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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.

jimbennet
devinplombier
1,670 posts
 

I love me an FM tuner. Those who say they are obsoleted by Internet miss the point.

Incidentally, the same people also say that vinyl has been obsoleted by Internet, alongside reel-to-reel and cassette tapes and basically anything that doesn’t stream in via an Aurender / Lumin appliance. Doesn’t that strike you as an ASR type of argument?

But I digress. Back to these lovely beasts that FM tuners are, most Kenwood units punch above their weight and many are found under @jimbennet ’s $250 threshold. It makes sense that the considerable RF expertise Kenwood / Trio accumulated over decades making world-class ham radio rigs would shine upon their tuner’s designs.

As for me, my bucket list includes an FM tuner with integrated oscilloscope. If you happen to know someone who owns a broken one which no one can fix, I am interested :)

jimbennet OP
193 posts
 

Whatever the Kenwood models, I would not consider anything less than top 15 tuners on the Shootout list at fmtunersinfo.com

yags1
87 posts
 

I own a Tandberg 3001A which I purchesed back in 1983 and use it 3 times a week

one of the the best Tuners I have ever owned just had it recalbritated..

The problem is the quality and condition of the used units and finding the right 

person that can work on them that knows how to really fix them.

guym-p
5 posts
 

I am envious of your Ron Smith Galaxy 17 @barry2013.  I had a good chat with his son, George, and was very keen to get one.  Then I made the mistake of looking up planning regulations.  Then I made the even bigger mistake of asking my local council wether an FM ariel really needed planning permission in the UK if it's just replacing an existing one.

"Yes," said the planning office.  "If it's bigger than 600mm in any direction, you will."

That sadly put paid to my upgrade from a regular folded dipole to a Ron Smith Galaxy 17!  One day ...

Guy.

hickamore
774 posts
 

"A good tuner with a good signal will sound much better [than the livestream]."
Just so.
Remarkable and encouraging that a discussion of FM tuners can still be had in CE 2025.

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