One of the great strengths of Creek Audio through the years has been the ability to produce exceptional tuners. The Classic carries on that tradition. Evolving from the award winning T50, this tuner is designed to complement the Classic integrated amplifier and CD player.

With today’s airwaves seemingly becoming even more crowded, coupled with the ever-increasing methods of accessing radio broadcasts, why would you purchase a dedicated tuner?  The answer is quite simple – it is the only way to really bring radio broadcasts to magnificent sonic life. Separates do sound better and a stand-alone analogue tuner will provide a purer quality of sound.

First and foremost, in a hi-fi context most listening is undeniably FM, although this analogue tuner is not limited to FM.  Tune in to your favourite station however and you are instantly aware of the quality of Creek’s Classic. Listening to it is addictive, and the idea that radio is purely a source of background music, carries no weight.  This tuner is both functional and versatile, high tech, yet simple.

The design objective for the Classic was to develop a tuner that, regardless of price, could be used as a benchmark for both radio and audio performance. That has been achieved by choosing technology that is more commonly found in professional communication receivers. The mixture of high technology and simplicity has reduced the component count to a level previously thought impossible.

Whilst the majority of synthesised tuners today use buttons to tune-in stations and select pre-set station memory, the Classic uses a rotary tuning knob connected to a digital encoder to provide tuning and pre-set station selection in a way that makes this digital tuner feel like an analogue tuner. To simplify its functionality, Creek engineers have reduced the number of local functions to a minimum, while maintaining all the sophistication required to operate every aspect of the tuner’s capabilities. Front panel controlled functions include: Rotary Tuning Mode, Rotary Pre-set Mode, Band Switching - AM/FM, or MW/LW/FM, depending on country settings, Auto Scan tuning, Display brightness. These plus Mono Stereo and mute threshold adjustment are also available via remote control. The T50 also has the ability to display the name and frequency of the station tuned using RDS (Radio Data System). 

To achieve state of the art sensitivity and selectivity, the Classic tuner uses a dual-conversion method of retrieving radio signals, which combined with a single stage broadly tuned front-end, allows it to pick out weak stations from the airwaves when they are closely situated in frequency to a strong local station. Local AFC also allows the digital bus to be switched-off when not in use, maintaining even lower levels of digital interference to the radio signal. Surface Mount Technology and the use of double sided plated through hole printed circuit boards provide a high level of interference suppression and help to achieve professional levels of performance. All the active devices in the Classic are controlled by a digital I2C bus, which allows the design of the tuner to be updated by changing the codes in its microcontroller. Future upgrades, or changes of country settings are made easy as these custom features and station pre-sets are held in a non-volatile memory, similar to that of a PC computer, with up to a maximum of 99 memory locations available for FM and 29 for AM. The vacuum fluorescent display is easy to read, and when coupled with the intuitive Creek system remote handset - which is standard with the Classic – control is effortless. The open and dynamic sound capabilities of the Classic tuner will be restricted by the quality of the aerial or antenna used, distance from the station and the source quality from the chosen radio station.

SPECIFICATIONS