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Old 07-09-2019, 03:52 AM
Charles Charles is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 3,230
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I recently purchased an MR 87. I have always had a "tuner" my most recent prior one being an MR 85. I have been extremely pleased with the MR 87. It is the only tuner that I have liked unequivocally. I use an FM locator site on Google which lists every FM station in my area up to about 70 miles. It pulls in so many stations clearly with beautiful sound that I stopped counting at around 40. An external antenna is critical to FM. I was never impressed by HD preferring analog. Recently there has been a lot of hype about HD and the MR 88 but I would rather have the MR 87, caring nothing for the frill of HD. The most recent advance in FM tuning is the digital signal processing allowing for adjacent and alternate channel selectivity to be very similar (60 and 66 db on the 87 respectively. On the McIntosh MR 80 it was 8 and 90 db in the Narrow mode which is the only audiophile quality mode for this tuner, IMO). Also, the other advance is analog to digital conversion and digital output which only the MR 87 and T-1200 possess. Maybe there are some others, I don't know. No question, the T-1200 is the best but at 3 times the price. Again, the quality of the external antenna is the key to FM quality. HD is IMO irrelevant unless you like MP3 quality audio.

I might mention the MR 80. It is generally referenced as an excellent older/vintage tuner. I owned one for several years and I tried to like it. I found the Super Narrow selectivity to be pretty worthless as it clearly compromised the audio quality. I almost always used the Narrow mode. In addition, it would simply not hold its presets. I'd carefully set the 4 presets and find the stations gone the next day and have to reset it. I sent the unit back to Mac twice to no avail. Also only 4 presets and no remote aside from a cable. The presets were quite odd, being solid hard surface metal. No tuning dial. Finally, I went to an MR 7083 which served my purposes well for many years but truth be known it was a forgettable component though it worked perfectly and was equal or superior to the vaunted MR 80 in every respect except for sound quality which was similar and it had a remote control feature. it certainly pulled in as many stations.

Last edited by Charles; 07-09-2019 at 04:07 AM.
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