New MR89 Tuner

[Charles]

Originally Posted by dkorbal

Per a quote from j3brow on another thread.

'They wanted to keep the dial but couldn’t. The company that made the analog dial, stopped making them. This info is from a McIntosh employee, Kenneth Zelin. I think we all agree the dial is beautiful."

Personal for me it's a lot of money to spend on fm radio especially if you have access to other conduits (iradio, internet radio, tidal, roon) for radio.

This makes a lot of sense. There is no price difference between the MR87 and MR89. The sonic difference would be minimal if any. For me I like the analog tuning dial infinitely better.

Best

Charles

[Maks]

I was figuring that Mc couldn't get that "analog" display anymore, that's a bummer. That aside, part of the draw for me on the MR88 was the XM and HD support and we can all have our opinions about those formats. Maybe it's easy for me to say this since I already own the 88, but if I was still using just my MR74, I think I would pass on the 89 despite the DSP and new features. I don't know that the 87 would even interest me unless I picked it up second hand. Like I said though, I'm still glad Mc is in the tuner game.

[Vintage Pete]

Originally Posted by Maks

I was figuring that Mc couldn't get that "analog" display anymore, that's a bummer. That aside, part of the draw for me on the MR88 was the XM and HD support and we can all have our opinions about those formats. Maybe it's easy for me to say this since I already own the 88, but if I was still using just my MR74, I think I would pass on the 89 despite the DSP and new features. I don't know that the 87 would even interest me unless I picked it up second hand. Like I said though, I'm still glad Mc is in the tuner game.

I don't know why it would be that difficult for them to find another supplier to make the dial glass? I would think whoever screened the glass for them on the MR87/88 wasn't the same vendor who made the older ones (MR74, 77, 78, etc). I could be wrong.

[BrotherMethias]

Will this tuner be able to filter HDRadio self noise? In chicago we have a great classical station WFMT but it has a ton of self noise. Only way around it is to have an hdradio tuner with a ‘force analog’ option. Strings especially sound ‘tinny’ on hdradio, like you put an empty soup can over your ears..

[prepress]

Originally Posted by Charles

This makes a lot of sense. There is no price difference between the MR87 and MR89. The sonic difference would be minimal if any. For me I like the analog tuning dial infinitely better.

Best

Charles

I noticed the pricing as well. I would have thought that the meters would add to the cost, but I guess not in this case.

[clpetersen]

Elsewhere on this forum is a discussion of the HifiRose, which has a 15" wide display - on their website is a simulation of an analog FM dial. But I will bet the up front capital for a complete custom display development is daunting.

[Charles]

Looking at the specs of the MR89, they are significantly improved over the MR87. I truly wish I listened to FM and was into FM, but I'm not. This would not change, so the MR89 after the newness wore off would be a Christmas season tuner. For some reason I love tuners. I don't know why. Maybe I'll buy one anyway. I could put my MR87 for sale at a reasonable price. Maybe the MR89 would be in by Christmas season. It truly is a lovely unit. Everything Mac puts out is eye candy to me. Hard to resist. I'm getting a refund on my amp stands. I've completely lost interest in them. This is a beautiful, gorgeous tuner, hard to resist. RESIST! RESIST! RESIST!

Best

Charles

p.s. Why did they have to come out with this beautiful tuner with all those wonderful specs? And I recently put up a new antenna. RESIST! RESIST!

[Vintage Pete]

Originally Posted by Charles

Looking at the specs of the MR89, they are significantly improved over the MR87. I truly wish I listened to FM and was into FM, but I'm not. This would not change, so the MR89 after the newness wore off would be a Christmas season tuner. For some reason I love tuners. I don't know why. Maybe I'll buy one anyway. I could put my MR87 for sale at a reasonable price. Maybe the MR89 would be in by Christmas season. It truly is a lovely unit. Everything Mac puts out is eye candy to me. Hard to resist. I'm getting a refund on my amp stands. I've completely lost interest in them. This is a beautiful, gorgeous tuner, hard to resist. RESIST! RESIST! RESIST!

Best

Charles

p.s. Why did they have to come out with this beautiful tuner with all those wonderful specs? And I recently put up a new antenna. RESIST! RESIST!

Charles.....something is telling me you won't be resisting for long. Yes, everything they make is eye candy; even the silly light box, as well as this tuner even though I would very much prefer the analog dial and tradition signal strength/tuning meters.

[cleeds]

Originally Posted by BrotherMethias

Will this tuner be able to filter HDRadio self noise? ...

FM reception is so dependent on the antenna and local conditions that it would be difficult to say for sure. A highly selective tuner helps. But even if the self noise can be minimized, "HD" radio still limits you to 120 kbps (at best) on the main channel, and more likely 96 kbps. That's why it's often possible to get better SQ from a station's stream than from its OTA HD signal.

[BrotherMethias]

My understanding is the best sound quality from FM is to use an HDRadio enabled tuner that allows you to force analog mode. I have a bunch of tuners I only use in analog, the only ones that eliminate the HDRadio hiss in analog are HDRadio enabled, a rotel RT 1084 and Sony XD1s that have been customized with a force analog switch. As stated previous, any noise that’s eliminated by switching to mono from stereo is HDRadio self noise. I bought a sansui and a Kenwood with filters that were supposed to help but really didn’t. I wonder if the DSP on the new Mac would work similar to having HDRadio processing to eliminate that noise…