Originally Posted by feinstei
I am a tuner fanatic. I own the Harmon-Kardon Citation IIIx (known in its day for its sensitivity and selectivity) built from a kit, a Marantz 10B in mint condition, the Sequerra One (the successor to the Marantz 10B, both of which were designed by Dick Sequerra), the Sony XDR-F1HD (considered to be one of the best tuners and has HD Radio/IBOC) and the MR-88.
The MR-88 is the best of all of them by a mile... Sensitivity to weak stations, selectivity (the ability to separate a weak distant station from an adjacent strong local station), and most of all, sound quality (I use the unbalanced analogue outputs on the MR-88).
I live in South Bend which means that I am within "DX" (distant station) range of Chicago, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee (across Lake Michigan), and Kalamazoo, all of which have excellent "live" classical and progressive radio stations (notably, WFMT and WXRT Chicago, WAUS Berrien Springs, MI (has a large LP collection), WBLV in Grand Rapids, and WBQR (a low-power classical station in Milwaukee). I have a Winegard FM Yagi (directional) antenna on the roof and use the AM loop antenna provided with the MR-88.
The low-power station in Milwaukee (104.3 FM) is surrounded on both sides by strong local stations. The MR-88 is the only tuner in my collection that can separate and play this station with excellent fidelity due to the sharp DSP variable width filters. WFMT analogue is also a favorite and sounds fabulous on live shows such as the "jazz-folk" show "The Midnight Special" on Saturday nights.
On AM, the MR-88 has a very fine "wide-bandwidth" audio quality similar to the great old vacuum tube AM tuners of the 50's and 60's. I listen to WBBM-AM at 780 kHz in HD-Radio/IBOC sound and it sounds surprisingly decent (a bit tinny, but acceptable). On Saturday nights, KMOX comes in consistently well (in winter, summer reception is too noisy for HD-Radio/IBOC reception) in HD-Radio/IBOC with Johnny Rabbitt's oldies show (the closest thing that radio has to the great rock & roll stations of the 1960's).
There is quite a demand for MR-88's these days due to the fact that it has HD-Radio/IBOC and Sirius XM capabilities which the MR-87 lacks. McIntosh stupidly discontinued the MR-88 allegedly because they couldn't get the chipset for HD-Radio/IBOC any more. This is kind of a bullsh*& excuse since JVC, Sony, and Alpine currently have many models with HD-Radio/IBOC in their lineup. All it would have taken would have been a redesign on one circuit board to change the HD-Radio/IBOC chipset to the currently available model. No effect on analogue sound quality or reception ability would have happened. They seem to be charging the same rip-off price for the MR-87 as they did for the MR-88.
Anyone looking for a McIntosh tuner which is superior in every way to the great McIntosh vacuum tube tuners of the past should search out the MR-88. I bought mine for about $1000 although I believe that the current market price is in the high-2000's these days. I wouldn't bother with the MR-87. HD-Radio/IBOC is all part of the fun of radio reception these days.
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