Radio FREE Chicago!

Tonight I caught one of WFMT’s live from the studio concerts. The performance was from a trio consisting of piano, flute, and violin. This interlude convinced me of two things. One, I haven’t been listening to enough classical music lately. Two, I need to stop being lazy and seek out live performances. One measure of inspired live music is worth more than an hour of Pro-tools perfection. I continue to be amazed by the sound quality that our current FM standard is capable of if the broadcaster cares and the person receiving the signal has a good antenna and tuner. I continue to be in love with the Tandberg 3011A. This reminds me that I should listen to the recording that I made off of WXRT that consists of performances from David Gilmour and Roger Waters solo tours. I listened to it at the time of the broadcast and recorded it because I continue to be obsessed with all things concerning “The Floyd." Perhaps at some point I’ll do a shoot out between the Tandberg 3011A and the Sansui TU-217 that currently resides in my bedroom system.

Speaking of Sansui recently I discovered this site that lovingly covers the company’s golden era. It provides high resolution scans of many of the pieces of sales literature that the company produced for it’s products. Also featured on the site are high quality photos for many components. It also provides schematics for many of the products free of charge, which is quite admirable. Anything that demonstrates passion for excellence in audio reproduction is always heartwarming to see.

Radio Free Europe

Originally Written: Wednesday, March 15, 2006


Look what I picked up for free. This is a Tandberg 3011A FM tuner, widely considered to be one of the best sounding analog FM tuners ever made. The preset section doesn't work, but the manual tuning section does! So someone wanted to throw it away! I stepped in and rescued it from the scrap heap, saving it from being cannabilized for parts. I'm sure the old owner will end up buying a mediocre digital tuner and won't even notice the drop in sound quality, that's the sad thing.

Analog tuners are far superior to digital tuners. Why are analog tuner better? Here is a quote from Robert Harley's "Complete Guide to High-end Audio." "Analog tuners have lower noise, and also allow fine-tuning to find the center of a station. Synthesized tuners jump in discrete steps of at least 25kHz, precluding the precise degree of fine-tuning possible with an infinitely variable analog tuner."

In Chicago there is a classical radio station called WFMT and occasionally they will do live broadcasts of performances from their studios. When I have been fortunate enough to catch these performances they have been ear-opening experiences, offering better sound quality than ANY CD or record. Most commercial stations sound mediocre at best. Classical stations are another story. For classical listeners I would recommend going to a pawn shop and finding an older analog tuner. Check out www.fmtunerinfo.com for some guidance about what is worthy of consideration. Then pick up a Fanfare FM-G antenna. For less than $200 one should be able to experience a lot of free music at extremely good sound quality.

So how did the digital tuners get their foot hold in the market place? The mass-market manufactures pushed digital tuners because they were cheaper to manufacture and required less warranty service. People adopted them because of the conveniences that they offered over analog tuners but for shear sound quality nothing beats analog. It's just another example of the dumbing down of our society to the lowest common denominator.

The really sad thing is that with HD radio and it's "near CD quality" the standards of radio are about to sink even lower. Near CD quality? There are those of us who are striving to surpass the quality of CD and even others that believe the term "CD quality" is in itself an oxymoron. One of my favorite stations just started broadcasting in HD radio. I sincerely hope that they continue to keep high standards when it comes to their analog broadcast.