Adding extra programs to the Hifi

Today's post is a little different to going into a major addition in part of my stereo system that had remained constant for a good decade or so.

There is a longish history to putting together a hifi system and usually I tried to get matching amplifiers and tuners at least visually if not by manufacture rather than the more commonplace two in one of a "receiver" in North America simply because you requirements of the amplification may be  in excess of you needs of the radio unit aka a "Tuner".

For me that translates as having great stereo FM for services such as BBC Radio Three but not needing a lot of presets and while AM reception is useful I normally use a quality portable for things like TalkSport Radio and the like.

With the first full system a RA313 amplifier was matched to a fairly simple manual tuned tuner  and when that after some sideways moves that didn't quite work out I got a hot rodded Rotel RA820B, I bought the matching RT820L that offered long Wave for Radio 4 but again manually tuned.

One thing that has increasingly come into things is both the closure of many medium wave stations such as local radio stations and newer stations not being on the traditional frequencies and services that covered.

The first thing to say about the Tangent Tuner II is it's quite a bit smaller and has two different wavebands on it.

The first is VHF/FM which first arrived on the scene here in 1955/6 after some experiments around how the signal was modulated and from the late 1960's stereo multiplex transmissions were added.

The other is more recent and that is Digital Audio Broadcasting, usually abbreviated to "Dab" which in reality is VHF Band III and digital broadcasting using two differing coding techniques that was initially launched as an experimental service in 1995 and for which most stations are transmitted on the same frequencies around the country to help boost reception.

From new the first thing it does is scan for all available stations and up to six may be stored as favourites and you can turn the navigate knob to move to the station you wish and press it in select it.

There is a period of change and a good deal of instability around if the VHF/FM service will remain or indeed if both will be replaced by internet streaming at home and on Smartphones while out.

Part of that is around concerns over the technical quality of the signal - some broadcasters are using relatively poor sounding mono - favouring more stations rather than higher fidelity although this model has an output so for better stations you can route the digital signal to a higher quality digital to analogue convertor for the best possible sound which is what I have done using my SMSL SU-9 via a QED Reference series optical connector apart from the traditional RCA line outputs you connect to an amplifier to.

In that way it does cover all bases as today there is very little on the Long and Medium wave A.M. bands that is exclusive in the way that in the era of my childhood you had to listen to Radio Four Long Wave for test match and Radio One on Medium wave only for your chart pop music with fading and whistles from nearby televisions line timebase's affecting reception.

Digital does bring silent backgrounds so you can here the coughing of the audience in a live concert to a silent background and better high frequencies compared to the A.M. and as slowly broadcasters upgrade the sound as Classic FM are planning to do come next January more of its potential will be realized.