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Tuners that do it?

In my 30+ years as an audiophile I have owned a few tuners that had good specs and received good reviews in the audio press. Generally, I was never satisfied with any of them and found they never matched my turntable or other source components for audio quality. I concluded that high-quality sound was just not possible with a tuner as the source.

But recently I bought a Harman Kardon TU910 tuner on ebay and its excellent performance in my reference system has caused me to rethink the whole issue. The sound is well balanced, the midrange is literally marvelous, the focus, imaging, and depth of the soundstage is quite impressive. I was listening to a local jazz station last night and my thought was that I'd never heard sound this authentic from a tuner before. I know that my particular tuner is not the best one out there, nor is it highly rated, but for some reason it sounds way better than other tuners I have tried over the years. My antenna is not anything special, so I know it can't be related to that. It has me wondering how good the sound quality may be using more upscale, highly-rated models.

I welcome any thoughts or comments on this topic.

Happy Thanksgiving to All!
plato
rok2id's avatar
rok2id
7,859 posts
 
I recommend the Sony XDR-F1HD.
lou_setriodes's avatar
lou_setriodes
687 posts
 
I've had some pretty nice tuners over the years that were highly recommended and now have a Creek CAS-3140 with a din-rca cord that I enjoy very much as well - but one of the finest sounding tuners I've ever heard was a modified Dyna FM3.

I've never heard the other classic tuners from Scott, Fisher or Marantz though.....
dcspace
1 posts
 
Kind of an old thread, but has immediate relevance to me today.

I just went through the process of looking for a new tuner, the one in a Pioneer SC-37 AVR is just too irritating. 3 of the 4 tuners I got were digital with costs ranging from free to $60, total cost for all 4 much less than any decent new tuner being sold today. All were much better than the AVR. Here is what I listened to in ascending FM audio quality. All used the same antenna cable, no splits, no two on at the same time talking to each other.
Yamaha T50 - free, digital, very good AM, somewhat harsh FM
Marantz ST50 - not free, digital, AM not as good as the Yamaha, but much better FM, still a little harsh
Luxman T-111 - not free, digital model, pretty good AM, cleaner than the Marantz in FM, would be the top keeper except for the next one
Harman Kardon TU910 - not free, but close to it, analog with changing color dial scale, or will be when I replace some lamps. AM is pretty good. FM sounds variable, depends on source. With good sources it sounds very musical. Voices seem natural. It never seems harsh, maybe digital tuners are like that?
I find that I get more engaged in the broadcast in the H-K than the others, seems to disappear and lets the content come through clearly.

Enough for the re-opening of the thread, Happy listening.
lou_setriodes's avatar
lou_setriodes
687 posts
 
Sonically, I'll take an analog tuner anyday over a digital one....but for convenience digital
bombaywalla's avatar
bombaywalla
1,958 posts
 
I'll chime in here - i Have 2 tuners - one analog, a Technics ST-8077 & the other 1/2 analog & 1/2 digital, a Sansui TU-99X. like another member here I also sent my analog tuner to Don Scott who was very generous with his time & effort to tune it up for me. The Technics sound really very nice & i can listen to it for a long time (too bad programming here is very limited). The Sansui also sounds very nice - I prefer the Technics since it has a more of an analog-ish sound. I got both tuners off Ebay for $50 each - very reasonable - and this after cruising thru fmtunerinfo.com for many hours....
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