Why get an expensive tuner?Am I missing something?

While rare, there are some good quality broadcasts available. A good tuner can avail you to a multitude of quality music you might other wise never know about. While I would love to own a really top notch tuner for the above reason, there are some bargains out there. Don't completely cheap out here. If your tuner sounds bad, you won't use it.
Think of all you might miss. Antenas are as important as tuners, especially re: tweaking for best results. Unfortunately a little bit of luck as far as your location, goes a long way re: both available broadcasts and reception quality.

The first thing you need is a great signal. If you're lucky your favorite station uses utra high end source gear. At that point you might find that a tuner will beat your TT or CDP. I've listened to a Naim NAT01 that sounded like an upper end CDP.

-Patrick

I certainly agree about the live broadcasts, I forgot about that. And I imagine these are often digitized and whatnot before being broadcast, so why is it that they sound so excellent?

But I remain skeptical about the rest. What's the frequency response of broadcast FM anyway? Isn't it something narrower than 20-20?

Yes it's "narrower than 20-20" but so are most analog and in practice many digital sources. Most of us don't really hear beyond 15k anyway. Very little music exists beyond 15k either. A major slice of otherwise unavailable music is better than none. Go ahead, audition a good tuner, you might be in for a pleasent surprise.

drubin & myraj

do a search on this subject on the gon. all above are good posts but i have seen some very technical stuff that is quite intresting.

in a nut shell...a good tuner is a very enjoyable source.

good listening

jim