The units from companies that really invested in FM Tuners, like Accuphase, Carver, Denon, Harman Kardon, Hitachi, JVC, Kenwood, Luxman, Onkyo, Pioneer, Revox, Sansui, Sony, Sumo, Tandberg, and Yamaha show the state of art for tuners in 1987.
You left Technics out.
The tuners from that era which would fit your bill are not many.
Beside the Yamaha T2 the Yamaha CT-7000, Kenwood 600T, KT-917, Technics ST-9030 and the ST-9700 (the last one never been sold outside Japan) and the Pioneer F26 comes to my mind. Non of them built for the crowded FM band of today.
Yes, sorry, that was an oversight. The 1987 listings had no entries for distortion on the Technics tuners, so I skipped over them. My mistake, as the ST-G7 is a top notch tuner by every measure. I actually had one for a while and was very impressed with both the sound quality and reception capability.
I've attached the 1987 Audio FM Tuners listings to the message, have a look at them! Another company I passed over was McIntosh, as the 1987 models are unknown to me. Many fans of that marque feel their last really great tuners was the MR-80. And also passed over Marantz, as by 1987 they were not making anything memorable in the tuner area.
I've attached the 1987 Audio FM Tuners listings to the message, have a look at them! Another company I passed over was McIntosh, as the 1987 models are unknown to me. Many fans of that marque feel their last really great tuners was the MR-80. And also passed over Marantz, as by 1987 they were not making anything memorable in the tuner area.
The units from companies that really invested in FM Tuners, like Accuphase, Carver, Denon, Harman Kardon, Hitachi, JVC, Kenwood, Luxman, Onkyo, Pioneer, Revox, Sansui, Sony, Sumo, Tandberg, and Yamaha show the state of art for tuners in 1987.
You left Technics out.
The Denon TU-800 has a really nicely implemented PLL detector. If you have not looked it, you may be interested to see how it was done.
Accuphase used pulse count detectors on many of their tuners for a long run. They got it right. As before, the ratio detector is hard to beat, Sansui used one on the TU-X1. Hard to criticize that model, felt by many to be one of the best FM tuners ever made.
Accuphase used pulse count detectors on many of their tuners for a long run. They got it right. As before, the ratio detector is hard to beat, Sansui used one on the TU-X1. Hard to criticize that model, felt by many to be one of the best FM tuners ever made.
Spec-chaser, that's a new one and a good way to run away from a topic. Yes you designed a tuner but how good is it?
I've asked the other fellow whose on the same boat, same thing no response as to what FM stereo generator he used to design his pulse count and phase lock loop discriminators. Garbage in garbage out, that's how I look at it.
If you designed a tuner with say an ST-1000A (which some people pay too much money), there is no way you can achieve THD <0.01% and S/N better than 80dB. You get worse performance when using 99% of the FM generators from HP and Rhode and Schwarz which are mostly geared towards communications application.
Specs are boring to some so I'll stop right here
I've asked the other fellow whose on the same boat, same thing no response as to what FM stereo generator he used to design his pulse count and phase lock loop discriminators. Garbage in garbage out, that's how I look at it.
If you designed a tuner with say an ST-1000A (which some people pay too much money), there is no way you can achieve THD <0.01% and S/N better than 80dB. You get worse performance when using 99% of the FM generators from HP and Rhode and Schwarz which are mostly geared towards communications application.
Specs are boring to some so I'll stop right here
You can't say what the distortion signature is unless you observe it (first hand) in the frequency domain. I've seen tuners with poor ceramic filters that had horrible upper frequency harmonics. You get this effect in a digital tuned tuner as there is no super fine tuning (on most) like the old analog tuners.
They put the IF at 10.70, but the filters may be at 10.74 or 10.67.
Agree with previous comments in FM signal generators. Most HP/Agilent, etc don't have the flat group delay bandwidth or linearization in the FM modulation circuit to be useful for aligning the better FM tuners. I use the Panasonic VP-8122, ST-1020A, and Meguro unit for my tests. Sine generation by HP339A, FFT via HP3562A and Ono Sokki CF-6400. Plus lots of other gear. Test gear is basically my main business, has been for over 30 years.
OK, people who deal in theory meet others who deal in the real world. Who actually test large volumes of FM tuners, versus those who built "one" and read some "reviews".
Sure, they specified 10.7 MHz, they all do. And that's what they bought, 10.7 MHz ceramic filters. Good luck with that.
The manufacturer's spec (ahem!) allowed them to be +/- 30 kHz, and in some production runs, they were ALL at the edges of the spec, or worse.
That's because some companies payed triple or more to get the ones dead on at 10.70, and everyone got the leftovers. It happens, welcome to economics in electronics.
When I buy unsorted ceramics filters, I have to buy 10 or even 20 to get 1 dead on frequency with perfect shape. That's why I buy and test large volumes, from sources I know are not pre-screened. Many have reported buying filters where out of 50, every one was one the edge of the spec.
Yep, specify 10.70, "done", what's the problem?
I've seen the spec edge filter problem too. Add to that I now live in a 30C climate, so temperature coefficient drags the filters and crystals off.
I don't remember details of our test equipment after 30 years, but GEC used to have anything worthwhile in the HP, Tektronix and R&S catalogues back then. Japanese audio test equipment was never marketed in the UK
I don't remember details of our test equipment after 30 years, but GEC used to have anything worthwhile in the HP, Tektronix and R&S catalogues back then. Japanese audio test equipment was never marketed in the UK
I think you will find that in some cases the FM transmitter may be (deliberately) off-channel by a similar amount. This certainly happened in Europe. If the offset was 50kHz it would be mentioned in public; if less than this then most people would not know.BFNY said:
No good having a perfect tuner, perfectly aligned with lots of expensive test gear which can't cope with the real world. As I said originally, OK for a lab.
The Tandberg tuners really were quite excellent, and even won prizes for their quality. Unfortunately Tandberg did not make many tuners only,- they were mostly oncorporated in their receivers.....
- So - that's all welll, - but soon to be extinct....... at the price of b#@*@ DAB.....
for music broadcast, maybe network broadcast with a good DAC... ????
- So - that's all welll, - but soon to be extinct....... at the price of b#@*@ DAB.....
for music broadcast, maybe network broadcast with a good DAC... ????
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