As you may or may not know after my Wife had survived cancer and had a few other severe medical issues I lost all my nice electronics equipment. Back in the day I could have bought a FIM 71 field strength meter for FM and one of the field strength meters for AM. Plus I'd have one of the best AM Transmitters with built in processing. That said its now just a laptop, NextKast as my Radio automation software with built in audio processing that was built for FM transmitters and Internet Radio. Having an internet station I can't screw with the processing to make AM sound good as it would kill my Internet stream. Remembering how I still wanted surround sound when watching movies I was able to get a JVC headphone surround sound adapter FREE from free cycle here in Elizabeth City, NC. I loved it for listening to movies in Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound. The side effect of the adapter was it added some low end. Well I thought since the Talking House 5.0 has a horrible sound as compared to FM how can I force a better more pleasant sound on a poor man's budget. Then it hit me. AM being mono does not care if your pumping mono into it or Stereo and as to how wide it is. What happens if I connect the JVC surround sound headphone adapter between my external sound card adapter and the AM transmitter. So I found some double AA batteries and plugged the built in cord to audio out of the card. Then I plugged the 1/8 in patch cord into the phones jack of the surround sound adapter and the other end into the Talking house 5.0. Fired it up and It helped. That shrill AM crap sound was now more sweeter sounding. There is a slight echo as the Dolby Pro logic virtual surround sound is creating just a slight echo. It reminds me of WABC AM years ago. WLS also had a slight sound like this. Only bad thing is that this adapter is battery operated. I'll have to invest in a battery charger and some NiMH batteries and charge them every night to allow me to run everyday from noon to 4 AM. I may try a graphic equalizer if I can get one cheap along with a stereo 1/8 jack to RCA jacks. Maybe a 5-10 band EQ eill do. AM doesn't really have any frequencies above 2K. Adjusting the lower end could help. Or maybe an electric version of the JVC surround sound headphone adapter could be a cheap way to make AM listenable to an Album Rocker. Some songs seem to need just a bit of tweaking, but at least now I can stand to listen to my own station as AM really did suck before for a poor man's Radio station.
I boost all my AM stations with some form of graphic equalizer. I find turning down the midrange nearly all the way provides the best results. Keep the higher treble frequencies turned up more than the lower bass frequencies. For a rock format I recommend setting an EQ to the classic V pattern.
I'll be looking into an external equalizer as well in the future. Plus getting a cable with a 1/8 inch plug on one end and the stereo RCA male plugs on the other. Now I'll plug the EQ into the sound cards output into the input of the equalizer. Then the output of the EQ into the RCA to 1/8 inch cable to the AM TX. I'm hoping to get the equalization set to where things sound good and have some depth. When I temperately used Winamp as an EQ and tuned to the server where I have my Internet station streaming from I could just take the 1K and turn that all the way down. That improved it a lot just by that. I had to tweak the mid base as well. I'll have to play more when I get a regular equalizer to tune into the AM Transmitter to get some good sound from it.
On a side note, I have noticed the TH units don't seem to properly mix to mono, so you may want to dedicate two channels on the board for audio, both mixing to left.
My older TalkingHouse, it's pretty much confined to midrange, EQ-ing the highs up does help, but I can't do much with the bass, in tests with Winamp's Equalizer settings.
I've read about creating your Signature Sound in radio, and on FM I used different Eq curves, but the would try another radio and it would sound `off`because the bass was too high in the car for example. I played with it but ended up staying flat. I'm sure EQ can help on some formats, like easy stations sounding more mellow.
I think stations these days control sound a lot more by what they do with compression and limiting instead of EQ. I don't really notice that much difference in the tone between commercial stations, even on better speakers. Maybe it's that the stations are using multiband limiting, which is an EQ function itself, like having automatic EQ on all frequency bands at once. Carl uses Stereo Tool, he should know.
So I think that stations might have given up EQ as a sonic signature.
What I could do then is to buy a Stereo RCA to mono y adapter that I'd connect to the output of the graphic EQ. That way its going to have both channels mono. Do it to the input and output of the EQ. Then all I'd have to do is to hook the left channel to the Talking House 5.0. There would not be any need to mix at the Talking House 5.0's audio section. It may also solve the fuzzy sound at times. You can definitely tell the difference between a Talking House 5.0 and a Procaster. But with an EQ I think I may be able to get it right. I may save for the C-Quam AM Stereo transmitter by Sean as I'm sure it will sound better even to a Mono AM Radio. We shall see.
"What I could do then is to buy a Stereo RCA to mono y adapter that I'd connect to the output of the graphic EQ. That way its going to have both channels mono."
This won't work properly either. Been there done that, same results. For true mono broadcast you either have to make a mono adaptor with resistors, find a mono setting on the board, or mix it to mono on the board.
"I think stations these days control sound a lot more by what they do with compression and limiting instead of EQ. Maybe it's that the stations are using multiband limiting, ..."
This is correct. Do note that many processors DO have built in equalization, I cannot comment on how other stations utilize this however. I can tell you many local stations here do use the EQ to boost certain frequencies.
OK I know this really sounds ghetto and believe me if I still had the money I use to I'd do things the professional way. But here is a ghetto station coming from a man who's lost everything but the clothes on his back:
OK since NextKast has the compression and limiting and I also want to do FM at the same time as AM what I could do is have the boombox receive my station on FM and of course find a good boombox at the Elizabeth City pawn shop. I've seen a few nice digital Panasonics come in from 1983. This is when they had good FM tuners on them and of course many have FM Mono in them. Now get the EQ just right and connect the patch cord to the Talking House. Then start to mess with the EQ till I get the sound about somewhere an Album Rocker will tolerate for AM. When Station8 test the antenna done I'm gonna want that 4 mile range. I'm sure most of my listeners will be listening on AM with the exception of a few houses next to me that can receive the FM signal. I'm also looking at the C. Crane FM2 due to less harmonics. Reports say its a great sounding TX and I know where I can pick one up for $44 and it WILL do what I want from the site that has this unit. My new frequency may be 99.9 Mhz for FM as so far there has not been any station coming in on that frequency. I'll have to keep doing a survey of it because I swear it was busy during the summer. Anyway it should work better for me.
I used to feed my talkinghouse with an FM tuner as well. The results can be pretty good, especially if you force it to mono. I'm also well used to ghetto setups! My first part 15 station ran off of pre-taped VHS tapes. The Full Power AM uses an 80s vintage Pioneer tuner for the EAS box, it seems to work rather well. Some of those Pioneer tuners also supported AM Stereo, however they will need an adaptor that wasn't sold in the US. I recently picked up a JC Penney MCS 3050 from 1985 that sounds fantastic, this model also fully supports AM Stereo.
Another Idea that I just remembered, I fed my TalkingHouse with a 90s era Sony Boombox that had a built-in graphic equalizer. Oddly this radio had one of the best FM tuners I have ever owned, I think I sold it in a garage sale a few years back.
Oh man I wish I knew you back then. I'd have bought the boombox from you. Always liked the older Sony's for FM. Someday I'll get back into my component stereo systems again. I got to really get on my feet and wait till the 2 yr old gets a little older. This is my Stepson's kid and right now he is a terror. But I plan on something like that. Slowly getting things back into the swing. I could get the AM TX up higher and maybe get that antenna outside when Station8 gets it all done. All I can do is hope.