Midnight Blue, the new FM tuner from 47 Lab

[CBRworm]

Originally Posted by paba

The Sony has best in class RF specs but there are mistakes in the audio output.... see http://www.ham-radio.com/k6sti/xdr-f1hd.htm

/Paba

Reading that review of the Sony, it sounds like it is close to perfect - especially for the price.

[Marlowe]

Yes, the Sony is surprisingly cheap.
I'd like to buy one but this model is not sold in my country.
By the way, the 47 Lab's are also not sold here.

[oshifis]

Is it possible to unsolder the tuner module of the Sony XDR-F1HD (or perhaps buy it separately as a replacement part) and build in a bigger box? I mean I'd use better PSU, RDS display, tube output, ...

[TimboinOz]

Originally Posted by Marlowe

You are right. Radio has been gradually leaving the audio mainstream. Anyway, FM radio is not as "Hi-Fi" as other medias at all.

However, I like turning the knob on the tuner and searching for the channel just right to me, and enjoying the music or talk shows in the low-end quality.

Currently, listening to the digital music is my best choice for sound quality, but the old-fashioned radio programs still catch me. In which, there is something memorable for the early times.

Cheers.

If we take the best possible FM sound as being a live broadcast of a simply miked (simple stereo) acoustic music concert. This typically also requires a large directional antenna driving the tuner hard into full limiting, with a low multi-path signal.

Then, no digital radio system can approach the sound quality of analogue FM at its best. Because all use lossy codecs, DAB and HD are at very low bitrates, to boot.

With the concert example we have no mix-downs, and no copy generations.

If you've never heard simple stereo recordings of acoustic music, and most of you never have*, and if you've never heard such a live broadcast, which is likely, you will have no idea how good FM can be.

Here in Australia this IS still possible, without any dynamic range compression or Eq either, thanks to ABC Classic FM.

SACD is a huge improvement on red-book CD and it was needed.

ALL lossy codecs are audibly inferior to non-lossy types.

Meridian Lossless Packaging is not the only efficient storage lossless codec, even Microshaft has one.

digital has not been the best thing that has happened to music. Digital done right can be excellent.

* most of you listen to a diet of multiply mono-miked pan-potted left through right mix-downs (MMPPM), with added delay and reverb. With much of the individual music tracks recorded without any other musician playing together with them. Multiple mono just is NOT real stereo. And, if you can't see what a travesty of music making - as a joint activity - that you have allowed to develop, that is your problem.

On top of that most of you listen to this stuff, most of the time, through lossy players like Ipods. You are dumbing down your hearing and affectice systems.

Just as the ripples from two stones in a pond will cancel as they cross, think about all the losses, involved in MMPPM, let alone all the copy generations each time a track is added or modified. Hundreds of them.

And they are audible, no matter what the 'digital is perfect' idiots insist, just ask any mix-down engineer.

End of blunt rant.

[kyrie48]

Originally Posted by TimboinOz

If we take the best possible FM sound as being a live broadcast of a simply miked (simple stereo) acoustic music concert. This typically also requires a large directional antenna driving the tuner hard into full limiting, with a low multi-path signal.

Then, no digital radio system can approach the sound quality of analogue FM at its best. Because all use lossy codecs, DAB and HD are at very low bitrates, to boot.

With the concert example we have no mix-downs, and no copy generations.

If you've never heard simple stereo recordings of acoustic music, and most of you never have*, and if you've never heard such a live broadcast, which is likely, you will have no idea how good FM can be.

Here in Australia this IS still possible, without any dynamic range compression or Eq either, thanks to ABC Classic FM.

SACD is a huge improvement on red-book CD and it was needed.

ALL lossy codecs are audibly inferior to non-lossy types.

Meridian Lossless Packaging is not the only efficient storage lossless codec, even Microshaft has one.

digital has not been the best thing that has happened to music. Digital done right can be excellent.

* most of you listen to a diet of multiply mono-miked pan-potted left through right mix-downs (MMPPM), with added delay and reverb. With much of the individual music tracks recorded without any other musician playing together with them. Multiple mono just is NOT real stereo. And, if you can't see what a travesty of music making - as a joint activity - that you have allowed to develop, that is your problem.

On top of that most of you listen to this stuff, most of the time, through lossy players like Ipods. You are dumbing down your hearing and affectice systems.

Just as the ripples from two stones in a pond will cancel as they cross, think about all the losses, involved in MMPPM, let alone all the copy generations each time a track is added or modified. Hundreds of them.

And they are audible, no matter what the 'digital is perfect' idiots insist, just ask any mix-down engineer.

End of blunt rant.

Well......... I AGREE!!

I'll never forget some of the live folk/old world/U.K. ballads and hillbilly music broadcasting throughout these N.C. mountains from NPR stations, back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's!! Being a "poor hick", my system was DQ-10's, a Sony ST-J55 tuner, and Hafler amp/pre... but the FM/music thought that basic system was better than any digital I've heard since it raised it's ugly little head!!