Tuner vs Satellite Radio

After learning what I have, I wouldn't spend the money on an MD in my area (pittsburgh). Very few radio stations use high enought quality equipment to justify a $1000 tuner. Everyone here thought that WQED was superb. Well, I got the "grand tour" and found out that the source was a pair of sony 200 disc changers-not even ES models just basic 1 bit units. Virtually no albums either. Their goal was to download 10-20,000 discs to hard drive for further ease of use. Wow was I bummed out to find that they were going to kill quality even more by compressing single bit data.
On a better note, I love the quality of my Dishnetwork audio for background music. It still isn't audiophile quality. You may get better selection from satellite radio but still won't have even cd quality sound.
I would recommend getting a vintage tube tuner (with mulitplexer built in) and letting the tubes "warm-up" the radio sound very nicely. You should spend about $100 to $150 for a nice Pilot, Fisher, Heath or similar and spend the rest on either satellite or dish.

I have Direct TV with all the music stations. Not inspiring. Although I have a very nice audio system, I did not want to spend big bucks for a new tuner, since it would not be my primary source. I purchased a Fisher FM-100B tuner a couple of years ago for $100 and have been extremely happy with its pleasing, musical sound. Although I have not touched it, I believe a complete tube upgrade can be had for around $200. As far as I am concerned, this route cannot be beaten.

Good luck.

I believe a tuner would give you better sound, provided you have decnt stations to pick up.

Depending on where you live there may still be good local stations -- typically college radio, NPR, and classical stations, possibly some jazz stations. FM tuners are still fun. I like the vintage tuners. Mine is a Tandberg 3011A that's been cleaned and modified. It sounds great! Don't count on "digital radio" being digitally perfect. The best FM tuners and equipment are analog.

I can just imagine the future of digital radio... Millions of songs loaded on hard drives and compressed. They don't even need a DJ, just program a day's worth of programming and let it run. Ugh! I read recently that Britian's digital networks are faltering because they aren't any better that FM, sometimes even worse.

What I think is cool though is being able to stream straight from the Internet to my stereo. I haven't done it yet, but there are wireless transmitors that will take the stream and send it from your computer to your stereo and either through an input or through an unused FM station. I don't expect much audio quality wise, but the variety is killer. I subscribe to archives of the Hearts of Space programs.

I have an XM satellite radio adapter in my car, which has a very good audio system (Mercedes/Bose). Satellite radio has plusses and minuses. For the plusses, the big ones are (i) variety of programming, (ii) lack of interference (multipath, etc.) and (iii) commercial-free channels. On the other hand, anyone who claims that satellite radio is CD quality is smoking something. It's highly compressed low-bit data--perfectly pleasant to listen to for background--sort of like MP3-- but not for serious listening. For sure you should get a good tuner if you have quality stations in your area. For a small additional amount of money, you can now get XM satellite receivers for home use, too (there's a Sony and a Delphi, each of which can be used with home audio), so you can use that for the additional variety.