The action of the up/down tune buttons is effective but alarming, as the scan is accompanied by a loud mechanical chattering from the mechanism inside the tuner. Hardly slick, but entirely functional, the more so as tiny steps are available and also audibly detectible. A hi-fi tuner has two quite separate tasks to perform. Helped by the antenna, it has to receive the signal, the whole signal and nothing but the signal from the airwaves. Then it has to take that signal and extract the maximum musical content, which is where the hi-fi bit really comes in. the requirements for each are significantly different, so a tuner with best RF performance is unlikely to come with the best sound quality, and vice versa. I'm a hi-fi rather than a radio enthusiast, so I took it to a couple of the latter for extra views on the reception side. "decent enough in content and performance, but nothing special" pretty well summed up their overall reaction. The variable selectivity was welcome, but a rather 'tighter' narrow band would have been preferred. As is still all too often the case, the signal strength meter saturates much too early too early to be of much practical help, while in contrast the centre-tune would have been more useful with rather greater sensitivity. Weak signals bring in a degree of mono blend and high frequency rolloff, which can become somewhat distracting when the signal is pulsing-the way it does when an aircraft passes across a long distance transmission path, for example. However, long distance DX-ing will be irrelevant to the majority of hi-fi enthusiasts. Musical communication skill is the truly important bit, and here the MD100 turned out to be a thoroughly impressive performer.

It had the good taste to arrive just as the Promise season was getting under way, and did an outstanding job of conveying the full richness and warmth of the Alberta Hall experience. The whole scale of the sounds seemed bigger and fuller than I was used to hearing, yet there was no trace of 'thickening' or 'heavyness'-it all sounded superbly natural and somehow 'right'. My regular tuner for well over a decade has been a Naim NAT01, which has happily seen off all corners to date. By the end of one evening with the Magnum Dynalab, I was seriously contemplating its purchase, and not just because I've always wanted an analogue tuner with remote control. The Naim simply sounded a little thin and weedy by comparison. It did perhaps have a slight edge in delineating leading edges, which has always been a Naim strength, but also seemed to lack the body, the weight, the harmonic richness and the sheer dynamic literacy of the MD100 through the lower registers in particular. Maybe this judgement was down to the relatively small and bright loudspeakers I had in the room at the time I took the IMLab Micro Utopias out and brought the bog Tannoy TD12s in, only to come to a broadly similar conclusion. Magnum Dynalab's tuner sounds almost vinly-like in its overall warmth and generosity of spirit, and I suspect

that it is a quite deliberate strategy. Out of interest, I did a quick test using a small, good quality IW 'local area' stereo FM transmitter, in order to compare the sound via the radio against a good quality source. The MD100 did a pretty decent job across the band, and seemed significantly sweeter than most at high frequencies, but it did also add a little extra low end weight, no question, which is not, strictly speaking, quite playing the hi-fi game. But it's a small discrepancy and one that in no way spoils the sound of this fine tuner. Nor is it sufficient account for the powerful sense of realism and authority that found me eager to select 'radio' in preference to other sources, for the scant few days that the tuner was with me prior to copy deadline. Behaviour is the ultimate arbiter of one's true and subliminal reaction to a piece of hi-fi kit, and I was seriously discomforted (not to mention pissed off) when it was snatched away for photography-right at the height of the Proms season, forsooth! I'm missing it, as I write, and very much looking forward to the carrier bringing it back tomorrow. The MD100 is a bit too oddball to be given an entirely clean bill of health. Its ergonomics are peculiar and certainly lack slickness. But the bottom line has got to be the performance, which is perfectly adequate in radio terms, and truly excellent from a musical point of view. And I still want one (though Branko is threatening to come down and seduce me with a MD102). And given the wealth of classy material still provided by Radio 3. I still reckon such a hefty investment in an FM tuner is well worthwhile.