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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…

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