I guess crap is in the ear of the beholder.
I listened to FM "crap" for too many years on tube and scope tuners and I appreciate ditching the unreliable motorized antennas. But if that's what you want you'lll a $55 tube headphone amp. Audiophile Jazz and Linn Jazz are
320 kbps and sound better to me than
pushing music through a transmitter.
The trouble with AM and FM is that the program signal becomes part of the wave that carries it. So, if something happens to the wave en-route, part of the signal is likely to get lost. And if it gets lost, there's no way to get it back again. Imagine I'm sending my distress signal from the boat to the shore and a speedboat races in between. The waves it creates will quickly overwhelm the ones I've made and obliterate the message I'm trying to send. That's why analog radios can sound crackly.