Will my vintage Mcintosh tuner wind up being a paper weight

[taters]

I keep reading in the near future F.m. Radio will be going away and I am wondering if I should sell my vintage tuner before it becomes a paper weight. I know people collect vintage Mcintosh gear. The question is will anyone want it when F.M. Radio disappears?

[W9TR]

It depends on where you live. In Europe, countries are slowly moving to a digital system that is not backward compatible with analog FM. I believe Norway will be the first to discontinue analog fm broadcasts sometime in 2017.

In the US, there are no plans to shut down the existing analog FM stations.

The new "in band on channel" or IBOC systems could take over, however. These are sometimes called HD Radio, the HD standing for hybrid digital, not high definition. As the HD injection percentages increase the resulting interference to analog fm could make it unlistenable.

This is already happening, so buying a vintage tube FM tuner like a Mcintosh MR 65 or Marantz 10B is a crapshoot depending on where you live and what you are listening to. These older tuners don't have post-detection filters that are needed to eliminate the HD radio self noise. So you get a lot of noise in stereo, even on strong signals. To eliminate this noise, you have to run these tuners in mono.

The FM radio business in the US is not healthy right now due to massive debt loads taken on by companies like Clear Channel after the consolidation boom fueled by the telecommunications act of 1996. They have eliminated all the local talent and gone to country wide homogenous programming. They are not even investing in that.

But the good news in this somewhat bleak scenario is that for about $50,000 in power cost per year you can reach millions of people. Receivers are cheap and plentiful.

So I guess it all depends on your timeline - I am very comfortable buying and maintaining high end FM tuners for the next 10 to 20 years.

I live in a market that has some of the best sounding public radio outlets in the country - Minnesota Public Radio alone has three carriers 89.3, 91.1, and 99.5 MHz that carry unique programming; alternative, news, and classical respectively.

[Masterlu]

Tom... all good info, thanks!

[cleeds]

W9TR's observations are pretty much spot on. I don't see iBiquity's IBOC ("HD Radio") technology holding much promise, and some stations have discontinued the service. It doesn't work at all in fringe areas - the IBOC signal is at greatly reduced power - and a tuner's tendency to switch between "HD" and standard FM in moving vehicles can be very annoying. (Many who cite improved quality with HD do so by comparing the signal to the FM signal in an HD tuner or receiver, and those units often have compromised standard FM sections.) Broadcasters haven't invested much in programming for HD, and listeners don't seem to be embracing the technology much, either ... as evidenced by ratings. So I think "HD" is pretty much a technology that will likely fade away.

As W9TR noted, there are no plans to discontinue FM service in the US. Its widely installed base of receivers, including in cars, means a transfer to digital is more complicated than it was for television. So I agree that FM will be around for a long, long time in the US.

[tweet]

Tom,
Good info and very interesting. I live in an area where country music is king and shutting down the popular FM stations in Knoxville or Nashville would lead to all out anarchy. Tennessee is fortunate to be music oriented at its core so we have some good FM for any genre you enjoy. I listen to my MR88 daily and thoroughly enjoy it. I can't imagine FM going away anytime soon.

[JGM411]

Didn't "they" say that about AM radio about thirty years ago?

[Kal Rubinson]

Originally Posted by W9TR

In the US, there are no plans to shut down the existing analog FM stations.

Mebbe but there are fewer and fewer worth listening to. In NYC, there's only one nominally classical station and its programming has deteriorated. When we renovated the main room and I reinstalled the system early this year, the FM tuner was not reinstalled because it had not been used in a few years. (Same for the turntable but that's another issue.)

At my CT house, too, there is only one classical station that I can receive (although I can get it from two different frequencies/outlets) but the sound quality is poor and the programming unexciting. As a result, I have not taken my FM tuner out of the closet in years and never bothered trying out the radio facilities of the many AVRs/prepros that I have auditioned here.

So, fwiw, I have two nice tuners lying fallow.

[Still-One]

Tom
That is a nice write up. Thanks.

I agree that it is unlikely that FM will disappear soon but I don't understand your position that it will be more difficult to transition from than going to digital TV.

As for myself I don't listen to music stations in the car let alone at home.

[jdandy]

Despite some having no interest in terrestrial broadcasts on AM/FM radio waves, I find listening to radio enjoyable. Living in a rural area of north Florida isn't exactly the best place for a wide selection of stations but using high quality tuners and external outside antennas I am able to enjoy quality signals from stations that broadcast as far away as 60 miles on the FM band, and occasionally as far as 100 miles on the AM band. Most of my listening is done in the evening except when I am in the vehicle. I routinely find quality jazz programming and even alternative, pop, and oldies music that sounds very good. For me, a tuner is an essential source component and has always been included in every sound system I assembled. Long live FM.

[62caddy]

Originally Posted by jdandy

Despite some having no interest in terrestrial broadcasts on AM/FM radio waves, I find listening to radio enjoyable. Living in a rural area of north Florida isn't exactly the best place for a wide selection of stations but using high quality tuners and external outside antennas I am able to enjoy quality signals from stations that broadcast as far away as 60 miles on the FM band, and occasionally as far as 100 miles on the AM band. Most of my listening is done in the evening except when I am in the vehicle. I routinely find quality jazz programming and even alternative, pop, and oldies music that sounds very good. For me, a tuner is an essential source component and has always been included in every sound system I assembled. Long live FM.

In all honesty, I listen to FM far more often than I spin vinyl nowadays.