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 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. |
I should have mentioned this tuner the Hitachi FT-5500MKII. It is just under the audio quality of the Hitachi FT-8000 but you likely would not hear the difference. This is the best fringe reception tuner ever made. So, if you live in a difficult reception area and install a unidirectional outdoor antenna this may be your ticket to success. A little rare but does show up on eBay for about $200. Most are in the UK so ask if wired for 120 volts AC. |
