Nick_G
Well-Known Member
I bought one of these rare tuners a few days ago and it arrived today so I hooked it up and did some tuning around with it. First impressions:
It is in absolutely mint condition and came with some decent-looking audio cables.
It looks gorgeous with the gloss finish on the front and wood side-panels.
It has many useful features for a tuner nut including a rotary tuning knob, two FM aerial sockets, a signal strength display in dB femtowatts, high sensitivity/selectivity specs, fine-tuning in 10 kHz steps, and 5 levels of signal thresholds for automatic tuning from 12 to 50 dB. As this is a Euro version the display is pale blue rather than amber and instead of the 'Elite' badge it says 'Reference Digital Synthesizer Tuner" in a very cursive script.
Well, after fiddling around with it I noticed that signals were spreading more on the upper sidebands than the lower, which is particularly noticeable in Super Narrow. Further investigation using fine tuning on weak signals in Super Narrow showed that minimum distortion occurs about +30 kHz off-centre. So it looks like either the filters aren't matched very well or it needs an alignment. Given the fact that this is a very complex tuner with many adjustments that interact with each other, I'm not that surprised that it is not perfect in this regard. For people who just want to listen to locals it isn't an issue. But for DXers like me who like to hunt for weak signals it is noticeable. Sensitivity is good though. There's also a button marked "SSS" which apparently stands for Spectrum Simulated Stereo which is supposed to make weak mono signals sound like they are in stereo but it just sounds odd to me.
Sound quality is OK but doesn't blow me away. It's a bit like the Kenwood KT-1100SD in this respect, a little bit bland and underwhelming. Possibly this would also improve after a proper alignment. The ultimate selectivity is a smidge down on the Denon TU-800L, although the specs suggest it should be a touch better. On the other hand it is built much more ruggedly than the Denon and looks much more attractive.
Ultimately the Denon TU-800L, which cost about 1/13th of this Pioneer, is a better performer! That was a really lucky fluke of a bargain.
Regards,
Nick
It is in absolutely mint condition and came with some decent-looking audio cables.
It looks gorgeous with the gloss finish on the front and wood side-panels.
It has many useful features for a tuner nut including a rotary tuning knob, two FM aerial sockets, a signal strength display in dB femtowatts, high sensitivity/selectivity specs, fine-tuning in 10 kHz steps, and 5 levels of signal thresholds for automatic tuning from 12 to 50 dB. As this is a Euro version the display is pale blue rather than amber and instead of the 'Elite' badge it says 'Reference Digital Synthesizer Tuner" in a very cursive script.
Well, after fiddling around with it I noticed that signals were spreading more on the upper sidebands than the lower, which is particularly noticeable in Super Narrow. Further investigation using fine tuning on weak signals in Super Narrow showed that minimum distortion occurs about +30 kHz off-centre. So it looks like either the filters aren't matched very well or it needs an alignment. Given the fact that this is a very complex tuner with many adjustments that interact with each other, I'm not that surprised that it is not perfect in this regard. For people who just want to listen to locals it isn't an issue. But for DXers like me who like to hunt for weak signals it is noticeable. Sensitivity is good though. There's also a button marked "SSS" which apparently stands for Spectrum Simulated Stereo which is supposed to make weak mono signals sound like they are in stereo but it just sounds odd to me.
Sound quality is OK but doesn't blow me away. It's a bit like the Kenwood KT-1100SD in this respect, a little bit bland and underwhelming. Possibly this would also improve after a proper alignment. The ultimate selectivity is a smidge down on the Denon TU-800L, although the specs suggest it should be a touch better. On the other hand it is built much more ruggedly than the Denon and looks much more attractive.
Ultimately the Denon TU-800L, which cost about 1/13th of this Pioneer, is a better performer! That was a really lucky fluke of a bargain.
Regards,
Nick
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