jat@mitre.org (Jim Teunas) (02/25/91)
I am looking to buy a Tuner....I live about 60 miles outside of Boston in the hills of New Hampshire so i have both the problem of many stations on top of each other and a low signal level... I like to listen to some low power stations ( college stations etc) so that is another requirement.. I am considering the Onyko (?) 9090 II and the Carver TX 11b.. both mail order for around ~$600. Any one have any comments on these two or other recomendations???? Also any recomendations for an antenna to use with it????? Thank You! Jim Teunas Email: jat@mbunix.mitre.org Twisted Pair: (617) 271 - 6489 Why does everything seem to be NP-Complete?
tao@speech1.cs.cmu.edu (Sammy Tao) (03/06/91)
In article <9746@uwm.edu>, jat@mitre.org (Jim Teunas) writes: > I am looking to buy a Tuner....I live about 60 miles outside of Boston > in the hills of New Hampshire so i have both the problem of > many stations on top of each other and a low signal level... > I like to listen to some low power stations ( college stations etc) > so that is another requirement.. I am considering the > Onyko (?) 9090 II and the Carver TX 11b.. both mail order for > around ~$600. Have you looked at tuners from Magnum-Dynalab? It sounds nice and is sensitive, too. (Sounds like a bad blind-date description, eh?) The FT-11 probably runs around $600 and the FT101A is around $800. I had a Carver TX11 for a week, but a guy I knew broke down and sold me his M-D 101. The Carver was a good tuner by itself, but the "Asymmetrical Charged Coupled Detector" and "Multipath Reduction" had the effect of variable high-blend. It wasn't discreet, either; it sounded blatantly converging toward mono. When the signal got really weak, sometimes I could have something listenable with both ckts switched in the Carver, but I couldn't with the MD in mono. With normal strength signals and all settings the same on both tuners, I had trouble distinguishing the two apart. Bear in mind that I was using either a 2' wire or the power cord as the antenna, though. Sammy P.S. I heard that MD's Signal Sleuth is a pretty awesome booster for weak signals. Also, an engineer at MD told me, "Basically, the worse the signal quality, the better the Sleuth can do. If you have decent signals (i.e. strong, no multipath), it may not have a dramatic effect." +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Sammy Tao, Dept of ECE |email: Sammy.Tao@speech1.cs.cmu.edu| ^G if | |Carnegie Mellon University|NeXT mail: tao@fechner.cs.cmu.edu | I'm an | |Pittsburgh, PA 15213 |"A straight mentirosa..." | Aggie! | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
sundinKC@dna.lth.se (Anders Sundin) (03/08/91)
In article <9746@uwm.edu>, jat@mitre.org (Jim Teunas) writes: > I am looking to buy a Tuner....I live about 60 miles outside of Boston > in the hills of New Hampshire so i have both the problem of > many stations on top of each other and a low signal level... > I like to listen to some low power stations ( college stations etc) > so that is another requirement.. I am considering the > Onyko (?) 9090 II and the Carver TX 11b.. both mail order for > around ~$600. My recommendation is a Yamaha TX-930. It has specs (independently tested) as good as or better than anything on the market, including the very good Onkyo you mention. It also has a remote (very nice on a tuner IMO) and two separate antenna inputs. Furthermore it is quite a bit cheaper (example: 339 $ at New York Wholesale) than the tuners you mention or Yamahas top-of-the line TX2000 (also _very_ good). IMHO the Yamaha TX-930 is about as good as any tuner in existance, and capable of VASTLY better performance than what is usually transmitted in the first place. The problems you allude to will not go away by buying a more expensive tuner, the way to go is to see to that the tuner gets a good signal to start with. With this class of tuners, I don't think I'm being very controversial if I claim that they are signal limited. The two antenna inputs come in handy here. The most simple setup is to attach a dipole to each input, mounted perpendicular to each other. Switch between the antennas to get the signal which has the best combination of signal strength and lack of interference. The optimum might be to have two outdoor antennas, one omnidirectional, and another highly directional/high gain antenna mounted on a rotor. Then you could use the omnidirectional to scan the programming, and when you have decided what you want to listen to, you could switch to the directional antenna and, if necessary, redirect it to an optimal orientation. Given that the TX-930 saves you almost 300$ you could easily afford this setup, and still stay within budget. Jonas I'm posting this from the account of a friend. Please direct any E-mail to: OK3JONAS@SELDC52.BITNET ok3jonas@gemini.ldc.se -- Anders Sundin e-mail: sundinKC@dna.lth.se Organic Chemistry 2, ok2aps@seldc52.bitnet P.O. Box 124 phone: +46 46 108214 S-22100 Lund, Sweden fax: +46 46 108209
wlm@uunet.UU.NET (Bill Moran) (03/08/91)
I am also looking for a tuner, and my dealer loaned me both the Magnum Dynalab (11) and a tuner made by folks called Musical Fidelity (T1). Apparently they are a well known UK firm who have just started importing their equipment into the US recently (since the start of 91). My dealer was raving about this tuner claiming that it sounded much more musical than any other tuner for less than $2k. I have both hooked up to a Terk Pi^2, and they both sound very good. I would have to agree that the Musical Fidelity sounds better. It's very strange, but the Magnum Dynalab is also much louder. I wouldn't say that either is amazing at getting weak stations, although both are excellent; I've been sort of surprised that sometimes one will get a particular station much better. Anyway, it might be worth the time to listen to the Musical Fidelity; for what it's worth, I'm not sure that either is worth $500+. I had a friend look, and in the UK, the Musical Fidelity costs L249 which given the way prices usually work would make its list about $500 rather than $600. Bill Moran