internet music same for any tuner?

A conventional am/fm tuner will not work for internet.

There are devices that provide the equivalent of an am/fm tuner as a high fidelity stereo system component for finding and playing internet radio stations as sources. These also generally allow for additional sources besides internet, an in house computer functioning as a music server, for example.

Roku Soundbridge (<$200, see my system here for an example) is one such device.

I grew up on music heard over FM radio.

But there is a much larger assortment of stations with very good sound in most any music genre on internet compared with FM these days, even in larger metro areas.

Plus, you do not have to worry about noise or other distortions due to weak signal, interference etc.

There is no comparison...internet blows away FM in most every regard already and the trend will only increase most likely over time.

Mitch4t,

Are you saying you listen to FM stations via internet connection using the Squeezebox? The Squeezebox is not also an over the airwaves FM tuner, like the Sansui, is it?

That would make sense to me in that the sound quality of many (not all) FM station internet broadcasts are often inferior to the over the air sound quality as well as sound quality of other internet only stations when I listen with the Roku Soundbridge.

The Roku Soundbridge is definitely internet only...not an FM over the airwaves tuner.

I still use my FM tuner on occasions for certain local stations in the Baltimore/DC metro area as well, but not very often anymore.

WWOZ New Orleans is an example of an over the air FM station that I listen to often via internet with the Roku that does provide very good internet sound quality, though I do not live near New Orleans so I cannot a/b compare WROZ's internet to it's over the air sound quality.

Mitch4t,

That makes sense.

I've found though that streaming rate alone is not a reliable indicator of sound quality. I've heard stations at lower streaming rates sound better than the same station at a higher rate.

The Roku device buffers/caches inbound data in on board memory. Then, data is sent from the on board memory cache to the DAC. I think Squeezebox does the same.

So even though higher streaming rates send more bits per period of time, that alone does not assure better sound. The quality of the bits sent matters more. As long as they arrive fast enough to keep the cache loaded, you are in good shape. If they do not, then rebuffering will occur. The Roku mutes the sound altogether whenever re-buffering occurs.