Tuner vs Satellite Radio

Depending on where you live there may still be good local stations -- typically college radio, NPR, and classical stations, possibly some jazz stations. FM tuners are still fun. I like the vintage tuners. Mine is a Tandberg 3011A that's been cleaned and modified. It sounds great! Don't count on "digital radio" being digitally perfect. The best FM tuners and equipment are analog.

I can just imagine the future of digital radio... Millions of songs loaded on hard drives and compressed. They don't even need a DJ, just program a day's worth of programming and let it run. Ugh! I read recently that Britian's digital networks are faltering because they aren't any better that FM, sometimes even worse.

What I think is cool though is being able to stream straight from the Internet to my stereo. I haven't done it yet, but there are wireless transmitors that will take the stream and send it from your computer to your stereo and either through an input or through an unused FM station. I don't expect much audio quality wise, but the variety is killer. I subscribe to archives of the Hearts of Space programs.

I have an XM satellite radio adapter in my car, which has a very good audio system (Mercedes/Bose). Satellite radio has plusses and minuses. For the plusses, the big ones are (i) variety of programming, (ii) lack of interference (multipath, etc.) and (iii) commercial-free channels. On the other hand, anyone who claims that satellite radio is CD quality is smoking something. It's highly compressed low-bit data--perfectly pleasant to listen to for background--sort of like MP3-- but not for serious listening. For sure you should get a good tuner if you have quality stations in your area. For a small additional amount of money, you can now get XM satellite receivers for home use, too (there's a Sony and a Delphi, each of which can be used with home audio), so you can use that for the additional variety.

The one thing I didn't catch in reading the posts that you might want to consider is getting a big yagi style antennae (if you got the space) and depending on your location you should get lots of radio stations (like all major nearby cities and college stuff in between). Depending on location and weather some people will get many dozens of stations--hence lots of variety. I owned a fanfare ft-1a for awhile. I chose it over the magnums.

I recently rode for six hours in a friends car that has satellite radio and it has some very nice jazz channels which I prefer to my Direct TV musice channel selection and has a better selection overall however, there is something that strikes me about that kind of a format where regular radio beats it and that is, everything is so divided up into catagories that there is no 'middle' station. Where are the true alternative channels?

I would sorely miss the college radio station in my area if all I had was some business's idea of what I should be listening to.

The satellite radio has a lot going for it but is no replacment for 'regular' radio yet.

Thanks for your responses. I live in the NYC area so it sounds like a tuner still makes sense. I'll definitely check out the vintage models as well. What about the antennae? I live in a ranch so, can it go in the attic or does it have to go on the roof? What do you look for in an antennae?