here is not so much about whether 96 Kbps is of the utmost audio quality, but more about the best way to hear currently available FM music broadcasts without any background noise. As far as I know, that means is via "HD (FM) Radio"---whatever that term might mean---provided you're able to latch on to a good "HD" signal. The Sony XDR-F1HD probably gives you the best shot at doing this when such signal is available, provided you've upgraded that tuner as described.
I'm familiar with the info noted in the "tuner info" site, and concur. But that stuff (mostly) addresses the stock product, not the upgraded version. My stock tuner was grossly misaligned and suffered treble falloff. The RF range was greatly enhanced after rebuild, and the sound got lots better. I recommend http://www.xdrguy.com/sony-xdr-f1hd-audio-performance.html

table jockey - I surmise, from your comment concerning vacuum tubes, that you’re a relatively young man, at least young enough that you did not have to suffer through those terrible times when vacuum tubes were the sole means of building anything electronic. I’m now 86, and not nearly so fortunate. My interest in “hi fi”, as we then referred to this hobby, first sparked in 1949, right at the beginning of the LP record era. My life, in the course of the next 5 years, left no opportunity to pursue hi fi, but that changed in early ’54, when I got back to NY from the Korean War. And from that time forward, I became quite active in my pursuit of high quality audio. Of course, this meant embracing vacuum tubes. Transistors (germanium alloy) were then in their infancy, and unsuitable for serious use, so tubes were the sole option. And I soon learned that tubes were imperfect—they had high failure rates, and the heat from their filaments cooked the other components—and that this problem could work well for me if I learned radio/TV repair. So I built a (kit) tube tester and oscilloscope, and an oscillator, and bought a multimeter, and I began a 32 year career in electronics.

I soon learned that, although some circuits were better than others, the basic variability of tubes made for lots of design compromise. Tubes are simply not high precision devices. Tube parameters are initially expressed, by their makers, as typical characteristics, not as absolute limits. And their variable performance is inconsistent. Tubes forever change as they age. Filament temperatures vary, cathodes continuously disintegrate, grid spacing shifts—and tubes constantly degrade, from the moment that they’re first turned on until the day that they fail. Tubes are simply not dependable.

All of those tube shortcomings were tolerable to me when they were inside somebody else’s radio or TV set, but I hated to see ’em in my own audio gear. I once purchased a costly hi-end Fisher FM-200B tuner, one of the very best available, but its RF and IF stages kept drifting due to tube aging. I had to perform complete RF realignments every 6 months. And my Marantz 8B stereo power amplifier needed constant rebiasing of the output tubes to keep the IM distortion to within 0.5%, and I’d install four new EL34s every 20 months or so. Indeed, I got so anxious to dump vacuum tubes that I finally built my own solid state power amplifiers (dual mono units) back in the mid ’70s, just as soon as PNP silicon power transistors became commercially available. So I happily left vacuum tubes behind forever, in the past, where they belong!

The state of vacuum tube technology has severely regressed in the 40+ years since I kissed tubes goodbye. All of the former domestic, British, Dutch, and German makers of tubes are now either defunct (like Tung-Sol Electric, my employer from March of ’57 to March of ’60), or they ceased production long ago. The remaining world market for vacuum tubes is now limited exclusively to (young) audiophiles, and it’s served only by a few recent Russian and Chinese suppliers who had no prior production credentials. (I believe that there might also be a supplier in Ireland.) The general quality and consistency of product coming from these unregulated foreign sources is dubious, and they’ll exist only for the duration that audiophile demand will support.

The future for vacuum tubes looks dicey—especially since all measurable means of evaluating quality supports the superiority of solid state design. It’s only a select subset of you young audiophiles—guys who feel that their ears are more accurate than any instrumentation—that makes selling tubes viable. Like I said, it’s dicey.

yogiboy - Thanks. I'd read about that new source in FL, but it had slipped my memory. I understand that his pricing is going to be tough to swallow, but price is not always a deterrent if you live in the land of hi-end audio. Hope that's your home address.

For the record, do be assured that it's quite possible to precisely replicate that "warm" tube sound with a solid state power amplifier design, if that's what you prefer. Indeed, famed circuit designer Bob Carver once collected on a bet with Stereophile by demonstrating exactly that.

Nothing it the cited article changes what i said. There is no world market for vacuum tubes other than the demand created by a relatively small group of hi-end audiophiles who feel that their aural perception is more sensitive than all of the available test instrumentation. They want to see filaments glow. And that's their right. But it's dicey to gamble that tubes will continue to exist, at ANY price, over the course of another decade.