What happened to the AM/FM tuner???

What happened to AM/FM tuners is that without content, they essentially became worthless. And what happened to FM radio is truly a crime against humanity. The FCC should be locked up in jail and sodomized nightly. They let the corporate foxes rule the hen house and now we have nothing worth listening to on FM except for NPR.

If you purchase an FM tuner, all you will find is coporate pre-packaged pablum off a digital music server that stores the music in an MP3 format. Oh and now we have plenty of spanish-language stations to choose from and more commercials than you (or anyone) can stand. None of which is worth spending $75.00 to listen to.

So, while you can still find new and used AM/FM tuners available to buy, why would you want one... they're just a waste of money and shelf space.

One of the biggest problems that I had with trying to listen to FM is the fact that most of the stations pump the bass about 12 to 15 db and the music sounds way too bass-heavy on a decent system.

Now the hype is all centered around HD radio. Broadcasters want you to invest in a new service to stream commercials into your home,car, or office. The HD radio system uses part of their FM bandwidth allocation to stream 100, 112, 125, or 150 kbits/second of lossy data to HD receivers. The actual rate is set by the station depending on power budget and desired range of signal. By comarisson, a CD has between 900 and 1400 kbits/second of data. In listening to HD radio, the sound has a time domain distorion to it that becomes tiresome after about 5 minutes and irksome after about 15 minutes. While this would be fine for your car (at least the meta-tags are useful), it really doesn't make sense for a high quality 2-channel audio system.
The new replacement for FM is internet radio or satellite radio. You are far more likely to be happy with either of these technologies than if you buy a new AM/FM tuner.

I recommend internet radio if you wish to stream to your system. A bit complex, but lots of choices for music and information. I like having XM radio available. Monthly subscription, but very few commercials and lots of choices for music. I also have DirecTV which hosts most of the music channels from XM. The Sat receiver has digital Toslink outputs and RCA outputs. I use an Onkyo receiver as a pre-pro and sometimes use the tuner in it. Many choices, but not like the old days. Good luck.

I find the Magnum Dynalab tuner that I bought an excellent source for good quality music, and it is free. Living in the northeast there are plenty of inependent/college stations with a great variety of music. Bought myself a decent powered antenna at RatShack and I find the quality to be quite good, sometimes better than what I get over the internet or via cable. And it is nice not having another bloodsucker draining $10- $20 per month in fees.

You should be able to find something to fit your needs right here on AudioGon.
After years of neglecting FM because I didn’t think it was worth the time or effort I stumbled upon FMtunerinfo.com and my enthusiasm in FM was ignited. I, like Zenblaster live in the Northeast where decent college stations are fairly plentiful. While there are many big corporate stations with over compressed and badly EQ’d signals, WGBH, NPR out of Boston has simply amazing sound quality and program material, classical, including live broadcasts (great sound quality), jazz every night and Celtic and others on Saturdays. This station alone has been worth the price of admission and in fact I rarely change the station. I hear all sorts of music I otherwise wouldn’t.

I have found some very musical tuners like the AM/FM Kenwood KT-5020 and AM/FM Luxman T-117. These get the high frequencies right, a weakness I’ve found with a lot of tuners. Sansui also made some excellent, but pricier AM/FM tuners like the TU-X1, 919, and 9900. There are plenty more by other manufacturers too. Two of the biggest mistakes it to 1) get a great tuner but neglect the antenna, and 2) not get it aligned.

Here’s some sad but appropriate news while we’re on the subject;

CHANGING OF THE GUARD: STEREO TV INVENTOR CARL EILERS - SK

The electronic engineer who helped develop production of high-fidelity stereo sound over the airwaves has died. 83 year old Carl G. Eilers, Friday at his home in River Forest, Illinois, on June 26th of an apparent of a heart attack.

A 50-year employee of Zenith Electronics, Eilers joined Zenith in 1948 as an engineer in the research department working on a subscription television system called Phonevision. In 1977, he became manager of research and development and led the team that in 1961developed FM stereo broadcasting. Eilers was also co-developer of another key industry standard known as MTS or multi-channel television sound for stereo TV. Zenith's MTS system was adopted by the industry in 1984.

Eilers also worked on development of remote controls, laser-disc recording and supplemental audio programming. He also contributed significantly to high-definition television and was granted 21 U.S. patents.

Eilers retired in 1997 but returned as a consultant for the company, which is based in the Chicago suburb of Lincolnshire. He is survived by his wife of Sandra; his son John and a daughter Janet Ames. (Published reports)

Check out fmtunerinfo.com and you won't be disappointed.