FM Radio, anyone?

There is a pretty good all Classical NPR station in my city, and I have listened a lot in the past 5 years.  Using both old school tube tuner (Dynaco FM-3, old school analog solid state (kenwood), SONY highly modded XDR-F1HD, and even a Crane pocket FM on occasion.

The Dynaco FM-3 sounds the best by far, totally "musical", I can listen for hours.  I did do some re-soldering and one small mod to improve grounding to keep the hum low.

The Kenwood is next best sounding but not close to the FM-3.

The Sony is flat, boring sounding, does not sound like music.

The Crane is junk, there is a known problem with the volume control for that model, and they won’t fix it.  Will never buy another Crane.

The FM-3 does require a 6 element YAGI and I have line of sight to the station’s tower, the others can use a Crane T antenna indoors.

By the way I did own an MR-87 for years.  And had it aligned and tuned up.  But the FM-3 sounds better...

I was blown away listening to a Marantz 10B back in the late 70's.  I wonder how it stacks up against some of today's best?

FM today is close to 1960s and 1970s sound quality on most stations. What you were hearing was vinyl vs CD and tube audio vs solid state now. Plus you used tube tuners that sound great. The problem is the solid state FM tuner. fmtunrtinfo.com performed shootouts on 84 tunes. The top 14 are good and higher rated introduce too high distortion  A top 5 tuner that is inexpensive is the Hitachi FT-8000.

@pdspiegel 

The tuner with my main system is a little Sony XDR-F1HD which is OK.  The additional HD channels offer some interesting programming which is often commercial free.

Use the best RCA cables you can afford on the Sony. It made a big difference to my ears. I had a modded unit from the

Repairs, upgrades, and sales of Sony XDR-F1HD HD Tuner

I regularly listen to FM. I have 2 tuners- A Rich Modaferri modded McIntosh MR78 and a Marantz 20B.