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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
jimbennet OP
193 posts
 

Two more top 15 rated tuners worth considering is the Kenwood KT-5020 (year 1990) and KT-990D (year 1988). Both are new enough to be reliable. Either are available on eBay for as low as $140. Careful on shipping cost as some on eBay will gouge you. Tuners cost about $20 to ship in USA. Why top 15 tuners? I bought a Pioneer F-90 that was rated good sounding at top 30 tuners on fmtunersinfo.com. Here is their quote- "Pioneer F-90 - Great sonics with a slightly lighter sonic presentation than the top dogs. Upper midrange and treble are top-notch". The tuner added distortion to the FM signals and IMO was unlistenable. Not all FM signals are great but the good FM stations were distorted on the Pioneer F-90.

stevencason
102 posts
 

HK Citation twenty three from the 80's great tuner

avanti1960
1,744 posts
 

@jimbennet 

I have a cambridge audio azur 340T (ebay less than $100) and it sounds surprisingly good- dynamic, lively, excellent bass and clarity.  

sounds and tunes better than the BHK tuner I had that was super well likes on the tuner info site.  

the controls on the cambridge are (however) absolutely awful- for both tuning and saving presets.  get that sorted and you have a low cost gem.  

durkn
108 posts
 

My MD-102 sounds excellent. It’s got big caps in it.

I use the MD-205 Signal Sleuth, and the ST-2 antenna.

Excellent sound from several stations, including a great college station with a wide variety of different music types.

I also stream a couple long distance stations but the sound quality is not there.

gsmith5
40 posts
 

I have owned numerous FM tuners. For a $250 budget allocate as follows:

a. $150 for used tuner. I’ve had good luck with Sansui FM tuners. Consider TU-217

b. $100 to have the tuner aligned. I use X Ray Tuners

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