KT88 makes a good point. Turntables are still useful as we keep our own LP collection. A tuner is dependent on the radio station. Once the station drops the "software", the tuner is useless.
I've been noticing a trend for many years. Radio station equipment is getting cheaper and losing audio quality at the same time. Digital processing is now used for compression and to limit phase modulation. The "encoders" don't appear to be concentrating on sonics. Just features and price.
Seems pretty obvious that as radio stations upgrade to the newer equipment to jam in more stations on each tower, the sound quality will suffer.
The HD channels are not high definition, except by branding. I believe they are merely bit-limited compressed digital audio, probably MP3 or similar. Old analog FM is far superior in terms of sonics. It can actually be quite good. Not sure how many broadcasters are still using such a quality setup. Maybe one?
jh
I've been noticing a trend for many years. Radio station equipment is getting cheaper and losing audio quality at the same time. Digital processing is now used for compression and to limit phase modulation. The "encoders" don't appear to be concentrating on sonics. Just features and price.
Seems pretty obvious that as radio stations upgrade to the newer equipment to jam in more stations on each tower, the sound quality will suffer.
The HD channels are not high definition, except by branding. I believe they are merely bit-limited compressed digital audio, probably MP3 or similar. Old analog FM is far superior in terms of sonics. It can actually be quite good. Not sure how many broadcasters are still using such a quality setup. Maybe one?
jh