All good things come to an end, including the TU-260L II, probably the most famous budget radio tuner ever. Denon's little baby (in all its guises) was king of the heap for more than a decade, but evidently Denon felt enough was enough. Replacing it is this modern star, with full RDS, 100 presets, rotary tuning knob and a nifty ‘Auto Preset' feature, which – like the auto-tune on a DAB tuner – scans the FM band and loads receivable stations into memory.
Inside the tuner, a surprise awaits. The small frame transformer is a familiar sight, as is the FM tuner head at the rear, but the main board seems awfully empty. Marked on that board, though, is the giveaway – ‘TU-1800 DAB'. Yes, this is a TU-1800, shorn of its DAB module, and as such completely unrelated to a former TU-1500 model. What's more, that FM tuner ‘head' is in fact pretty much the whole tuner, right up to left and right channel audio outputs. What used to be just the first stage of processing, in tuners from the 1970s to the 1990s, has now become the entire device, apart from power supply and controls, all thanks to miniaturisation.
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As a result, what one is listening to is more Kwang Sung (a major manufacturer of tuner modules) than
Denon, though of course
Denon's detailed implementation and power supply will play a major part. But then some of these modern FM modules give very good performance. In fact, when we put this unit briefly on the lab bench, we were in many areas testing the limits of our measuring kit as much as the performance of the tuner itself.
In short, build quality is absolutely fine for the price and the unit is pleasant to use.
SOUND QUALITY
Not having a TU-260L II on hand, we relied on cross-reference with old favourites from the tuner world, including models from Luxman and Revox. Listening to a range of stations with variable RF signal quality, and also via a local FM generator, we were on the whole quite impressed with the TU-1500AE. FM tuner manufacturers have risen to the challenge of the ever-more-crowded FM band and managed to squeeze decent performance even from weak signals and those plagued by multipath interference or adjacent station breakthrough, while with good reception the sound is almost entirely free of break-up and obvious distortion. There's a little roughness at the edges, but it's not badly intrusive.
In fact, tests with the FM generator were the least impressive, the TU-1500AE sounding rather hard and compressed with relatively limited stereo imaging (despite good separation measurements). Under real-world conditions, though, it comes much closer to the reference tuners, which date from a time when stations were typically spaced further apart. In fact, looking back at notes from tuners we've seen in the last five or six years, we'd say it's roughly par for the course these days, which isn't at all bad as it's one of the cheaper models around. Pop sounds lively, classical suitably subtle (with a very low subjective noise floor making the most of quiet details) and speech quite natural; just a little chesty, but without the dreaded ‘spit'.
We have no qualms about recommending this tuner as a fine-value purchase for anyone wanting to get decent, if not utterly outstanding, FM reception. As ever, a good outdoor antenna will contribute enormously and this tuner plus a roof-mounted ‘twig' will outperform a tuner plugged into the freebie piece of limp wire. But do bear in mind that at today's street prices, the TU-1800 offers identical FM performance with DAB thrown in for a little extra.
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Denon TU-1500AE ¦ $399 ¦ 
¦www.audioproducts.com.au
For: Clear detailed sound with plenty of gusto.
Against: Can be a little congested and harsh at times.
Verdict: For the price this tuner offers a lot, in terms of features and sound.
