internet music same for any tuner?

If you have a local college or NPR station (non-compressed), then a good tuner sounds as good or better than a Squeezebox/DAC. This is my opinion of course.
I use both a tuner and a squeezebox because I have a great jazz station in my city that I cannot pick up on the Squeezebox. The Squeezebox is well worth it for the vast variety of musical choices.

I grew up on music heard over FM radio.

But there is a much larger assortment of stations with very good sound in most any music genre on internet compared with FM these days, even in larger metro areas.

Plus, you do not have to worry about noise or other distortions due to weak signal, interference etc.

There is no comparison...internet blows away FM in most every regard already and the trend will only increase most likely over time.

I stream digital radio to an airport express which is connected to an aux input on my pre-amp. I love it many stations available especially classical. I use i-tunes or you can use windows media player streaming to the airport via. air foil software.......... No Tuner Needed............GREAT STUFF INDEED.

Two good classical internet classical "stations" are theclassicalstation.org and Bartok radio. Goggle both. They are both MP-3 steams. At work,for casual listening,I use WinAmp,and for what it is;an MP-3 feed,it is OK.

My understanding is that if you load your digital music onto a hard drive,you use a Squeezebox between the hard drive and a DAC,and from the DAC,to your preamp.

A compact disk at 44.1,16 bit is just under a gig(about 800+mg),so a rough rule of thumb is that an auxiliary hard drive that is 500 g would hold a few more that five hundred cd's of music.

I'll let others get into "lossless" formats and all.

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I have a Squeezebox and it is excellent for listening to FM broadcasts.

However, I do have a Sansui TU-X1 FM tuner for listening to the local jazz station here in LA. As good as the Squeezebox is, the Sansui is head and shoulders better. When listening to the Sansui, you know you are unquestionably listening to a high-end component.

But, I use the Squeezebox more often because I now listen to jazz radio stations around the world and it is way more flexible and convenient than an FM tuner.

For critical jazz radio listening, I listen to my Sansui FM tuner, for that, there is no subsitute.
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