Malcolm Steward: audio journalist

This article first appeared in Hi-Fi Review in March 1989

Magnum Dynalab FT-11

Having recently had my enthusiasm for FM radio revitalized with the installation of a new aerial array atop my roof. I’ve started taking more notice of the tuners that pass through the editorial offices. Indeed most that arrive are taken home for at least a brief audition — infor­mal or otherwise — and through this some in­teresting facts of FM life are starting to emerge, not all of them loo palatable.

My research thus far, for example, tends to indicate that the number of tuners — at any price — that are truly worth spending good money on are pitifully few. As far as this writer is concerned I would set that figure as being countable on the fingers of one hand if I’m feel­ing inclined toward generosity. At the bottom end of the market there’s the NAD 4225, the only digital-tune model in the bunch; next in line is the Creek — pick any model from the 3040. 3140, T40 family: despite Noel Keywood’s reservations about some aspects of the latest T40′s performance — see the Jan 89 is­sue — I still consider the Creek range to be eminently rewarding to listen to. Having left the £200 price break behind there’s nothing to ex­cite me until the Nairn NAT101 hoves into sight at £698.50! If ever there was a disgusting state of affairs facing potential buyers this has to be a prime contender for major honours in that respect.

What causes me to make such a statement you are well entitled to enquire. The answer is simple: with the exception of those models I’ve just mentioned — and maybe one or two I’ve yet to hear — most of the devices purporting to be FM tuners sound to these ears no better than glorified transistor radios. If you’d like proof simply tune any of these boxes (on the best quality programme you can find then wind the volume knob on your amplifier nearly as far as it will go in a clockwise direction: would you de­scribe what you are now hearing as “high fidel­ity”? Any listener who possesses a modicum of discernment will be hard pressed to answer in the affirmative.

Quite why this situation exists is a mystery to me. There’s a huge resource of music of all kinds floating about in the ether that can be tapped at will for very little cost: once you have invested in a tuner and an aerial it’s yours for the taking. Surely that’s an offer most might hardly be able to refuse, so why do most hi-fi companies produce such mediocre equip­ment with which one can tap into this abun­dant vein?

Leaving the philosophical considerations for those interested in such to debate, let’s take a look at two tuners from a company who do lake a serious view of FM reception: such is their interest in the medium that they produce nothing else;, no amps, no speakers, no cables, just FM tuners and associated ancillaries. The company in question — Magnum Dynalab — is an American concern whose products are being imported into the UK by Welsh-based electronics manufacturers Ion Systems.

The devices under consideration in this is­sue are the FT-ll tuner £450), the FT-101 tuner (£650), and the F-205 Signal Sleuth aeri­al amplifier (£220 — see In Brief).

Both the tuners boast digital displays to show the tuned frequency but in both cases tuning is accomplished by the preferable ana­logue method. I say ‘preferable’ because ana­logue tuning pays useful dividends to the user in some instances: digitally synthesised tuners tune in fixed steps, going from one frequency to the next in fixed increments, which is fine if these coincide exactly with the precise fre­quency that gives the best stereo reception for the station one wishes to listen to. This method, while being convenient most of the time, does not allow for fine tuning when a station is slight­ly off-track. This situation often arises with com­munity radio stations: one frequently gets the quietest reception of these when the tuner is set slightly to one side of the station’s adver­tised frequency — the Magnums will allow this kind of detuning to be accomplished easily whereas a digital tuner will not, meaning that reception will be compromised. Analogue tun­ers also make it easier to avoid interference caused by two stations transmitting on closely adjacent frequencies, again by allowing the lis­tener to bias tuning away from the interfering station. This facility will not be important to all listeners — contributor Peter Turner, for exa­mple, never strays from BBC Radio 3 — but once one has experienced good radio recep­tion the temptation to seek out a variety of sta­tions often becomes irresistible: finding one that seems to broadcast the kind of material that interests you. then discovering that it is be­ing swamped by a more powerful signal from elsewhere can be infuriating to say the least. This occurred during my time with the Mag­nums: I found a local station using a low-pow­ered transmitter whose broadcasts were all but being drowned by BBC Radio 1. The facility for tuning down the scale by a minute degree al­lowed me to receive the local station without too much compromise to sound quality.

I listened to the tuners through my regular Nairn 250 powered active SBL system, and had both Creek and Nairn (NAT101] luners on hand for comparison. Signal was provided by a root-mounted, three element aerial feeding through a low-loss coax downlead with sol­dered connections for maximum signal stren­gth. I also used an omnidirectional whip-type aerial (type Magnum ST-5) lor reception of lo­cal stations where the roof aerial’s directivity precluded their receptbn, Although Magnum recommend just a five minute warm up time for their tuners, I decided that in the interests of fairness I would allow them to warm up for a week before serious listening was attempted: whether this is truly necessary or desira­ble is not the question, my Nairn NAT 101 is never switched off and a prolonged period of being powered up put the tuners under lest on an equal fooling with that with which they were being asked to compete.

The less expensive FT-11 was the first to be auditioned. This model is, in effect, a pared down version of the FT-101 taut offers none­theless the convenience of three, push-button selected pre-sets along with ‘regular’ manual tuning. Also gracing its slim and pleasantly bus­iness-like fascia is a power on/off button with two more providing mono/stereo switching and selectable inter-station output muting. A stereo indicator light, and centre tune meter and RF signal strength meter, which flank the frequency display complete the line-up. As I’ve intimated, the tuner is a visually elegant design, its looks marred, for me at least, only by the top panel fixing screws which protrude somewhat noticeably: the like-proportioned Signal Sleuth aerial amplifier is housed in a similar case but one which avoids this unsightly aspect. A re­movable top-plate might conceivably be a ne­cessity but an alternative method of securing it ought to be found.

Internal arrangements are neater and the tuner feels good to use. Manual tuning is per­formed by means of a rotary flywheel control — which operates with a silky, well weighted feel — which provides the control voltage for the tuning varactors. Presets are tuned (without any intrusion inside the tuner) by means of a supplied miniature gold-plated screwdriver, which is used to turn a potentiometer acces­sed through a small hole next to each preset button. Spec-wise the most important figure one needs to be concerned with is the amount of signal the tuner requires to get it into full 50dB quieting: the Magnum should manage this with 27.5uV As my aerial gives more than 100 limes this amount for most stations I felt assured that the tuner would give of its best. The tuner’s front end is a three-stage MOSFET design claimed to offer a highly respectable S/N ratio and low noise characteristics.

I began by connecting up the Creek. Mag­num and Nairn tuners to the three line level in­puts of my Nairn 62 prearnp so that fast switch­ing between them would be possible, enabling immediate comparisons to be made. All that in­terrupted listening was swapping the aerial feed from one to the next, an operation that took but a matter ol seconds. Programme ma­terial was a selection of Radio 3 for high quality music. Radio 4 and LBC for speech, and either GLR for a not very good popular music signal, or Capital for really plumbing the depths of poor quality signals.

An LBC interview with film makers Derek Jarman and James Dearden proved an inter­esting first selection. The Creek established a fair baseline performance with its clear, articu­late rendition of voices and some sense of the studio environment corning though. The Mag­num FT-11 opened out the voices more, imbu­ing them with greater clarity, more breath sounds, more character and naturalness. There was still some element of two-dimen­sionality about the voices but the FT-11 im­proved greatly over the Creek’s performance; the voices were starting to ‘come to life’ far more, and there was now an enhanced im­pression of the studio ambience. Moving up to the Nairn NAT 101 brought even mote tangibili­ty to the speakers: had you passed the listen­ing room it would have been this performance which made you wonder if it was a broadcast you were hearing or two ‘real’ people having a discussion within the room. The voices were richer still in timbre, had greater depth, and even more detail was being revealed. Micro- phone pops, creaking chairs and other inci­dental noises were brought into sharper focus and became more readily identifiable: instead of their being just ‘noises’ one could now attrib­ute them to some definite cause.

Radio 3 was putting out some captivating programme material during this test. I tuned into a delightful violin concerto which arrested my attention as I scanned past it with the Creek. Turning up the volume to better appre­ciate it I found that the Creek was souring the string tone at high levels, and that it tended to throw a thin veil over the orchestra, partially ob­scuring what the players were doing in detail. Dynamically it sounded a mite restrained lend­ing the sound overall a character that was smooth and pleasant while ultimately less in­formative than one would wish for (although given its price such criticism is churlish). Switching to the Magnum brought better dy­namics — both overall and internal — into the picture. String tone became far more life-like with no sense of the soloist obscuring the con­tributions of the rest of the orchestra as had been the case. The sound in general expan­ded, sounding both larger and freer, less re­strained. The music also started to flow more freely, the Magnurn making the Creek sound pedestrian and stilted by comparison. The Nairn tuner exhibited a greater sense of control on climaxes than the Magnum: despite being forcefully bowed the strings never threatened to become piercing or too astringent, yet the power behind their playing was never in ques­tion

Later in the afternoon the station chose to play quite the noisiest LP of a piano sonata I’ve heard in a long time. How the tuners coped with this was enlightening. Through the Creek the piano seemed to fall behind an almost im­penetrable wall of surface noise and hiss. The Magnum brought the piano out of the mire but changed the character of the noise making it appear ‘sharper’ and still intrusive. The Nairn gave the best piano sound of the three and fur­ther softened the hiss, making it more tape-like: it didn’t eliminate it (something would be amiss if it did) but it didn’t allow it to intrude as much as the others had.

Over on the popular music front Capital Ra­dio was pumping out its usual quota of dross. Faced with this the Creek started to sound much more like a tuner — ‘cloudy’, not particu­larly dynamic, and rather monotonous and uninviting. I know that the signal is the main cause of blame for this but the other tuners made more of this admittedly poor signal. The Magnum gave a better insight into the music allowing the listener to hear more of what was on the original record/CD. Vocals, in particular, became more intelligible and clearer, and what had been a rather boomy bass on the Creek sounded tauter and drier on the FT-11. The overall sound was powerful and more dynamic but the Magnum did seem to have a trace of thinness about its midband. Prolonged listening required a lowering of the system volume to temper what was becoming a penetrating to­nality, The Nairn scored its biggest triumph with this signal, showing both tuners a clean pair of heels. Even when played loud the sound never became oppressive, and the music was by far the most detailed, dynamic, expressive and enjoyable I heard from this station.

So in terms of sound quality the Magnurn FT-11 acquitted itself well. It should have clear­ly bettered the Creek, which it did without problems, and I would not have expected it to worry the more expensive (by over £200) Nairn NAT 101, which it didn’t. The tuner fa­vours better programme material but one can hardly criticize it too harshly for that. Despite its overall rather ‘lean’ sonic character it avoids sounding like a conventional tuner and as such deserves praise.

Its dearer, big brother, the FT-101, was next to be put through its paces. This is, externally, a much more macho looking animal, its taller fas­cia panel playing host to a small bank of toggle switches, a large rotary tuning control, digital display panel, and three illuminated meters. Taking these in order from left, one first alights upon the toggle switch for power on/off. Next to this is a vertical array of four similar switches which, from top to bottom, are the mono/stereo selector, wide/narrow IF bandwidth control. AFC on/off, and inter-station rnute on/off. The first meter indicates the presence and strength of multipath signals, the second is a centre tune indicator, and the third and last is a cali­brated signal strength meter. Finally there is a rotary tuning knob which like the FT-11′s is beautifully weighted and makes fine tuning very easy to perform accurately. Fast scanning from one end of the scale to the other can also be easily accomplished.

The tuner features two sets of outputs, one ‘high’ level and one low’ level The Magnum’s ‘low’ output is generous enough to drive most line level pre-amp stages quite easily and this was the one I used for the listening tests. Use of the high level output might prove problemat­ic with some pre-amps by causing the signal to bleed through into other inputs when the tuner is switched on but not in use, so 1 would sug­gest that youcheck this with your own amplifier be­fore deciding which output level you intend to use.

The tuner can be remotely tuned with a hand held module (an optional extra at £75) which connects via a long cable to a rear pan­el mounted socket on the FT-101. This gives you the facility of being able to preset six sta­tions which you can then select from your arm­chair — provided that the cable will reach, I elected to be energetic and left the module in its box!

I removed the Creek from the system arid inserted the FT-101 in its place, interested to see how it would compare to the FT-11 and whether it could topple the Nairn 101 from its perch. In view of the nearness of its price to that of the similarly numbered Nairn one has every right to expect that their performance levels should be reasonably comparable: i.e. it should be roughly on a par with the Nairn and equally as superior to the FT-11.

Comparing the two Magnums on an LBC phone-in show, I noticed straightaway that the FT-101 imparted more character and richness to the voices from the studio. Sibilants were still emphasised a little too much but the FT-101 was better in this respect than its cheaper stablemate. Voices were more detailed and displayed more in the way of breathing and mouth noises which enhanced their realism. But overall I didn’t consider these differences alone sufficient to justify the asking price. In an immediate A/B comparison you would pick up on them, but that’s not the way one listens to hi-fi in normal circumstances. Putting on the Nairn 101 (all these 101′s gel confusing do they not?) brought about the kind of change that one could describe as noticeable under any circumstances. The voices now had an al­most palpable quality being graced with a nat­ural warmth and depth that really brought them to life

Switching to GLR brought forth tracks from Thin Lizzy and The Eagles which the FT-11 presented with a keen vigour that verged on brightness. At modest levels the FT-101 had the same character but brought the music into slightly sharper focus and kept it under tighter control. The sound was still punchy and dy­namic but distorted guitars mixing it with insis­tent cymbal figures didn’t become aggressive although aggressively played, But in the ‘how loud can you play it?’ stakes the Nairn NAT 101 still won the day, never sounding less than composed and completely in control. The ranking here would be the FT-11 in second place — a little bright although still exhibiting good bass weight — and the FT-101 surpris­ingly in third place — at high volumes it tended to harden and sound rather strained and gritty at the top end.

On belter quality programmes other differ­ences emerged between the two Magnums. A Radio 3 broadcast of music interspersed with discussion had rne preferring the FT-101 over the FT-11. It had a colder, more analytical sound but presented the music with greater definition — a pianist’s phrasing and dynamic attitude was more clearly appreciated through the dearer tuner. For example, the varying force of the instrument’s hammer strikes could be more easily discerned. However, this should not be seen as condemning the per­formance ol the FT-11 which still provided re­warding listening. Ultimately though the Naim NAT 101 still proved the best of the bunch with neither of the Magnum tuners being able to close the gap.

So, at the end ot a long and arduous session I had to formulate some kind of conclusion about the Magnum FT-11 and FT-101. Both strike me as being much better than average and if you’re looking to spend more than the cost of a Creek but your finances won’t stretch to a Naim they merit your serious considera­tion. Or, for me at least, the FT-11 does. On bal­ance I feel that the extra money spent on the FT-101 will not buy you appreciably better sound quality. But one has to remember that I am fortunate in living in a good reception area, relatively close to a transmitter and I am not surrounded by tall buildings etc. Were my cir­cumstances less favourable I might have reached a different conclusion (it’s worth re­membering that these tuners were designed for the American market where reception con­ditions are very different and a lot more crowd­ed than here in the UK). There is also the con­sideration that the tuner I would recommend for those wishing 10 spend over £650 might not offer what they want in the way of facilities: while I feel that the Naim NAT101 offers the very best in sound quality it does not afford the user the facility for any input other than tuning to the required station. If you wish to be able to select IF bandwidth, switch AFC and muting in or out. and want meters to help you tune to the best signal then you might feel happier with the FT-101. I’ll finish this report then with the ear­nest recommendation that if you are spending this kind of money on a tuner that you a) get yourself a properly installed and aligned aerial, and b) insist on being able to hear the tuner at home or at least be able to get your money back if it proves unsuitable once installed.