AM/FM/XM tuner?
"Greg Grainger" wrote in message
Now, I have a hankering for a decent-quality tuner for
news, weather, traffic, as well as a few programs that I
liked.
I have in mind a combination unit that does all three -
AM. FM, and XM. There are a very few on the market - the
Polk xrt-12, the Marantz st7001, and the Magnum Dynalab
MD609T or MD606T have been suggested to me. None is
available in any stereo store in the area (Toronto) that
I've been able to find.
While XM may solve the commercial problem, it creates what for me has been
an intolerable sound quality problem.
I'd rather prefer to listen to LPs with all their obvious sonic problems
than even the best-sounding XM channels, and many of the XM channels sound
far worse than the best.
My solution for mobile listening is digital recordings I prepare on my
computer and download to the player.
I find XM to even be marginal to unacceptable even for listening to spoken
word programming. I can't believe that people who complain about the SQ of
high bitrate MP3s can stand to listen to XM, whose highest bitrate is far
worse. Right after introduction XM sounded almost as good as 128 kb MP3s,
and then they more than doubled the number of channels in the same bandwidth
and I've heard maybe added some video.
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