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From: tao@speech1.cs.cmu.edu (Sammy Tao)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.high-end
Subject: Re: High Sensitivity FM Tuners
Message-ID: <9983@uwm.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 91 13:51:02 GMT
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Approved: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
Originator: tjk@csd4.csd.uwm.edu


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."


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   |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 |
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