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Best tuner ever made?

Have Fun said:
Absolutely
The most you can do is enjoy them for what they do for you.

I've been trying out another of my tuners here for the last few days & whilst it has excellent reception & very enjoyable it still has that "radio" sound. - Plugging the Onkyo back in today & I'm not aware of it being a radio source at all - that's pretty damn good given my reception location, & budget equipment I use, & its the only Tuner I've heard that I can say that of.
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What other tuners do you have?
 
Check out my article in Hi-Fi World magazine from the early 1990's. I have owned all the top domestic tuners in the world (mostly US made) plus some broadcast monitoring receivers costing about £35K in the 1960's (the cost to make these today would be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds). To be fair I have to group these in to 2 groups:
1. Domestic stereo tuners
2. Professional broadcast monitoring receivers.

In group 1 the very best sound was from the Marantz 10B, this was followed by the respective US equivalents from Fisher (FM1000), Scott (4310) and McIntosh (MR71). All these tuners are “all tube” designs, some having up to 23 tubes in circuit with proper tube decoders.
Note: the Marantz 10B and other tuners listed above were properly calibrated and set up for UK de-emphasis. Many 10B’s imported were not calibrated and therefore will not perform as they should.

In group 2 the best I heard was the German Rohde & Schwarz broadcast receiver which incidentally weighed 50kgs, closely followed by the US made Nems Clarke 1906 receiver. Both these were mono devices and did not have the bandwidth for resolving the stereo sidebands so you could only listen to these in mono. The best sound I ever heard was using the Rohde & Schwarz.

All the others listed on page 1 of this thread are just average by comparison to these above. The quality you get with a properly calibrated all tube tuner is outstanding on live broadcasts. There is a realism and sound stage which is simply missing on other domestic tuners however good they appear to sound.

The above tests were achieved using a Ron Smith Galaxy 23 element aerial fitted to a 20 ft mast with a Crown rotator.
 
Nick_G said:
What other tuners do you have?
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In stash ... Leak 75 receiver needs a fix / trio Receiver / Yamaha 400 Receiver these plugged into tape on a Yamaha 600 amp - best of these is the yammie

the one referred to in my post above was a Marantz ST50 tuner which is dual Mosfet Wide /Narrow & a lot nicer ie simpler to use than the Onkyo
 
G T Audio said:
Check out my article in Hi-Fi World magazine from the early 1990's. I have owned all the top domestic tuners in the world (mostly US made) plus some broadcast monitoring receivers costing about £35K in the 1960's (the cost to make these today would be in the hundreds of thousands of pounds). To be fair I have to group these in to 2 groups:
1. Domestic stereo tuners
2. Professional broadcast monitoring receivers.

In group 1 the very best sound was from the Marantz 10B, this was followed by the respective US equivalents from Fisher (FM1000), Scott (4310) and McIntosh (MR71). All these tuners are “all tube” designs, some having up to 23 tubes in circuit with proper tube decoders.
Note: the Marantz 10B and other tuners listed above were properly calibrated and set up for UK de-emphasis. Many 10B’s imported were not calibrated and therefore will not perform as they should.

Graham, we mortals would be satisfied with the crumbs from your table.
In group 2 the best I heard was the German Rohde & Schwarz broadcast receiver which incidentally weighed 50kgs, closely followed by the US made Nems Clarke 1906 receiver. Both these were mono devices and did not have the bandwidth for resolving the stereo sidebands so you could only listen to these in mono. The best sound I ever heard was using the Rohde & Schwarz.

All the others listed on page 1 of this thread are just average by comparison to these above. The quality you get with a properly calibrated all tube tuner is outstanding on live broadcasts. There is a realism and sound stage which is simply missing on other domestic tuners however good they appear to sound.

The above tests were achieved using a Ron Smith Galaxy 23 element aerial fitted to a 20 ft mast with a Crown rotator.
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Graham, we mortals would be happy with the crumbs from your table. :)

I have a question for you. Are there significant improvements to sound quality to be had from component updates etc. to the Troughine when using it with a separate decoder?
 
Wow, I think this thread covered the territory FAST and with a refreshing level of exhaustiveness. I've owned a number of the tippy top ones, had a near-fetish going for a while I think:) I did way more solid state than tube. My solid state vote would be Accuphase (probably the tuned and refreshed T-100; the thing was rather large unfortunately).

So now for my petite curveball contribution:

The Sony XDR-F1HD

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00168Q248/?tag=pinkfishmedia-20

NO, it is not the best. YES, it is rather outrageously good for the price. I stumbled onto it I forget how, then did a little web research and found some compelling reviews, a la this:

http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/sony-xdr-f1hd.html

No, I'm not selling anything lol. At this point I confess I primarily use the web for radio, BUT this thing is really really good, and for the price, a bit of a total no-brainer. I didn't head-to-head it, having already departed with all the big stuff (for the record the list included the big Tandberg, several of the top mcintoshes, several of the monster yamahas, several accuphases, kenwoods, pioneers, quad, naim), but let's just say shy of another T-100 or an MR71, 10B (never owned! but I would!) etc, I'm not bothering looking for a tuner anymore.
 
I will never go out and buy another Fm tuner as DAB and Internet radio perfectly adequate for my needs, however i love looking at all the pictures, especially the more vintage stuff and gear where you get to twiddle with knobs etc to fine tune them, very 'hobbyist'....
My last tuner was a Pioneer that i picked up in the middle east, it had sw, lots of fun building roof mounted wire aerials on my villa roof....
 
Sid and Coke said:
I will never go out and buy another Fm tuner as DAB and Internet radio perfectly adequate for my needs, however i love looking at all the pictures, especially the more vintage stuff and gear where you get to twiddle with knobs etc to fine tune them, very 'hobbyist'....
My last tuner was a Pioneer that i picked up in the middle east, it had sw, lots of fun building roof mounted wire aerials on my villa roof....
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Are you sirius? :)
 
So glad I started this thread, loads of great information and views, my knowledge has been improved greatly. All I need to do now is start the search and find myself a great tuner.
 
bhassan said:
So glad I started this thread, loads of great information and views, my knowledge has been improved greatly. All I need to do now is start the search and find myself a great tuner.
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But where will you start as there are now about 100 best tuners in the world? :confused:
 
Have a couple of Troughlines plus decoders, a Magnum Dynalab FT101 Etude and a Day Sequerra Model 1 (design based on the famous Marantz 10B) - they are all great tuners but with a different presentation.

Good aerial from Ron Smith is essential to get the full benefit.

Troughlines with decoder , recently serviced, are the best value if you don't mind the period look
 
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