A some what quick and dirty aircheck recorded off of a cheap radio wired into the line input of the computer. You can hear noise creeping in from a high powered AM station and a bit of distortion at the beginning.
I also switched back and forth between 1610 , 1620 and 1630 which surprised me with some splatter. Otherwise the sound isn’t too bad for hard rock on AM.
Nighttime in the Mountains
From out of the Kentucky Mountains came weakly signals seeking fresh batteries to drain for the trip home.
Unable to get beyond that first sentence, science fiction writer Carl Blare crumpled his paper and pitched it behind the bookshelf, still listening to the mysterious signal on the radio.
An other worldly voice had been heard saying something that sure sounded like “Blue bucket radio”, but Carl was sure no one would believe him so he muttered, “What’s the use, anyway. It’s my word against them… all the people who doubt my tales of low power radio deep in the mountains at night”.
I believe you, Carl
You see i was there when this recording took place and i have an eye witness too, my cat, yeah my cat knows what took place here at the radio ranch, she was sitting on the stair’s staring at me.
Then again, i think she wanted another can of tuna…
Sound Check
This sounds like a good quality AM signal. Nice clean bass. I did notice some hum but that is almost inevitable when the receiver and transmitter are close together and near power lines. I have the same situation here but when away from the house there is no hum in the signal on a portable.
Neil
Attenuation
Neil, Thanks I tried to attentuate the signal by putting some distance between the receiver and transmitter but even 80 feet wasn’t enough space between the two.
I would like to try connecting to the car stereo in my Jeep again to record the signal from a distance greater than my 1/4 acre lot. Last time i tried it i didn’t have Audacity rescan audio devices and i think the software recorded the interior of the suv via the mic.
I had my netbook connected to a usb audio interface and the external amp jacks on the back of the car stereo.
I should try that again sometime and perhaps drive to the fringe of my stations coverage area.
That bass did sound good,
That bass did sound good, nice thump for a radio broadcast, and the sound was flat across what I could hear, and it sounded like it was right on frequency too. If that’s a Talking House, that’s really good, my 3.0 is off frequency by a few hundred cycles and the audio could never have that much bass.
Your receiver seems pretty wideband, I could hear the 10 khz whistle, especially near the end of the second track before you switched, Metallica? It sounded like when you first switched, the tone went up slightly, but not much, so it seems like your transmitter is dead on freq!
The splatter seems normal, you’ll get that with any transmitter at least one channel away on either side.
Just listened to the aircheck
First time listening and was surprised that at the end of the sample song I heard the exact same jingle(one of them) that I use on my station!
Mark
Thank you
This was recorded from the headphone plug of a Sony SRF-M37W Walkman wired to the line in on a desktop pc running Audacity. The transmitter used was the SStran AMT3000 at 1620 Khz with a coil made out of pvc and some scrap wire i had laying around. The antenna is just a piece of 12 gauge solid wire.
I spent several hours on the sound with a few breaks in between to combat listening fatigue. The processing was from Sound Solution 1.31 software, a little EQ from the computers sound card. Compression was turned off on the AMT3000.
First song was Aldo Nova – Fantasy , a jingle someone sent me from old air checks, a short liner from myself and Metallica – Orion.
I have another aircheck without using the software processing, only the on board compression turned on in the AMT3000 a little EQ too.
Song is Brian Bethke – The Watcher from the Ghost Songs album, this has some heavy bass, a bit heavier than i would normally like but it’s clean.
LINK TO AIRCHECK
Well, it’s Sony, it has to be
Well, it’s Sony, it has to be good, I really like their tuners and radios. With a headphone radio they’d pay attention to having more of a wideband sound, more bass especially. I should have a little Sony like that, since I listen to my station out and about on $11 Sony pocket radio that’s pretty good itself, but limited fidelity and volume outside.
Now I got you, the AMT is more of a pro transmitter, and you put a better antenna on it. Now why doesn’t a company have an auto tuner and frequency selector like a Talking House, with AMT style audio and transmitter circuitry? That would be two good things together.
The sound is really good for AM in my opinion, and you’re doing well with Sound Solution, it was one of the first processing programs I tried, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to sound good, it defied me. 😉 There was a page of preset files for it that users had made, but I found them to be too strong, and couldn’t tame them without making the sound EQ turn out all wrong.
I tried some others and settled on Sonos Limit, though it won’t work as a plugin with Zara, it will add on after Zara or other player through virtual cables.
I’ve heard good things about the compression in the stock AMTs, one of the few that comes with some kind of a limiter. I think it was Carl talking about the sound. I didn’t recognize the Aldo Nova, though I know that song, and the Metallica, I was second guessing thinking it was them, because it started with organ, and that didn’t seem to be a Metallica thing.
I like the good bass levels on Brian’s song, and I like bass on AM, since lots of stations strip it out. If you run flat audio, no preemphasis into a good AM transmitter, it can be bass like you’ve never heard on some radios. If you could build a linear amp for that AMT and get it up to a few watts, you could get some real carrier current going.