AM/FM Tuners

jjames
jjames AMX Sustaining Engineer
in AMX General Discussion
Hey all,

What whole house / multi-room purpose AM/FM tuner do you prefer? We've been using Parasound ZTuners for a while, and although the new ZTuner v2 serial is rather easy to work with, the devices themselves are sub-par. We'd like to move up to a decent tuner with pretty decent RS-232 capabilities.

Any ideas?
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  • VLCNCRZR
    VLCNCRZR Senior member
    Tuners

    When it come to 3rd party tuners, we have pretty much standardized
    on the Contemporary Research products for commercial projects.

    They have a wide variety of units available (including HD capable).
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  • DHawthorne
    DHawthorne Junior Member
    It seems like we use a different one each job, but most recently it has been the Marantz ST-7001 (AM/FM/XM). For customers that want Sirius, we are moving towards the SCH-1, which is just a little black box tuner with RS-232 and an audio out.
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  • jjames
    jjames AMX Sustaining Engineer
    Is the SCH-1 only a Sirius tuner or does it do AM/FM as well?
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  • REBUILD_EVENT
    REBUILD_EVENT Junior Member
    NuVo

    We use NuVo Concerto for Multiroom. There is also a double-tuner (T2 Tuner) that we used. Both have RS-232.
    This was my first work, when I started programming Netlinx actually..

    http://www.nuvotechnologies.com/tuners.htm
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  • alexanbo
    alexanbo Junior Member
    We've just started using the Elan DTNR units and they've been working very well for us.
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  • DHawthorne
    DHawthorne Junior Member
    jjames wrote:
    Is the SCH-1 only a Sirius tuner or does it do AM/FM as well?

    It's Sirius only. It also requires some sort of control system - there are absolutely no manual controls on it at all. It is intended as a plug-in to add Sirius to devices that support it, but the interface is RS-232, which opens the doors to lots of custom stuff. I have one sitting on my desk, but I have yet to twist my bosses arm sufficiently to get me a Sirius account to test with.
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  • B_Clements
    B_Clements Senior Member
    This works well.
    REBUILD_EVENT wrote:
    We use NuVo Concerto for Multiroom. There is also a double-tuner (T2 Tuner) that we used. Both have RS-232.
    This was my first work, when I started programming Netlinx actually..

    http://www.nuvotechnologies.com/tuners.htm

    This unit integrates nicely, AM/FM/Weather and XM.
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  • philg5140
    philg5140 Junior Member
    Elan Tuner

    I've used the Elan dual tuner(AM/FM only) with success. Question on the SC-H1, is that the only piece I need to integrate Sirius with an AMX system...

    Thanks in advance
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  • DHawthorne
    DHawthorne Junior Member
    philg5140 wrote:
    I've used the Elan dual tuner(AM/FM only) with success. Question on the SC-H1, is that the only piece I need to integrate Sirius with an AMX system...

    Thanks in advance

    Yes. AMX even has a module written for it already.
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  • the8thst
    the8thst Junior Member
    Do any of the tuners mentioned utilize RDS?

    I have a client that wants the Artist and Song Title to be displayed on the touch panels when they are listening to radio.

    I have two thoughts for this:
    1. Get a tuner with RDS available over 232
    2. Upgrade to an HD Radio tuner with metadata available over 232

    I am just starting to research this, so any thoughts would be great.

    Thank you.
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  • joelw
    joelw Junior Member
    the8thst wrote:
    Do any of the tuners mentioned utilize RDS?

    I working on a jobsite right now that is using a Rotel RT-1080 that displays RDS data. RDS data is presented on the touch panels. Keep in mind RDS data content is determined by the radio station.
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  • the8thst
    the8thst Junior Member
    joelw wrote:
    I working on a jobsite right now that is using a Rotel RT-1080 that displays RDS data. RDS data is presented on the touch panels. Keep in mind RDS data content is determined by the radio station.

    I hear the warning about RDS and it is something I have experience in the past. Car audio decks hace had RDS for years and years, and the radio stations used to update the info every 3 or 4 songs. I hope is has become a better medium nowadays.

    That is why HD Radio is really where I think I will head with this one. Does anyone know if an HD radio tuner that is less expensive than the TuneSuite?
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  • REBUILD_EVENT
    REBUILD_EVENT Junior Member
    the8thst wrote:
    Do any of the tuners mentioned utilize RDS?

    I have a client that wants the Artist and Song Title to be displayed on the touch panels when they are listening to radio.

    I have two thoughts for this:
    1. Get a tuner with RDS available over 232
    2. Upgrade to an HD Radio tuner with metadata available over 232

    I am just starting to research this, so any thoughts would be great.

    Thank you.


    we have done it with the nuvo T2 Tuner. it does support RDS, we even display it on the touchpanel. but think first, that if stations send rubbish, or reception is bad, the tp will display rubbish.

    nuvo T2 Tuner supports the two RDS data fields Program Service Name (8 byte), and Radiotext (64 Bytes). some stations in my country send both, some only PSN for details read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Data_System
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