Budget tuner?

This isn't an answer to your question, exactly, but a suggestion that you might want to consider a couple of alternatives to a tuner. If you live in a city with good FM programming and you live in a place in that city where reception is reasonable, a tuner for your main system may be just what you want.

But if you live in a city like I do, where there's not much on the FM band that's very interesting, you might be happier with one of the satellite radio receivers from Sirius or XM Radio. The sound quality isn't as good as good FM but the program options are very broad.

And if you really do want to just listen to FM casually, one of the stand-alone radios like the one from Cambridge Soundworks or a Tivoli table radio might do the trick in a package that's more versatile than a tuner.

FM broadcast signals are bandpassed so everything above 15 Khz is clipped out of the audio signal. With this in mind no FM station will reach CD quality so spending as little as you need to (assuming the rest of your gear and your ears are up to the task) may be the best bet.

A $60 tuner and freight should be within your target. There are a few options (http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?misctunr&1107142572) listed at audiogon and at that price point you will get a FM signal through your speakers.

Do not be too upset if the sound is not great but it will be better than what you get from a boom box or your car stereo considering the wind and traffic noise.

Or ... go back to the time when FM listening was considered as important as listening to vinyl or tapes. Go on ebay or your local Salvation Army (or sometimes even here on Audiogon) and pick up a vintage 70's or 80's receiver and use the receiver as your tuner. You would simply connect the tape out on the receiver (bypasses the receiver's controls) to your NAD's tuner input. Receivers to look for are: vintage Pioneer (something like a 636 or SX3600); Marantz 22XX series (one of the baby Marantz receivers ... 2215; 2216B); and Sherwood 7000 series (7100 had a great tuner). Yamaha, Onkyo, and Kenwood also made some great ones. Because you will not be concerned about the amp portion of the receiver, you will not have to chase some of the more mammoth and pricy receivers. Also, few things look nicer than one of the vintage analog receivers with their cool blue lights and silver faceplates. I have a Marantz 2216B in my main system (I also use a 2240 in my bedoom system, but as a receiver) and it has worked out quite nicely.

regards, Rich

I'd get one of the early ca.1980 solid state tuners off of ebay. Something like my sansui I got off of ebay for $7. On the right jazz broadcast, it betters my redbook front end. If FM is really, really good in your area, you might strong for one of great old tube tuners and either restore it yourself or have it professionally restored.

Many of the new tuners seem to be a notch or two below in sound quality compared to the old ones. And two, the FM broadcast is going to be the limited factor be the SQ of my $7 sansui tuner is. Even for uncompressed stations. Something to think about.

Aaron

used sansui :)