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'm still using the McIntosh MR80 tuner that I bought new back in 1979. It still sounds great although many FM stations are way too over-processed today.
I've had similar experience. So-called "HD radio" offers the great s/n that's easy for digital, but it's lo-res and can compromise even the main analog signal.
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@jimbennet Not sure if you might already know but if you want to pickup broadcasted FM and esp if you have a certain section of the band you happen to prefer in your area, it's fairly easy to make an antenna tuned to that band or even station. It's a simple FM dipole with each "pole" being a certain length. You need the formula but it's that easy. People might like my story about living in Puerto Rico (dad in the Navy) and how my fav station was on the other side of a small mountain making it almost impossible to get. I made the antenna and not only got it but was perfect 100% of time. It was like magic and sounded great! |
"My price range is $250 maximum" jimbennet-. your max makes finding much of anything good or bad difficult. If you can find a Cambridge Audio 550/650T it may be near your threshold. This is just for example Cambridge Audio Azur 550T Black AM/FM Tuner + Remote *TOP Condition* | eBay I used one before deciding a wanted a tube tuner(Macintosh MR71) Should be priced near what you want to pay.
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@mapman it's awesome when Hitachi gets some love. Use my Hitachi tuner every day, listen to the morning show, have it on when I'm working. For me the tuner sounds so much better over streaming the same stations. They sound compressed and lifeless on my system. Tuners have been going down in price as demand is going down. Really search local FBM and Craigslist. There are a ton on there, most are in your budget. Around me there are some Mac and Luxman tuners that people want over $1000 for, they have been there for quite some time. |
