Review in image hifi magazine (Germany), Issue 6/2006
Accuphase DDS FM Stereo Tuner T-1000
by Roland Kraft
"The T-1000 is the ultimate luxury-class FM tuner representing a successful blend of sound quality, performance and ergonomics".
A proud statement indeed. After all, we are not dealing here with anything that incidentially may have come along but with an Accuphase. An Accuphase tuner, to be more precise. It goes without saying that this new tuner would neither belong to the "el cheapo" variety nor would it be equipped with run-of-the-mill technology.
Otherwise, this honourable noble maker from Japan would certainly be loosing more than its excellent reputation. So, logically, you could expect Accuphase Laboratory to launch an FM-tuner that is going to please even the most discriminating "radio listener".
FM? Wasn't there something else? Oh, yes, DAB: "Digital Audio Broadcast",
i.e. digital radio. By the way, there is the industry's vision of having millions of radios in good ole' Germany eventually thrown into the dustbin, whereupon they would make a huge profit in replacing them with DAB-compatible radios (however it should be all clear that 99 percent of them are certainly not made in Germany but in Asia).
Consequently, the question may arise as to whether spending money on a fine analogue tuner like the Accuphase T-1000 would be worthwhile at all.
I think we should all calm down a bit. It's because in Germany there will be no
"hard" change, i.e. analogue broadcast technology being recklessly shut down in the near future. Quite unlike TV, where you could help yourself with an affordable black box to also receive digital TV while maintaining your precious TV set, this would mean to have millions of kitchen radios, radio-alarm-clocks, hi-fi receivers and car radios replaced fairly soon and at the same time would mean to provide DAB
exhaustively and at the same time guarantee a great variety of programmes. Hold your horses, as the saying goes, because as far as DAB is concerned we could expect a rather "tender" change, which, according to some insiders, may last well into the year 2015 and even beyond. In addition, the recent EBU conference (where frequencies for all kind of public services and nevertheless for broadcasting are to be shared and administered) has yet to assign the hitherto analogue FM band to any other future purpose. For this very reason, too, experts and insiders consider analogue FM broadcast to be carried on for a long time, albeit perhaps in ten years without the current programme variety but still interesting enough to justify the usage of analogue tuners.
As far as I'm concerned however, I tend to remain pretty sceptical in view of all this: I doubt that the potentially good transmission quality in the digital domain would likewise be used to come up with better sound quality. I'd rather venture to say that the priority will be to squeeze as many programmes as possible into the available frequency bands. And if you are becoming aware of the present developments in the
big market of entertainment electronics, then every pessimist would expect nothing better than the sound of MP3 mono, because, evidently, the majority of users is already most happy with the "sonic squawking" downloaded from the Internet.
Yet before we end up once again in criticizing culture, let's get back to the
Accuphase which was launched as a classic analogue tuner featuring most modern technologies. Quite evidently in opposition to other seemingly high-end-oriented
