Cool AM format station in Tyler I heard 20 years ago while there. Can't recall the call sign. They did big band, Rat Pack crooner stuff. Some sounds leaning into Old Country or Western. Really liked it.
KDOK? or KPYK? Only Tyler area station I can think of with that format is KPYK 1570 out of Terrell. KDOK was oldies, possibly KFRO? That format is gone otherwise unless it was indeed KPYK which has been holding onto that format since the early 90s.
There are a TON of folks I know that want Z-Rock back, especially in Dallas. That being said Dallas has always been a rockers market.
As far as AM processing goes, I've had pretty decent luck with my Aphex Compellor and Inovonics 222. My little part 15 is just about the loudest station on the AM dial. (I suppose adding some EQ would be of benefit as my sound IS noticably duller than the better processed stations.)
... I'll take some exception to the idea that AM can be hi fidelity even if you have good equipment. And I only say that as a hi-fi guy. ...
Just to mention that analog stereo broadcast FM uses amplitude modulation of L-R audio on a 38 kHz (suppressed) subcarrier. The upper and lower sidebands of that AM subcarrier then frequency-modulate the main channel. L+R audio also frequency-modulates the main channel.
The recovered L-R audio is dematrixed with L+R in the FM stereo receiver to produce the left and right stereo audio channels with very low harmonic and intermodulation distortion, high SNR, and L&R audio bandwidths ~flat from 20 Hz to greater than 15 kHz, each.
Hard to imagine the days when heavy metal was considered "devil's music" by some parents and talked against in some churches at the time. Anything new that shocks current parents of a generation... I'm glad we're beyond that these days, so many more important issues.
Rich has a clear description of how stereo FM is made, yup, that's what our stereo transmitters are doing every day.
I think the whole concept of fidelity on the radio is relative to the medium itself, you have to adjust to what fidelity actually means on AM or FM. In the real world, nothing on the radio will be like a CD player connected to an amp directly.
There are compromises all along, like all of the equipment the signal has to pass through at a station, audio processing, pre-emphasis, STL links to the tower, multipath to your receiver and finally your radio and how faithfully it decodes, for AM and FM.
I think both AM and FM can sound much better than they do today, if a concerted effort would be made on both transmit and receive. I don't think the vast majority of stations have ever concerned themselves with trying to achieve genuine high fidelity though, meaning the best the radio medium can offer.
AM is actually capable of good fidelity, it's just that people are fooled because the tuners among the populace are so poor, and getting worse with some lower end DSP tuners.
That's only AM's reputation, because if you have a highly linear transmitter and a wideband receiver with a low distortion detector, I'd have to say that under controllled conditions, AM mode could rival the quality and frequency response of FM.
"AM mode could rival the quality and frequency response of FM."
It sure gets REAAALLLL close in wideband C-Quam.
As Artisan says, if something is on AM that you don't have on FM people will listen to AM to hear it. I never listened to FM because here the oldies stations were always on AM. In the 70s and eighties spent evenings from Toronto listening to New York and Chicago stations and CKOC from Hamiltion Ont. for years till just recently they went sports. But back then you all know the noise from the A/C wasn't there that now makes AM listening to weaker stations impossible. A tabletop tube radio was nice clean mellow sound.
Then you have someone like my brother who says it doesn't matter what's on AM I will not listen to AM!
He says, and has a point, when you have a HI-FI system and you go to AM and hear how it sounds...why did I spend thousands of dollars to listen to this!
But it's true, loose the noise interference, have tuners, like they used to be with wide band settings and AM would be revitalized. But, it's easier to just go HD because the noise is here to stay and this solves it.
Mark
There are some really dissapointing recievers on the market, by far the worst I have used is a Rolls product that reduces AM to just a hair above telephone quality. It DOES do a pretty great job of avoiding the noise though. The 2nd worst is The Grundig S450 which just has an AWFUL AM side especially when compared to the older S350DL which has a pretty darned good Wideband AM side.
I agree with Mark on the Tube AM Radio's oh god those sounded so damn sweet. Even a German Tube AM/FM radio my aunt Kay had would put these new Radio's to shame. I could get WZZP in Cleaveland from Pontiac michigan. Also WIOT which was an Album Rock station sounded nice in Lansing, Michigan where I couldn't get it on the new Radio's. I connected it to my outside antenna and I got WXKE a 10 Watt station in Indiana while in Lansing. Indiana was at least 75-100 miles away.
My aunt and uncle would never part with that Radio and I loved that Radio. But to replace the tubes every 1 1/2 years was expensive and to recap the unit cost a fortune, but muy uncle did it because the Radio was so HQ. I bet you'd get a C. Crane FM station for a mile and that is without illegal mods to the transmitter that Radio was so good.
I have a large 40s era "Airliner" brand radio that sounds simply amazing on AM. It has those HUGE vacuum tubes.
I think several things help with the old good sound of AM radio that people remember.
Good quality receivers because AM music was popular. There were some narrow receivers, but even the "All American 5" tube radios had a decent bandwidth, they did roll off highs, but smoother and with no ceramic filters. Some ceramic filters have up to 3 db of passband ripple.
Pre-emphasis came around, which you can see as either a treble boost or a bass decrease, so some older radios can sound shrill today, and not have the big bassy sound you remember.
AM stations were allowed full 15 khz bandwidth, and even if most radios didn't get the upper frequencies, they were there and without peaks caused by pre-emphasis or extreme filtering to roll off highs. That would tend to make a smoother sound.
Now AM stations are limited to 10 khz audio response, and with the peak in pre-emphasis also occurring at 10 khz, some transmittters and receievers will "ring" with a loud sibilence that hits just right, making spurious audio.
This was all with stations that cared about their sound, but most probably did sound better, and also music of the era was produced with AM radio playback in mind, that's why the voices of the Beatles just jumped right out of the speaker in your dashboard!
I think AM radio reciever quality is a race to the bottom at this time, I was reading on some guy's page who thinks it's a conspiracy on the part of manufacturers to degrade AM quality, so they can kill the medium and don't have to worry about putting AM bands in products any longer, so they can be sold cheaper.
My opinion is that AM bandwidth is far narrower than it needs to be in receivers. They're being built by engineers who see narrow bandwidth as a virtue of what their systems can do, but the engineers aren't being real listeners.
Come on, America! Let's BUILD again!
Doug
Darn right! That looks every bit like a 1970s intercom system on a boss's desk. Woodgrain peaked in like 1973? That's great, I do like the looks of that.
That's an interesting idea, a Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) radio with AVC. TRF can be good, they can have lower distortion than superhets, with no mixer or IF stages. Most of the selectivity is probably in the front end, meaning the loopstick and tuning cap combination, since it has a single gang cap.
Likely you''l get local stations well, but you could get more stations with external tunable loop, preselector and other accessories for AM radio. Seems like it would be good to monitor the full sound of your own Part 15 transmitter.
Check out WMBG-AM out of Williamsburg VA. (wmbgradio.com)
Doin' it right with a Nostalgia music format day and night.
It can be done we could bring back Music to AM and get more interested in better Radio's and then you'll see more listeners to your part 15 stations.
Thing is, a radio like the Heathkit is $150! Made in America! We'd rather go to the Chinese. Cheaper. Now, to my Chinese friends:
Look guys. You know you're the greatest. Incredible people! But I wish you made better stuff! When you DO, you knock it out of the park! But we are inundated with junk, frankly! As an off-topic example, look at this:
A beautiful rendition is ruined by the fact the wheels are misaligned! Not just that one. ALL of that model are the same! And ya let that pass! What, no quality control? Incredible! Look at this one:
That has to be majorly modded to fix that! So YEAH, guys! You go to all the trouble to make a gem like those, but can't get even the basics right? So don't get mad if I rail on ya! You're my friends! I know you can do better!
OK. Made in America costs more. Period. Ya wanna give it to China? Yeah, they are cheaper! In every way! Myself, I don't mind paying $150 for quality like the Explorer! My neighbors? Heh heh! Yeah. What are ya gonna do? AM ain't worth it to them. They got pods and pads with gigga-maroo, and 5000 songs on a freakin' postage stamp...on and on! Sigh...
Doug