Tuner - FM over the air - suggestions

Do you live in an urban area with many strong signals? Or, perhaps a rural area where you'll need a highly sensitive tuner?

This Linn looks nice.

paradisecom

Why not just stream any station you like?  Why be restricted to the 1 or 2 that might be available where you live?

The fidelity of OTA audio is almost always better than streamed radio. Once set up, you can't beat the convenience of a good tuner.

dpop

FM reception these days can be very noisy. That's another reason why OTA audio processing is kept aggressive, to mask that noise. Another factor is FM stereo performance, which at best has a S/N ratio of -65 dB. If the same station has a decent high bandwidth stream, that S/N can be closer to -80 dB, or even -90 dB ...

Yes, digital has the s/n advantage, but it's of little value when the signal is lo-res lossy digital, which most radio streams are. (Yes, there are some exceptions, as you note. For example, Radio Paradise has great SQ, although it has no OTA signal.))

FM stereo reception and performance is not really as "high quality" as it is sometimes portrayed. It may be convenient, but it is rarely a high quality medium these days. 

That's true - most FM audio is w-a-y over processed, and the HD signal can create noise in the analog signal. But there are notable exceptions.

The truth is that the stream of most radio stations is very lossy mp3 quality. So even if the stream has less processing than OTA, the sound suffers. Same with so-called "HD" radio. It's not high definition at all, but lossy digital. And that's why FM still has some appeal.