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!