I have never personally seen, touched, measured or listened to a Marantz 10B. The gentleman that calibrates all of my test equipment happens to own one though. After aligning the unit, he not only told me that it measures better than any other tuner that he's ever repaired / calibrated in most every respect, but that the sound quality is also unmatched in most every respect. Given that the complexity of design and production costs that this product brought with it are what brought Saul Marantz to his knees financially, forcing him to sell the company, i can believe that this is a truly astounding product. That is, when it is fully aligned with all of the circuitry working as it was designed. Then again, i'm taking someone else's word on it, but i've never had to doubt their word before.
As far as the fmtunerinfo goes, i've had some very different results than what they've reported. On one tuner, i commented to them that it sounded "tinny", like a transistor radio. They posted this and responded back on their website that the tuner actually sounded very good and was quite full bodied sounding. After comparing the tuner to several others, in one of the other reviews they referenced this tuner and said that it had somewhat of a "solid state sound". Yet if you read their main review of this tuner, it says "we think it sounds great but two of our contributors think it sounds bright". Bright is not the same thing as lacking in warmth with a glaring upper midrange / hot lower treble.
Another tuner that they absolutely trashed is a very nice sounding unit. If it sounded as bad as they said, i would have been a fool to buy the four of them that i have. I actually heard a demo where we were comparing the signal directly from the turntable feeding the broadcast station's transmitter and then listening to the broadcast over the air via this tuner. It was as close as one could get. Is the tuner "ultra-sensitive", "fancy" or built like a tank? Not by any means. Does it sound good? Most certainly, my answer is a resounding "YES" !!!
Speaking of sensitivity, the tuner that i spent the least amount of money on has the most sensitive front end of any that i've ever used or owned. The fact that Larry Schotz designed the front end, the manufacturer touted the sensitivity of this unit as being the high point of the design and one reviewer stated that "the sensitivity exceeds the theoretical limit" should tell you something. The tuner website said "they were pretty good values when new and still sound pretty good on strong signals". All i can say is that it sounds better on using a 6' piece of wire as an antenna on a distant station than my Magnum does using a highly resonant FM antenna mounted on the roof of my building.
Another tuner that i had, and that they referred to as the first "super tuner", measured better than any other tuner ever made in some respects. Yet when i listened to these tuners, the sound quality from unit to unit was anything less than consistent. Given that i've owned well over a half dozen of these specific tuners, some of them at the same time, i was able to do many "head to head comparisons" between them. Super tuner it is not, at least not sonically. Why did i have so many of them? I kept reading about what a great tuner they were, so i bought a bunch and was going to keep the pick of the litter. I ended up selling all of them out of disappointment. One guy was so unhappy with the performance of the tuner, that i gave him his money back and i kept it. I'm going to work on this one in the near future and hopefully improve the sonics.
Another tuner that i have that sounds very nice has some very obvious "digital" flaws to it. It probably doesn't measure all that well compared to some of my other tuners, but there i still keep hanging onto it.
If there is one thing that i have learned out of all of this, it is this. One of these days, i need to clean house : )
If there is another thing i've learned, it is that these guys are doing the best that they can with what they've got to offer their sonic observations. All mass produced gear have tolerances that cause some units to measure and sound quite different from the next. On top of that, atmospheric conditions vary from day to day and even hour to hour, so relying on "over the air" test results can be somewhat less than conclusive. Other than that, i appreciate the time and effort that they put into performing these tests and sharing their observations with us. At least with these guys, we know that they aren't afraid to point out flaws and / or amend previous statements that need correction as their levels of experience and equipment exposure increases. Sean
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