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Your thoughts and experience with getting the best FM reception/signal?

From vintage to new there are many tuners.  Classic old ones, including Sansui and others and new ones from companies like Magnum Dynalab.....but what about the signal/antenna/cable etc.?

Yup, (or is that yep?)  I can buy the best of tuners from what is available...but what about the signal?  Cable and the like can be a mess and many of us cannot do a vintage Finco FM-5 with a rotor on the roof as the building we are in is not ours...so, that means an indoor antenna and the possibility of an antenna amp.

If you are in the know or have experience/expertise.....let us know the best way(s) to get a quality FM signal.  If possible if you thoughts could include if you are in an urban area with many stations or in a rural area with few stations that are a distance away.

If you want to include signals available on cable, etc. feel free, but my experience with that has not been very good quality.  Thanks
whatjd
tablejockey
3,966 posts
 
A devoted tuner disciple has a rooftop antennae.
No tuner does its magic without it.

Staying home more, I can't imagine being without my 65 Mac MR71.

At the very least get the MD ST-2
https://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=MDST2

Wanna get the "best"?
Get this
http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/roadtour7/hero_precedent.jpg

REL Precedent inspired Saul Marantz's 10B and the others during the heyday.
https://pitchperfectaudio.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/setting-a-precedent/

Arguably, nothing since has surpassed it. There's one listed right now. Open your wallet
cd318
2,636 posts
 
In the UK digital stations through a television seem to be better than those heavily compressed ones through DAB.

Whilst DAB is no doubt a great system the neverending pressure to squeeze in more stations and thereby reducing bandwidth even further works against sound quality.

FM broadcast seems to now have a limited shelf life. Besides, for me, it has always seemed impossible to get good reception on all stations.

Radio 2 (88.3FM) is especially tricky where I live.

Classic FM (99 - 101FM) is not so bad.

A rotator mast might be the way to go for those who can accommodate one. I do t think any wire will help much unless you only listen to 1 station.


"The BBC Research & Development department states that at least 192 kbit/s is necessary for a high fidelity stereo broadcast :

A value of 256 kbit/s has been judged to provide a high quality stereo broadcast signal. However, a small reduction, to 224 kbit/s is often adequate, and in some cases it may be possible to accept a further reduction to 192 kbit/s, especially if redundancy in the stereo signal is exploited by a process of ’joint stereo’ encoding (i.e. some sounds appearing at the centre of the stereo image need not be sent twice). At 192 kbit/s, it is relatively easy to hear imperfections in critical audio material.

— BBC R&D White Paper WHP 061 June 2003[18]

When the BBC in July 2006 reduced the bit-rate of transmission of its classical music station Radio 3 from 192 kbit/s to 160 kbit/s, the resulting degradation of audio quality prompted a number of complaints to the Corporation.[19]

The BBC later announced that following this testing of new equipment, it would resume the previous practice of transmitting Radio 3 at 192 kbit/s whenever there were no other demands on bandwidth. (For comparison, BBC Radio 3 and all other BBC radio stations are now streamed using AAC at 320 kbit/s, described as ’HD’, on BBC Radio iPlayer after a period when it was available at two different bit rates.)"


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Audio_Broadcasting#:~:text=The%20typical%20bitrate%20for%20D....

whatjd OP
1,139 posts
 
Thanks to all for you input and thoughts. 

fuzztone's avatar
fuzztone
5,638 posts
 
FM was where it was at 50 rears ago.
Fire up the.time machine or move on

whatjd OP
1,139 posts
 
fuzz, I can see why you would say that.
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