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Best tuner ever made?

Jowcol said:
Some years ago, when Radio 3 sounded better, I was into tuners in a big way.

I sold a tuner to a person who was into them in a bigger way than me.
He had owned everything, and he still had a serious collection of top tuners.

He had a very expensive system. I convinced him to set up all his tuners with levels matched so that he could instantly switch from one to the other. He got his wife and son to sit and listen (unfortunately too far away for me to be there).

His conclusion was that there was virtually nothing to choose between them, and 'a good tuner is a good tuner' - and I had sent him one to try which wasn't very exotic.

I used to listen to the live evening concert every night on Radio 3.
The last time I listened I just heard music which had no contrasting dynamics at all. No quiet sections, no rousing crescendo to contrast the quiet bits. Everything was at the same level.

Choral evensong can still sound quite nice, and the Monday lunchtime chamber music live concert. Otherwise I have switched off to the BBC.

Sorry to be a 'party-pooper'.
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I'm glad to be ignorant of past Radio 3 quality - sounds great to me!

However, sound quality seems to vary so much with programme that perhaps you're listening to the wrong programs.. maybe their recording techniques down at the venues, live broadcast, have changed over the years. They use Pyramix as a computer program for controlling the recording and passing it on to broadcast (supposed to be a great sounding set-up, some prefer it to Pro Tools).

If you listen to programs like Late Junction where many different recordings and type of material are played, what you get varies so much within the hour and a half that you end up thinking that the broadcast itself is more than capable enough.

It can go from wide soundstage with lush enveloping sounds to narrow and hard recordings to tonally bright, back to soft again. All the while the presenter sounds a little spitty though..
 
nat8808 said:
The MD pricetag and reputation come from still being in production and a need to increase price to account for much lower sales volume.

If the top tuners of yesteryear were still in production the god only knows what they would cost today and surely their reputations would be greatly increased due to being freshly built and calibrated/to spec?
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+1 to that.

I still reckon the Troughline is hugely overrated though.... and I've got loads of them! and have built all sorts of decoders for them...
Once upon a time (not that) long long ago there were lots of second hand hifi dealers who had cupboards full of Troughlines which were worth maybe a fiver if you didn't have to give them away or bin them.... Then one of them wrote an article in a hifi mag saying it was one of the best tuners ever built... the rests history!
 
I am on Arkless' side, I have never rated the Troughline, mainly due to poor sensitivity (especially the ECC84 version), and some had a tendency to drift.
My current tuner is an MD100, altho' I also have a couple of Beomaster 5000s, an Hitachi 5500MkII, a Revox B260, a Trio/Kenwood KT9900 and a Yamaha CT7000 which is the one I lent to HiFi News for their vintage review. They all compare pretty similarly for sensitivity/selectivity, just subtle differences in tonal quality and soundstage.
It is interesting that all the "good" tuners are "vintage" types.

John
 
That's much too much. You can get excellent tuners from anywhere from free from friends who throw them away to maybe £10 in a flea market. Or try audio shops that have second-hand stuff or old repair places. The Japanese and German tuners from the 70s, 80s, '90s were all pretty good.
That's my experience, anyway. Others may have different opinions, of course.
 
Not usually a Naim fan but always loved the Nat 01 tuner, best sounding tuner I've heard. Would still like to buy one, even though analogue radio days are numbered :(
 
RobH said:
Not usually a Naim fan but always loved the Nat 01 tuner, best sounding tuner I've heard. Would still like to buy one, even though analogue radio days are numbered :(
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Well when you guys over there can't use them anymore, you can send them across the ocean to us at greatly reduced prices! :)

Anyone know what changes have to be made to the deemphasis filter to make a UK FM tuner compatible with US broadcasts? Is it just the matter of changing a capacitor or two?
 
Jazz'as said:
Could you please give me recomendations, who ca be best tuner in 100-150 £ price range?
Thank you!
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I haven't owned a FM tuner for 4 years. I never spent more than £150 on a S/H tuner and went through loads over the years. Best, by far, was the NAD monitor series 4300 digital AM/FM tuner. VERY sensitive and you could listen to it for hours on end. Now sits in my father's system with a stereo 20 and Kef concertos. Should be found for far less than £100.
 
Another vote for the FT5500 from me. Got MKI and MKII and although the MKI got rave reviews the MKII got even better reviews... personally my preference is for the MKI.
 
Jazz'as said:
Could you please give me recomendations, who ca be best tuner in 100-150 £ price range?
Thank you!
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If you have a top quality aerial then one of the best within your budget must be the Linx Theta. Totally under the radar. They're rare but do crop up from time to time if you're patient. They use the front end of a Magnum Dynalab but with their own PSU and output stage. Probably the finest midrange of any stock tuner.

Another MD based tuner to consider are the ION FMTs, although these are even rarer. Not quite as good sounding as the Linx in my opinion, but uber-cute with their shoe-box styling. If you're lucky you may get an Onix, which is also blessed with cute shoe-box style and sounds very good. This one is much more common.
 
John Caswell said:
I am on Arkless' side, I have never rated the Troughline, mainly due to poor sensitivity (especially the ECC84 version), and some had a tendency to drift.
My current tuner is an MD100, altho' I also have a couple of Beomaster 5000s, an Hitachi 5500MkII, a Revox B260, a Trio/Kenwood KT9900 and a Yamaha CT7000 which is the one I lent to HiFi News for their vintage review. They all compare pretty similarly for sensitivity/selectivity, just subtle differences in tonal quality and soundstage.
It is interesting that all the "good" tuners are "vintage" types.

John
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In the Uk, what other tuners are there? Those that aren't vintage, from the time when radio was popular, are afterthoughts FM tuners on one IC. That's because there isn't the demand and old ones still exist and too cheap to compete with.
 
+1 to the Onix BWD1. Worth every penny if you can find one and feed it a reasonable signal. Proper, sensitive analogue tuning stage - the digital readout is only a counter, not a PLL synthesiser - with some very well thought-out circuitry details yielding a very, very quiet and low distortion output. Subjective results can be gobsmacking when the studio feed allows (and tells you exactly whats wrong in the studio otherwise!)
 
RobH said:
Not usually a Naim fan but always loved the Nat 01 tuner, best sounding tuner I've heard. Would still like to buy one, even though analogue radio days are numbered :(
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People say that but then there's no actual planned date and local stations will still be there. I can't see radio 3 switching off for a long while yet.
 
The only kind of analogue transmissions that have been reduced so far, all over the world, is medium wave and short wave broadcasts. Which were not used much for music, but for news.
Haven't seen any signs, at least not in Italy or Israel, of FM declining. In fact in Italy in recent years radio audiences have increased while TV audiences have declined. And 99.9 % of the radio is analogue. Its cheap and it works beautifully.
 
martin clark said:
+1 to the Onix BWD1. Worth every penny if you can find one and feed it a reasonable signal. Proper, sensitive analogue tuning stage - the digital readout is only a counter, not a PLL synthesiser - with some very well thought-out circuitry details yielding a very, very quiet and low distortion output. Subjective results can be gobsmacking when the studio feed allows (and tells you exactly whats wrong in the studio otherwise!)
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Sounds like my Yamaha T-2 Martin. Even through my humble system I can tell it's in a different league to any other tuner I've used, which includes:

Sony ST-SA3ES
Onkyo T-4970
Yamaha T-85
Kenwood KT-1100SD
Sony XDR-F1HD (the worst for audio quality but the best for selectivity)

I have heard that there is a lot of individual unit to unit variation on these tuners though. But I think I got one of the better ones. It really is stunning!

Regards,
Nick
 
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