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In Reply to: RE: FM Tuners - Who still builds these? posted by samurai7595 on October 08, 2014 at 12:06:30
The question might be: who sells good, affordable tuners? If my Sony XDR-F1HD dies, I doubt I'll find affordable new HD tuners.
It'll come down to what I could afford on eBay. There's gold there, if you know what to look for and are willing to do some refurbishment and get it properly aligned.
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I am told, lots of stations are dropping it. I don't live in the USA.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
I can tell you that where I live, there are very few analog-only FM stations and no apparent rush to abandon the HD Radio technology. Most cars are now shipping with HD-capable receivers.
FM HD Radio has worked very well for me and the audio quality is better; no multipath, extended frequency response, more programming. We do have a couple or three local stations that actually care about the sound quality.
AM stations locally running HD Radio are just as scarce as analog-only FM stations. Not a great loss for me as there's little music programming on the AM band that I want to listen to. But I have to admit that the AM market has mostly dropped HD Radio in all but very large markets.
Although, last weekend KKXA 1520 was running full digital AM HD Radio in several test broadcasts. Far stronger signal and I was able to get HD lock. Alas, it was country music, in mono and not stereo. The audio quality was essentially equal to analog mono FM.
Given the high performance of DSP-based receiver chipsets, there's no reason even analog-only AM/FM tuners couldn't be cheaply produced. I don't think HD Radio is mandated on new equipment, but any new tuner I buy in the future will have to support digital broadcast.
I cannot see how any codec can ever compensate for the low bit rates HD uses. Otherwise high-res recordings and downloads would be a waste of money, no?!
I live in a very hilly city, and multipath would be an issue where I live, but for an old but good long-boom and wide-band yagi with a tight enough pattern.
IME FM sounds fine so long as the signal arriving at / driving the tuner has not been futzed with (it too often is), is strong enough is fully limiting the front end of the radio, and has low multipath. That is what antennas are for.
Noise is a big issue for me, as my listening diet is mostly classical music. IME live direct broadcasts of the same can be very good, esp. when minimally miked. And I use a rebuilt valve front-end receiver. I have sufficient gain from the old antenna and a good SS kit MPX decoder, built in.
I record such concerts for a local community FM station, using their gear for simple stereo technique and SS recorders to digital wav 16/44.1 files.
Warmest
Tim Bailey
Skeptical Measurer & Audio Scrounger
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