Is an old Denon 800 tuner as good as a new Fanfare?

All things being equal, the arbiter of the performance is the aerial. If you are on a fixed budget or have a certain investment, and are in a house, an external aerial like an APS and a rotor with proper cabling will MOST PROBABLY outperform the same investment in a tuner and a dipole. In an urban location where you cannot mount an outside directional antennae the performance will still vary according to the type of internal aerial, especially if it has an ability to limit bandwidth and/or be oriented. This is very much a definable but complex topic. Finally you should consider the condition of the tuners you are thinking of purchasing..... Tell us more about your situation....

Sorry I wrote it late last night. What I meant to say was that one should first purchase the best aerial and connecting cables for your particular situation, and then spend the rest of the money on the tuner. If you don't get a high power clean signal into the tuner, your investment will be greatly compromised.

Before you put big bucks into a tuner make sure that(a)you have stations worth listening to, and (b) those stations put out a decent signal. You might also wait a few months to check out the new " satillite radio " service available shortly from XM Satillite or Cirrus. Conventional tuners will not work with this format. They promise to deliver about 100 digital quality stations to home or auto receivers. The monthly fee is supposed to be $10 to $12.