[Damon Hill[_2_]]

wrote in :

http://theaudiocritic.com/blog/

H"D Radio FM/AM Digital Tuner
Sony XDR-F1HD

This is a $100 (thats no typo) tuner that blows away the classic
super tuners of McIntosh, Marantz, Sequerra, Accuphase, etc.,
according to FM experts who know more than I do."

He referes to this in depth technical review:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/xdr-f1hd.htm


Got mine last year for about $60 after the $50 rebate from Ibiquity.

The Sony cleaned up my FM reception (multipath) problems with the
stock dipole mounted randomly, apparently thanks to the digital format.
To get my older tuners to work cleanly with the same stations I'd
have to put up a directional outdoor antenna, which I may do
anyway just to see how many long distance stations I can reliably
pull in.

The AM HD radio market in Seattle is virtually non-existant with only
one station (all sports, news and talk). On rare occasions I can
tell that the format does offer a clean stereo signal in AM, although
it's from commercial jingles and has outrageous compression/limiting
effects.

KING-FM offers good classical broadcasting, albeit with variable source
material quality that the Sony tuner reproduces mercilessly. Voice
music, especially large groups, can reproduce more cleanly than I recall
from any other tuner I've owned.

Still not quite as good as a decent CD recording on a high quality
player, but HD Radio obviously offers performance improvements on FM and
could benefit a lot of listeners who have reception problems. I'd like
to hear the performance in a car, to see how it copes with severe
multipath as the vehicle moves.

It's a technological tour de force, that could probably be improved upon
in a serious "audiophile" version for not much more money at
all--assuming someone doesn't tweak the design with a better analog
output stage. Between getting this new tuner and having sold my entire
vinyl record collection during a recent forced move to more modest
housing, I'm now almost totally digital.

Will HD Radio save broadcasting? Well, that remains to be seen, but the
price of trying out the format is pretty reasonable.

--Damon