Tuners

Plenty of previous threads to search on. I am very keen to experience satisfying radio reproduction, but have never managed to listen for an hour without noise making me want to swith off.
My normal pattern of behaviour would be to throw money at it e.g. buy a NAT01, and the eliminate the tuner from the problem equation. However, as I've never heard decent radio I won't do it yet.

I think the nat2 replaced the 101. but not sure on that 100%. I'm on the look out for a nat03 and yesterday saw on audio-t online that they were going for £140UKP!!!!!!! I thought this was too good to be true, so phoned both the branches and yes it was too good to be true :-(

As far as I recall the 02 replaced the 101. I'd guess on the 'later is better' principal the 02 would be better but they were at similar price points. If you're looking at a 2nd hand 101 they'd now be 10yrs or more old so would benefit from a recap for the PSU and a check on the tuner head to see if it's drifted.

I've got an 01 and a Ron Smith G17 in the loft (had the same wife aerial outside veto issue) and it sounds fine. I haven't compared it to a smaller aerial outside but I recall a statement that increasing the height of an aerial by 6 ft was equivalent to doubling its gain. Also by moving the aerial outside you lose the reflections, absorptions and interference of all the nearby house bits (joists, cabling in the loft etc). I have a suspicion that unless you're a long way from the transmitter something much smaller (say a circular 5) on the chimney may be better than a G17 in the loft. The other thing to bear in mind is just how tight a squeeze a G17 in the loft area is - I was lucky that our house was facing the right direction - 20degs further north and the aerial simply wouldn't have fitted while pointing in the right direction.

Phil

The 101 certainly had the coolest dial ever. Looked like an electricity meter!

Andrew

Andrew Randle
2B || !2B;
4 ^ = ?;

I am a proud owner of a 101+Snaps, bought it s/h on an add from Hifi-World mag 2 years back. I am very satisfied, it is the best sounding tuner I have had so far (among them are Revox A76, Klein+Hummel FM2002, Sansui TU9900, Yamaha CT7000, Sony ST5000FW and some others).

I rate it even higher than the 02, which I got from a dealer for a weekend demo, and was quite powerful from sound, but lacked freshness and air, somewhat dry. I also compared the 02 to the Quad FM4 and must confess, that I liked the Quad better.

There are rumours in Germany, that former German Naim importers said that there is *very* little gap between NAT01 and NAT101.

regards,
Hartmut from Munich