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Tuner Information Center...gospel?

I am sure many of you know this site. It seems way too many people are taking the shootout opinions as gospel.

Obvious Kennwood bias. Units that are nothing special being rated as something special....ie: Technics ST-9038 and Sansui TU-717(ok, but flat, thin, old sounding).

For what it's worth I have owned most of what this site has in the top 30, and none are better than the Magnum MD-108 (with the exception of the Accuphase 109v).

Most of the top rated older tuners sound like that...old transistors, old(and not very good) capacitors,aluminum internal wiring, Zinc RCA jacks...etc...guys and gals these do not make for high end sound.....if so, go buy some old Sansui or Kenwood amps...you wouldn't because they are outdated sonically. Then the newer Kenwoods that are rated highly...all have cheap op-amp based audio cicuits....again, these are not audiophile parts.

If you have watched the price of older tuners...and these Kenwoods...the site has had much impact on the re-sale prices of these tuners....people are putting way too much faith in one person opinions (which is what the shootouts are).

The Mitsu 20 and the Sansui 919 are very,very good...esp. if aligned and newer caps, wire and RCAs are installed. But better than the top Magnum........nope.

Also, tuners like the top two Linn, the top Naim, and others, are not among those listened to.

All this said, I do like the site, and there is much useful information and I do like the fact that this site may have made people more interested in tuners. If you have a great FM station in your area, or a few of them, then having a good tuner is a great investment. There is useful info on the site, but the shootouts are just one person's opinion.....so do some of your own listening and don't take anyone's opinion (including mine) as anything more than that.
whatjd
sedond
1,387 posts
 
hey whatjd, cool - don't bother w/vintage tuna. more for the rest of us! ;~)

seriously, you need to listen to several kt-5020's before you can make a determination as to how one should sound. or, at least get yours properly serviced & aligned. tuna's are far & away the one piece of audio gear that most needs to be serviced & aligned before a serious audition. don't get me wrong - i am not defending this tuna - i have never heard one. but i know i wouldn't be so quick to judge it, based upon one un-serviced sample.

again, the shootout list is only one person's opinion, in one person's rig. i certainly have disagreements with the shootout list, but that does not mean it's patently off base. example: while i *did* think my revox b760 was fantastic, i like my philips ah673 & mitsubishi da-f20 a bit better. and my revox b261, which was thoroughly panned on the shootout list was *identical* in performance to the b760 - i decided to keep the b261 & sell the b760. and, the tandberg 3011a *sucks* - i was happy to return mine in exchange for the b261 i replaced it with. :>)

as far as "ferrari for fiat" tunas go, here's a list of those i have personally tried that all cost me <$100, that i feel can stand shoulder to shoulder w/the best, sonically. some are not the most sensitive, tho:

nikko gamma 1
philips 185
hitachi ft-8000
jvc bx1100
aiwa 9700
technics st-8600
stromberg carlson sr445 (used w/mpx stereo decoder)
fisher fm90r (used w/mpx stereo decoder)
sherwood s3000-III (used w/mpx stereo decoder)

i have not tried the hitachi ft-920, or the mitsubishi da-f30, but i suspect they, too, are winners, based upon comments of those i trust.

ymmv,

doug s.
warnerwh
539 posts
 
Well maybe old tuners aren't the best sounding tuners there are. I haven't owned all of them but have owned a dozen or so. I do know that my modded Kenwood KT 7500 sounds great and far better than my friends Magnum Dynalab that he paid 700 bucks for several years ago. He was quite disappointed as a matter of fact as it sounded no better than the old Denon 747 it replaced. I'm not putting MD down, I'm just stating what we learned. He paid 40 bucks for the old Denon at a hock shop. So I think a good modded vintage tuner can be a real bargain compared to many modern tuners. I think alot of people have also listened without these old tuners being serviced and also without a good yagi antenna. Both are mandatory imo.
fmpnd
481 posts
 
Hey Doug! This is a duplicate post from another A-Gon thread designed to get to you in hopes of getting your opinion. The guy who has the Rotel RHT-10 NEVER told me before he sent it to me that it is the 220 volt version. When he sent the Technical Manual via e-mail, it made me worry about two things: 1) will it be costly to convert to 100v? and 2) it looks like the 220v version may be set up and optimized for European stations. Do you have any ideas on this? Would Joesph Chow be able to help? If so, do you have Joseph's phone number? Or, do you have someone else in mind I could turn to?

Thanks again Doug, as always you are a great help to a relatively novice FM guy like me.

Frank

PS, I contacted you this way because Audiogon is having problems with AOL e-mails bouncing back and it wouldn't go through to your e-mail.
sedond
1,387 posts
 
hey frank, this is a duplicate answer. ;~) check your email...

doug s.
ricktpt
35 posts
 

With the passing of time, there are (through my direct experience, aggregated over decades) some emergent biases, some acknowledged, some not.

These are just my observations and I acknowledge that they are also limited to the perspectives of a single source and the complications arising from there being "no privileged reference point in the Universe".  MOST of ALL when it comes to something as environmentally influenced as FM tuners or (or stations/transmitters/studio front ends for that matter). So, my take is this:

 

1. There is a pretty severe bias toward Kenwood tuners. The Top Kenwood may be deserving of its placement, but I’ll never know because they’re badly overpriced and rare, which segues into #2.

2. If it’s "weird", rare or the result of an evolutionary offshoot marketed as "cutting edge" (new or old) then it’s prized/inflated for those very reasons. The exceptions are the inexpensive tuners at the very top, which are mostly (again, see #1) Kenwoods. I’ve owned multiple samples of all of them (the 990D and the 5020) and they are both critically flawed and seem to fail often in exactly the same way. The front ends lose their ability to demodulate the 19kHz Stereo carrier which causes the tuning center displays and the Quartz Lock to cease working. Alignment isn’t the problem. I’m two samples deep on both models and I won’t be spending money on a third for either. They’re cheaply made, have poor shielding and their longevity is suspect. I acknowledge that Kenwood/Trio/Accuphase have blazed a lot of trails in amateur Ham Radio and I won’t dispute those acknowledged trailblazing honorifics. It (like Nakamichi with Cassette decks) gave the next, anti-biased brand something at which to aim.

#3 A pretty severe anti-classic Era Pioneer bias. The unjustly vilified F-93 Elite (and the identical sounding, but feature-handicapped F-91 Elite) should be at the top of anybody’s list who doesn’t live within 4 miles of all the stations one wishes to listen to with full quieting. The F-28 (I haven’t owned a 26, see the earlier comment regarding rare/exotica) sounds very nearly identical to the F-93/91 grandchildren and so close to the TX-9800 and TX-9500 II’s that the differences are very nearly not worth contemplating. The F9/90/99x are to Pioneer what the 990D/5020 are to KW. Underbuilt, ergonomically handicapped with their audio sections struggling to compensate for longevity-crippled RF sections.

#4 Tuners like the McIntosh MR78 and Yamaha T-2 are badly undervalued compared to the tuners that rank above them.

Space Weather, Terrestrial Weather, and the day-to-day variations in us, the end user wetware can dwarf the differences that we obsess over with respect to FM Tuners. That won’t stop us from doing it, but it does mean that any list is worthy of a certain amount of skepticism. I value the ricochets more than the list itself. What can be said about the shootouts themselves is that they have encouraged debate and reexamination. I think Mr. Rivers threw a couple of "berserkers" onto the list just to provoke that exact kind of engagement, and I respectfully submit that it worked beautifully. In the end, not the worst thing that could happen. I’d reserve that appraisal for the programming that’s driving the format to irrelevance. (Everyone’s mileage varies...)

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