Quote:
Originally Posted by Weirdcuba
I’m just happy that there are folks talking about tuners.
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Mac was in the design stage for an MR 79 which would have combined the MP14 and the MR 80. It had no presets and had Normal Narrow and Super Narrow options. The design was cancelled and the MR 80 produced which had Narrow and Super Narrow. Narrow was "Normal". The goal to me of FM is to be able to advance up the FM dial in .2 increments as opposed to .4 while at the same time maintaining the
all same specs and sound quality. In addition you want to be able to monitor the quality of the signal because the other part to FM is the antenna and the number of stations in your area. It is unwise to have a quality tuner and not have a quality external antenna.
When you look at the MR 85 which I owned for years it had a signal strength indicator and a few other minimally useful features. That was it. It had none of the really desirable features that the 87 possesses. The remarkable thing about the 87 is that when you look at
all the specs they are the same for the adjacent channel as they are for the alternate channel and when you are going up the dial using Seek, the 87 with some exceptions can actually advance in .2 increments, not .4 and the stations are generally clear and free of noise and multipath, and signal strength can be poor, average, good, or high. With my 85, it was basically an excellent alternate channel tuner. On Seek it advanced in increments of .4. On a good FM channel I have never been able to discern much difference in the sound quality between Mac tuners. They uniformly have excellent sound to my ears. I think this is because the audio quality of the sound produced by the station's gear is inferior to the tuner's quality. No tuner can exceed the quality of the station's gear. It's really incredible what Mac has done in almost every part of the audio chain whether it be amplifiers, preamps, sources, etc. Mac has been making tuners for 50 years and these designs have not been lost or forgotten nor has their sound quality. In the MR 87 they seem to have put it all together and created a tuner that can truly advance up the tuning dial in .2 increments with no compromise in sound quality, vary sensitivity and blend, and carefully monitor the quality of the signal.