Stereo vs mono FM transmission

Although transmitting in FM mono sort of defeate the purpose of using FM. At least according to all those who insist their music requires stereo to be enjoyed!  

As mentioned in the comments of the article not only a slightly denser signal with a bit more reach, but also less noise created by the generation of the stereo signal to those in the fringe areas, so your signal becomes listenable at a greater range in mono even though the signal strength may be the same. 

TIB

My view is if your running FM, stick to stereo for the better sound. The extra distance that you gain with mono is not worth worrying about at low power. People on the fringe areas can always switch their radio's to mono or tune a little off freq to make it clearer. Most car radios auto switch to mono when the signal gets weaker.

Of course, if your source material is mostly mono, transmitting in stereo is of no benefit.

Much of the 50s & 60s music was first available in mono versions only, and anything before the 50s is mono.

Stereo is an electronic effect done in the recording process and the only way to truely hear it is with headphones. Even people with hi-fi at home don't sit like a log in a sound room with the speakers 10 feet apart and sitting 10 feet back so you can get the full stereo effect, and if you move from that sweet spot you can't hear it anyways. You can be doing other things, moving around etc. And listening on a radio, most with one speaker....what stereo? Even in the car in the drivers seat listening to the radio or even a CD you hardly notice the stereo at all, especially when driving...with the window open! Stereo doesn't really replicate live performances....If you are listening to someone playing a guitar, or even listening to an orchestra, live, you are hearing it in MONO....both ears hear the same thing.  When music is playing in a store....you are hearing it in mono. It's just a recording technique for special effects. I for one don't want to be wired up with headphones. Good fidelity and stereo are two different things.

Has to be a good reason why even HI FI tuners, integrated amps, have a mono selection, Why all better FM transmitters...all Decade models, Ramsey, Wholehouse 3, Panaxis, are made in mono versions or have mono modes if they are stereo. Why does Decade make all their transmitters in mono only models? I don't think it's just to have a less expensive version. Even the more expensive Chinese ones have mono mode.

My point, stereo isn't all it's cracked up to be....you aren't hearing it anyway.

Mark

I broadcast in mono for too long, and with good quality audio now, I want to have stereo where I can. I had a Radio Shack FM transmitter at one time, if you can believe it, the transmitting section was just one transistor, mono. The thing actually got out though, in those days of lower band noise I guess.

It was a fight to get good stereo, vinyl was okay, but we had lots of cassette tapes, that when broadcast in stereo on a Ramsey later, sounded bad on mono radios. I was happy to be able to record in digital audio with clean stereo, and want to enjoy that now.

I feel, no use going back to mono, this is the 1980s 🙂 Really, radio stations aren't doing enough to keep up with the times as it comes to audio fidelity. They're stuck in time, while digital audio is offering clean sound and good frequency response on music, and dynamics that make voices sound more natural, but radio still sounds like it's in a time warp of 80s goodness, and AM is army grade.

I have a radio that does HD, and listening to a local rocker last night, they were playing some live track by the Outlaws or someone similar. The radio starts in regular FM then switches to HD after about 5 seconds. Well, their FM sounded decent enough, but when it popped up in HD, it sounded like a 1970s cassette, with phasing, bad stereo effect, voices sounding hollow, etc. With this particular radio, I can't turn off the HD either, unless I take the antenna off so it only gets the FM signal. I mean, it was really bad, assuming that the digital AAC compression wasn't handling the old tape source well and being fooled. I had that trouble with "Blade" mp3 encoder way back, Bladeenc.

Proper stereo is great though, it doesn't have to mean vocals all on one side, but I do hear it in the car, and even across the room from a boombox, because of the ambience of the stereo effect. With most songs you can hear better with stereo.

I'm into AM stereo a whole lot now too.

“Even people with hi-fi at home don't sit like a log in a sound room with the speakers 10 feet apart and sitting 10 feet back so you can get the full stereo effect “

That is EXACTLY what a TRUE Album Rocker (Progressive Rock, Deep Tracks) does. I remember setting my couch perfectly between the speakers which were about 10 feet apart and moved so that the center is slightly pointed inwards to make sure the tweeters are aiming towards the center of your ear. This gives you the best Stereo effect. Plus having one speaker closer to a wall than the other will offset the sound.

I use to scream at ANYONE who would move the couch away from its perfect center and I would mark the carpet with a piece of tape so I could get the couch back to the exact spot if I had to move it for any reason. People tried to trick me, but I could easily tell if it was moved 1 MM from its spot.

Rap has deafened Americans and desensitized their ability to know what real Stereo is and what it should sound like and that is not a 25 inch subwoofer for a 8x10 room. Real stereo has separate base for each channel.

I have spent 10’s of thousands of dollars (when I had the money) for good Stereo components which most Americans would say Huh when they see a separate preamp/power amp with XLR cables. You mention oxygen free cable and they don’t know what the heck your saying. I hear “But you can buy the same cable at Walmart for $5. They could not understand why I paid $100 for oxygen free RCA cable for my Luxman CD player. Now I bet you can’t even find that sort of thing. High end Stereo places died when Album Rock was killed on ordinary Radio.

I’ve not played with the mono mode of my WH3 when I experimented with the lightning bolt on and got the mile. I truly may do it again under the experimental license to see if it makes all that much difference.

I’d have a difficult moral decision to make after that to my Album Rock listeners and I’d have to then make a poll and see if they would even listen to a mono Album Rock station. I’d bet the answer would be NO WAY!!

Crazy people can still spend hundreds of thousands on their stereo systems.

I have actually been to this place, and I have purchased a few records from them, and I watched them work on remastering original Blue Note recordings.

http://store.acousticsounds.com/

You might want to pick up the $36,000 turntable.

There are plenty of similar outfits selling this stuff around the world.

TIB

Reminds me of a cartoon published in Audio magazine many decades ago showing two people sitting in adjacent seats in an auditorium, listening to a live musical performance.

One person turns toward the other and says, "lacks presence."

When I do live broadcasts of the football games and music concerts I do a simple stereo mic setup with two cardioid mics.

Sitting in front of the stereo it's like being there.  

Granted most people don't know what stereo is but some of us do.

As for commercial music, most music isn't from instruments and lot's of vocals are auto corrected for pitch so stereo or mono, it's all electronically manipulated anyway.

"High end Stereo places died when Album Rock was killed on ordinary Radio".

Don't understand the connection with album rock being killed on ordinary radio and HI-FI.

High end audio and HI-FI stores are alive and well. Here in Toronto and area there are lots of high end audio stores where you can get all the high end makes. With the resurgence of vinal records the HI-FI places sell more turntables and integrated amps and speakers then anything else. All the high end makes are there....you can get a $10,000 turntable, a $5000 integrated amp and $20,000 speakers if you want. In fact, I saw a $25,000 turntable that had no direct drive, it worked by magnetic induction.

Macintosh, Goldnote, Arcom, Rotel, Bryston, and more, even Marantz still has their high end component line, are all alive and well in lots of audio places.

No, people don't listen to music at home like in the 60s but HI-FI is not by any means dead or dying.

Mark

According to the radio industry, and the various ratings organizations, Album Rock is the number one radio genre in the U.S.

There IS a difference between Classic Hits and Album Rock Deep tracks and real Progressive Rock.  Call one of the Wanna be Album Rock stations and request Geniuses - Carpet Crawlers or anything from White Witch or Hot Tuna and some wanna be music expert will say Huh...

I got more to say later.

I thought it was country?

http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2014/tops-of-2014-audio.html

Also... https://www.statista.com/statistics/252230/top-radio-formats-in-the-us-by-number-of-stations/

Also... http://www.musicgenreslist.com/country-music-gains-top-position-as-most-popular-music-genre/

Also... http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2014/02/nielsen-names-20-top-radio-formats-where-does-your-music-rank.html

Notice that if you are over 54, radio doesn't give a damn about you!

Mark

Our Full Power's Translator runs in Mono, nobody has noticed. Stereo isn't an important feature anymore whatsoever on FM. Many radios no longer even have a Stereo indicator. When was the last time you even heard a station promote being in stereo? Granted, I DO like stereo when I hear it but its not going to make me tune away if stereo is not there. From my personal experience, listeners are extremely radio ignorant and have no idea why they get static or how to shut off stereo reception unless it is plainly labled on their radio. Even then they tend to get confused.

Blame the advertisers not the stations on the 54+ thing. (Also do note age doesn't matter at all once you get outside of the ranked markets)