FM/AM versus Analog versus Digital

Not really comparable when you think about it. All your tuner is doing is receiving a signal from a radio station using a CD player or analog turntable. The sound you are hearing is created primarily by the CDP or turntable in the studio and transmitted over the airwaves to your tuner. A high quality, uncompressed, signal fed to a very high quality tuner will come very close to replicating the sound of the CDP or turntable used in the studio. If you have the same CDP or turntable at home your's should sound better.

FM is also bandwidth limited, I think, so it won't give you the full frequency range you can get from your other front-end components (although those with limited frequency response from their speakers may not care about this). And among Newbee's excellent points is the kicker, an UNCOMPRESSED signal--sadly, very few radio stations send this out. Very noticeable on large scale orchestral works, where the loud parts are usually mercilessly squashed in order to be broadcast over the airwaves. With pop stations, which routinely overmodulate anyway and most of the recordings have a compressed dynamic range to begin with, this is less noticeable. Despite all that, if you can get a live broadcast over a good tuner, it is frighteningly good.

Two very good replies, nothing to add except to wonder why the poster places so little thought for digital.

The Stereo FM signal is transmitted, not as Left and Right, but as Sum and Difference. The Sum signal is the Mono signal that can be received by an old FM set that is not stereo. The difference signal is carried above a 19KHz marker tone that activates the stereo capabilities of the receiver (and lights up that little indicator that says "STEREO"). The difference signal goes 20KHz to 40KHz, but is processed down to represent the usual audio range. Then the sum and the difference signals are mixed, so as to get Left and Right. Unfortunately, the signal to noise ratio of the difference signal is lousy unless the RF signal is very strong, and that corupts the Left and Right signal that we listen to.

You might recognize this system as the four channel LP that was tried about 30 years ago. The only good thing about that was that the phono pickup had to be good to 40KHz, and the resulting advances in phono pickup technology have benefited conventional stereo.

All of the above answers are very accurate. I have a very old Fisher AM/FM tuner that has been recently refurbished and I do enjoy listening to it. While I really do like the sound coming from it, I do know the limitations. Still, it is fun to listen to.

There are other sources of music that I do enjoy, especially when it is commercial-free. I often set my Dishnet Satallite on the CDs and the variety of music is quite pleasing, especially The Blues. Also, sometimes PBS will broadcast something worth listening to and I pull this in using my High Definition Receiver and I have an excellant DAC and the sound is really good.