Finding a Great Sounding FM Tuner
The site to visit is fmtunersinfo.com It is unbelievable of the info at the site. About 90 tuners were compared for best sound. Trouble is top ten FM tuners cost $500 and more on eBay. Why a FM tuner? Well, the station does all the work playing different records or likely CDs. FM does not sound near as good as a record, but for casual listening ok with the right tuner. Many FM tuners do not sound good and distorts the audio. FM station quality audio is not near what was in the 1960s and 1970s. Competition was fierce and stations had audio engineers. Most FM stations were all tube generated audio too. Opti-Mods were carefully adjusted unlike now too. As stated top ten tuners are $500 to $1K- too high cost IMO for FM. However, a few slipped thru the cracks so to speak. A Merdian 504 is in top 14 and we are splitting hairs here. I bought one for $140 but usually cost $200. They are rare though. Cost was $1350 in 1991. The Mitsubishi DA-F20 is a cheap top 10 tuner but failure rates are high- no good. The sleeper is a Hitachi FT-8000. It was not in the Shootout page but mentioned as better sounding than the stellar Hitachi FT-5500 MKII in Shoutouts 2.0. I owned both Merdian 504 and Hitachi FT-8000 and both are great sounding equal in audio performance. The FT-8000 are not known for failure and cost $150 to $220 on eBay.
I listen to FM radio for background music. My Magnum Dynalab FT101A Etude is more than satisfactory; soundwise it competes well against internet streaming from most FM stations. I love the way it looks with 3 meters and a digital frequency readout. And it seems to trade typically within your $500 price cap. Here’s what it looks like >> |
Livestream of a good college radio station like my beloved WHRB in Cambridge, MA, home of the “Orgy”, is only bested by good terrestrial broadcast reception on a good tuner. I live less than 5 miles from Harvard’s transmitter so I have compared using a Yamaha T2, nearly SOTA FM tuner. My rooftop aerial got damaged and now I let the Bluesound Node do it. In my experience few tuners beat out the top Kenwood (KT-8005), Pioneer (TX-9100 or 9500), Sansui (TU-919) or Yamaha (CT7000). The T2 beat the livestream but I can’t access the antenna any more, so I sold the tuner last year. Of course Sequerra, 10B, MR78 owners can claim bragging rights, but their day is mostly done. |
That Precedent is a classic, @tablejockey. I'm not a collector of tuners, I do have an old McI 110z which I use as a preamp in my vintage system and it has a tuner. It sounds good. I don't have an elaborate antenna system either. Tuna s are cool. |
