A guy I spoke a few days back told me that if he lived in Boston and had the quality of FM programming as good as we have in my city then he would have peruse the best FM receivers possible to get. I was laughing replying that it was exactly what I am doing…

Anyhow, the end of the season in Tanglewood is customary Beethoven paradise and this last week of the summer season is no exception. The program is truly killing:

Today: Mass in C and the Symphony 5. The BSO lead by Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus lead by John Oliver.

Tomorrow:  Christoph von Dohnanyi lead BSO with Sympnonies Nos. 2 & 3 ("Eroica")

And on Sunday – the closing of the season is the habitual Symphony No. 9, with soloists & Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Christoph von Dohnanyi conducts.

Tonight and tomorrow concerts are broadcasted by my local “bad station” with not friendly reception. Now I am listening the Mass in C and the sound if very good. (Watch this phenomenal Tanglewood Festival Chorus!!!). Do you know what I did two hours before the broadcast? I was trying to get the WCRB station with minimal amount of noise and interference. It looks like a simple task – but it is not so simple if you know…

Noise-vise reception was leading by Yamaha t-85 in ultra narrow mode and insultingly precise antenna positioning. It has no good sound though all-around with 130K of bandwidth. REL was OK but it needed 24dB atenuation, max out own gain. Still it had some FM noise that I was not able to defeat.  It is not to mention that REL at preset stage has own internal noise that make it imposable to record. The Sansui was ok but with it’s best and at 28dB attenuation it still had to high residual noise. Then the Rohde & Schwarz entered the fight. This receiver is ridicules. It want all signal in the line, I was forced to disconnect all line spiders from my antenna feed to drive the Schwarz with max signal. The Schwarz then with its internal brain decided how to process the signal and I was not able to beat it. If with any other tuner I have and this specific station the turning antenna for 2-3 degree absolutely killed the signal then the Schwarz allows turning antenna for 20-30 degree with no impact to noise – amazing! I locked the Schwarz as it will do 2 day recording and thanks God it can handle the WCRB.

BTW, the running now performance of Mass in C is absolutely amassing. I am in the middle of my big Cohiba…

I have to admit that engaging in second R&S receiver I was perusing just a better unit – I was getting it from the hands of Munich R&S technical – fully calibrated and tested. I always met to keep juts one unit but I kind of grow on them and  ended up with actual unit both of them one is use with R&S MSDS decoder and another with MSDS2 decoder.

I still have a preference to one of the EU-6201 unit (sound and mechanic-wise) and I still would like to take the other to an alignment technician (anybody that you know would like to work with Rohde & Schwarz EU-6201?). But I kind of turned to like together, and some I have two decoders I decided to keep them for a while. I use one of the 6201 and Sansui to record and another 6201 is not even connected to A/D and used juts for listening…

Yesterday the winter season started and the WHRB went live. On 22 the BSO season will be opening and so on… So, I kind of ready for new music coming in…. All that I can tell that my late recording were better than even few months back, I keep learning how to get it better and better…

Well, after the year of playing with it  I did what I always wanted.  Without having a technician who would be able to work on the Schwarz I combined my two of Rohde & Schwarz EU-6201 into one. One of them had very good front and with very precise working oscillator. Another had very well perfuming intermittent section and generally better sounding. I put them into one unit and mane a few other minor modifications in audio section and power supplies. The combined unit has phenomenal sensitively, very good stability to hold the station, fantastic selectivity and insane immunity against overload.  But the best part of it that it also sounds very seriously.

I do feel at this point that it has a very small edge over Sansui, not mach but has. The EU-6201 bas a very minor advance in bass, yes, believe me or not but the advance over TU-X1. It is also a bit different. I would call the TU-X1’s bass more sophisticated and soft but EU-6201’s bass more brutal and violent – not necessary a bad thing. Also the EU-6201 is a very slightly more forward in mid bass… Otherwise they are insultingly similar…

There is one more unique quality in the new combined Schwarz - the one that did not expected and never seen before. The TU-X1 and Schwarz subjectively have identical dynamics but with station running compressed signal somehow the EU-6201  feels like is has more dynamic. It feels like it almost decompresses the signal. Of course it is not the case but do I care if the crappy WCRB-like stations sound with Schwarz less compressed?

zako wrote:

There is a "NEW" Roahde & Schwarz Tuner on EBAY today,,,$3600,,sourced out of Isreal,,  cant make out the mod number,,,Should i bid????

Hm, this is the type a question that I was not asked for a while!

Zako, I do not know this receiver. I know the Rohde & Schwarz EU6201, the one that is up for sale is EU200, I have no idea what it is. From the picture it looks like has a different front end. I do not know what purpose was for this unit and what topology it used. This EU200 is from end 70s, Rohde & Schwarz made super cool communication receivers in end 80s. I was approached with one it was bout $5K and it was 4U large unit with enormous amount of functionality and tuning options. I decided to pass is as I had no use for it. This EU200 unit might be a good tuner or it might be just a good communication recessive.  If it has a fantastic selectively by narrowing IM bandwidth then you will hard get from it a good quality sound. Whatever it is you would need to invest some efforts to it to modify it out stage as it is not up to the demands of the best tuners. You would also need a good multiplex decoder.  Still I would not go for the EU200 until I know certainly what it is and what topology it uses. The only this that I can assure you that whatever topology it has it will be very well made. Call to Rohde & Schwarz, find some senior person who work in there for a while and talk to him/her.

I think it all boil doe how interesting FM in your region.  If you have a worthy FM station then you might try to experiment with Schwarz. Be advised that no one will be able to alight it in this country.  Well, aligned EU6201, modified, and driving by own preamp a properly voiced multiplex decoder might sound as good as classic tuners theoretically can. I do not know anything about EU200 and to make assumptions only by the company name I would not recommend.