Can anyone recommend an FM Receiver that would play into a relatively high end system?

Meant to say “I wouldn’t get a stand alone tuner”

Hi, while I am at my computer I have a Pioneer  HD CAR ! FM tuner DEH 33HD. $65 if I remember, with $7 car whip antenna. I only listen to HD FM jazz WQXR. In New Jersey near NYC, very very strong signals. For my main system I have and Outlaw HD receiver, thats why I bought it. I love the sound quality, I am  near field so hear everything. What's up with this unhappiness with HD ? Is there some technical reason that it is not much better than plain FM ? I am a Physicist/EE. Regards Pat O.

patrickorlando

What's up with this unhappiness with HD ? Is there some technical reason that it is not much better than plain FM ?

As implemented in the US, HD radio uses lo-res lossy compression. So while it can be quiet just like all digital, it sounds much more like an mp3 than a quality FM signal. Note that "HD" does not stand for high definition or anything else. It's just a gag.

HD creates self-noise that degrades the frankly better-sounding analog signals.

If stations would put news/talk on the HD side and music on the analog side, I'd be less critical of it.

Many great tuners aren't of the "conspicuous consumption brand name namecheck" Persuasion.  By Stereophile's own proclamations, the Pioneer F-93 ("Pulls stations in even after they've signed off") killed all its peers in a very "Britward" biased review.  And that included the Day Sequerra.

Of the many tuners I own I will only list the ones I use daily in eight different systems, in a rough order of quality/performance.  A few sound slightly better, a very few have significantly better RF front ends.  

McIntosh MR78-The variable bandwidth tuner the rest of the industry was forced to emulate.  The only downside to this powerhouse is even when modded, the "Very Narrow IF bandwidth filter" is rarely useful owing to distortion.

Pioneer F-28 Series 20  A great sounding and RF-sensitive tuner.  Unfortunately handicapped as a DX tuner by its unique Quartz Lock system.

Pioneer F-93/F91/TX-9800/TX-9500 II (you could include any of their well-lauded brethren reviewed in the early years of TAS.)

Sansui TU-919 (uses Pioneer's variable capacitor)

Yamaha T-2 (even better specced than the vaunted CT-7000) A favorite, but no longer easy to find in great condition.

Magnum Dynalab late generation Etude.  Great sound, not bad RF, terrific ergonomics-positive user tactile experience.

Kenwood KT-5020- I bought one fully expecting it to be awful, based on very bad experiences with Pioneer's F-9, 90 tuners. I was wrong, the 5020 is a top-tier tuner.

TOTL Pioneer SX-XX50 and XX-80 receivers.  None will stand up to a top-level variable IF bandwidth tuner, if the DX stations you're trying to tune aren't adjacent to a local blowtorch, they sound great.

As noted by others the big problem with FM is like politics, everything is local.

If you live in an area where high-quality music is being broadcast things are pretty much as they've always been.  But if you're in an area of the country where the entire bandwidth has been consumed in a tsunami of "CLEAR CHANNEL" and "come be 'wif us" religious broadcast formats, then justifying the purchase of TOTL tuners (and maintaining them) can be a "point of diminishing returns" proposition.

After all the back and forth to be found on the tuner groups, in the end, the best one is the one you have if it works as designed and is reliable.  Arguing over the placement of filters or the swapping out of minutiae is great fun for armchair engineers, but in the end makes very little difference to 99% of end users.  Just my two cents.