Tuner - FM over the air - suggestions

Great suggestions!  You folks really have a lot of good ideas.  

In addition to the freebie Pioneer (thanks again!), I really like the looks of the refurbed Dynalab, the Galaxy, and the Teac...  The Dynalab is probably the most "upscale" but they all would do the job I'm looking for in my prospective environments.  

@dpop  I did find the teac 670 on ebay new old stock NOS w all the trimmings: remote, manual, antennae, unit.  Looks mint and fits the aesthetic and intent:  $107 incl taxes and shipping,... so I snagged one, I mean why not, it's under my budget, it's a brand I like, and between it and the Pioneer I think I'll be all set until the whole world goes digital which will be a few years away here in U.S. anyway.

Thank you again, all of you.

Magnum Dynalab.

Used mine every day for the past 30 years.

Very musical component.

And get one of their ST-2 antennas, regardless of which tuner you get.

Enjoy!

Over the air FM sounds so much better where I live than streaming. I am currently listening to a classic rock station on a refurbished Accuphase T-101 tuner and I am just blown away at how good it sounds. I was thinking that is is almost as good as CD.

At 9AM - 12PM I switch to the incredible KCRW(,com) on my Magnum Dynalab 108T tuner. That is also incredible and KILLS the same steam of that stations broadcast. This station likes to play albums when available. One time a DJ on KCRW stopped a song half way and apologized to say he was playing a bad version and he had a better vinyl pressing to play instead. These guys love music.

FM streaming is awful compared to what I hear over the airways.

I have 2 cheaper tuners (not really used at the moment) that are not too expensive. A modified $500 Sony XDR tuner (Welcome - About - Contact (xdrguy.com)). You need a very good RCA interconnect to really bring this to life.

The other tuner is a Sansui 9090 tuner I got for $750. It was refurbished and sounds really good. Not as good as the Accuphase and MD 108T but damn fine for the price.

Could it be Arizona University's KUAT (90.5

That's Tucson and comes in strong. The Green Valley station must have changed. 

@yyzsantabarbara Audio reproduction is very subjective. What you may think sounds right to you, may not sound right to me, and so on. Audio processing on radio is the same. Some listeners think balls to the wall processing sounds better to them, than a lightly processed radio station (lightly meaning you're hearing more dynamic range, and audio that's closer to the original source). Having been (and still kind of am) a Radio Broadcast Engineer, I could talk your ears off on this subject. The truth of the matter is that 99% of radio stations use separate audio processors for their webstream audio, and OTA (over the air) audio. The OTA processor is usually cranked full tilt to compensate for road noise, and achieving ratings; so that audio will be highly processed, and considered by most to be consistently loud (and not very close to the original source). Since most radio stations don't want to spend $10,000 on a webstream audio processor (like they do for their OTA audio processor), because radio stations do not make any money (95% of the time) off of their stream audio, you'll find that most radio station stream's audio is closer to the source, and not as highly processed as the OTA audio. Now, which do you prefer? This gets down to the individual taste of the listener. Many are not looking for audio quality (I will guarantee you that) - they just want to *hear* their radio station. The weak link in radio station webstreams is the amount of bandwidth they are willing to pay for. If you have a high quality system, try listening to high bit rate webstream audio from: BBC Radio 3 (which uses no audio processing), WCPE, KCSM, WMSE, and even WECK (these are just a few examples). When I was working for commercial radio stations, I always processed my/our radio station's webstream audio channels more lightly and uniquely, as compared to our OTA audio, so that if listeners were looking for higher audio quality, they had an alternative choice. Radio station webstream audio, and OTA audio, will rarely ever sound exactly the same.