Conference hips::uk_audioo

    The NAD 4225 is a good tuner; stations that were very noisy on my
    old Technics come through loud and clear.
    
    Although its selectivity and sound quality are good, its sensitivity
    isn't particularly special at 2mV, so a good roof mounted aerial
    is essential - but that's true of any tuner if you want it to work
    at its best. Since the NAD is about 130 notes it doesn't leave much
    in your budget for an aerial, though.
    
    Dave
    
    

    I am looking a tuner which should have more than 7 preset station.
    Any one know the performance and audio quality of the following
    tuners ?
    
    ONKYO T-4500, DENON TU-550, PIONEER F-443 and SONY ST500(222 in
    Singapore).
    
    Thanks/parry

    A kind friend, hearing me mutter about getting a tuner, brought round
    an ancient Sony thing to my flat. It's called an ST-88, is the size
    and shape of a small loudspeaker, and, being encased in wood, looks
    positively antique. I didn't expect much from it.
    
    However I'm very impressed with the actual sound. Real hi-fi off the
    radio - what a pleasure! This thing gives a very rich and detailed
    sound which doesn't sound that bad even against my deck. The only
    thing is that it still sounds radio-ish somehow; sort of a very
    slightly muffled sound.
    
    Can anyone tell me anything about this unit? How would it compare
    against something modern? Is the radio station doing anything to the
    signal that would make it sound muffled? (Like, what's compression?)
    
    
    Rod

I have the flat midi sized version of this tuner,  along with matching amp and 
speakers.

The tuner was offered in both 'flat' and 'upright' versions,  if yours is the model
that I remember,  the dial is large and round?

The tuner suffers from awful selectivity, intermod, spurious rejection etc.. and
is based on very early tuner theory,  I would expect that it is of 1975 vintage.

However,   it was ok for the era,  however you get a lot more bang with a 75 
quid tuner these days.

_Richard

    
    It's always worth getting a decent aerial, as other notes in this
    conference state ad nauseam. 
    
    Compression is where quiet bits of music are automatically boosted to
    make them louder, thus flattening out the dynamic range of the music.
    This is the same effect as you get with cheap, crappy, tape recorders
    that have no record-level control. 
    
    I find it rather annoying, and Radio 1 certainly has a great deal of
    compression applied. It is most obvious when you hear a track that you
    know has a quiet intro. which then suddenly gets louder - the effect of
    the crescendo is removed. Sometimes, on a track which has actual
    silences in it, you can hear the increasing amounts of hiss during the
    silences as the thing doing the compression continually has to boost
    the gain right up and cut it back again.
    
    I think the rationale behind it is to make the sound more "exciting",
    and to improve things for people listening in cars or other noisy
    environments.
    
    
    Trevor

    The aerial with it is one of those long T-shaped things. I can arrange
    it so that there's no obvious hiss or stuff like that. Do things
    continue to improve in a 'hi-fi' manner if you fiddle with it more
    or get a better aerial?
    
    Thanks for the comments.
    
    
    Rod

    re .6.....
    "Do things
    continue to improve in a 'hi-fi' manner if you fiddle with it more
    or get a better aerial?"
    
    Not much, and more than you can imagine, respectively.
    
    Dave