FM - Switchover

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 7 Aug 2009 22:44:57 +0100, "Agamemnon"
wrote:

Yes, MW on my radio is crystal clear,

A crystal set?

Even a crystal set sounds better than DAB.

A crystal set should get the best quality out of AM. Assuming you have a
strong enough signal. In practice it will get interference from other
stations.
But then I doubt you've ever listened to one - like AM and DAB.

--
*When the going gets tough, use duct tape

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , News
wrote:

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
By that yardstick how old is FM? 50 years? And it's outdated too. No
one starting with a clean sheet would do stereo that way.

FM is perfected and state of the art.

You must have different FM to me. It's neither perfect or state of the
art.

Given good reception FM is capable of extremely high quality. I have
off-air recordings made 30 years ago which would surprise you. What has
happened is that in many cases the originated programme signal is poor:
for example Radio 3 has horrible dynamic range compression which
flattens out all the levels and feels like being beaten round the head
with an invisible newspaper. I once did a direct comparison between R3
FM and Freeview on a live concert. With my recordings adjusted so that
the maximum peak (which didn't come at the same place in the two
recordings) was the same, the FM recording sounded about 10dB louder
and you could hear the levels bouncing around all over the place. This
wasn't the case 30 years ago, and its introduction nnnwasn't an
engineering decision - it was imposed by cloth-eared administrators who
though it was a clever idea because of people listening on car radios.

Digital - Freeview and DAB - doesn't have as much dynamic compression,
but the digital compression to get the 192kb/s bitrate (reduced to
160kb/s on DAB when Five Live is doing a breakaway) leaves an edgy
quality to most orchestral music. Ironically the iPlayer may be better
quality because it uses more recent compression algorithms.

In article , Peter
Duncanson wrote:

On Fri, 7 Aug 2009 22:44:57 +0100, "Agamemnon"
wrote:

Yes, MW on my radio is crystal clear,

A crystal set?

I have a few recordings made almost 50 years ago from a crystal set and
the quality is surprisingly good. It was only viable in the daytime -
at night more distant stations tended to interfere, producing sibilant
breakthrough and whistles. At that time the BBC AM transmissions used
the full available 9kHz bandwidth, and there was no dynamic compression
(just professional level controlling to keep things within the
acceptable 25dB range - a thing of the past, evidently nobody even
takes levels any more).

In later years the considerable increase in stations led to a reduction
in transmitted bandwidth to around 4kHz and tight filtering in
receivers to reduce adjacent channel interference, which renders the
quality non-hi-fi, though it still should be clean - however most AM
radios manage to make it sound fairly mucky.

"Roger Wilmut" wrote in message
. ..
In article , Peter
Duncanson wrote:

On Fri, 7 Aug 2009 22:44:57 +0100, "Agamemnon"
wrote:

Yes, MW on my radio is crystal clear,

A crystal set?

I have a few recordings made almost 50 years ago from a crystal set and
the quality is surprisingly good.

I'm not sure it counts as a crystal set once you connect a tape recorder to
it (with its amplification). (Unless you found a way to record it on a wax
cylinder.)

I imagine some early valve radios were basically crystal sets with audio
amplifiers connected to them.

--
Max Demian

In article ,
Roger Wilmut wrote:
You must have different FM to me. It's neither perfect or state of the
art.

Given good reception FM is capable of extremely high quality.

I'm not denying it can sound very good. Just that it's neither perfect
*or* state of the art.

I have off-air recordings made 30 years ago which would surprise you.

I doubt it - I've been listening to (and recording) FM for over 40 years.

What might surprise you is some recordings made from a wideband AM
receiver from BP Light Prog. Before the bandwidth was chopped to 4.5 kHz.

--
*Microsoft broke Volkswagen's record: They only made 21.4 million bugs.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:42:47 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

I'm not denying it can sound very good. Just that it's neither perfect
*or* state of the art.

"State of the art" just means the latest innovation, does it not, or
is that a misuse of the term?

The latest innovation does not necessarily offer the best quality.

In article ,
J G Miller wrote:
"State of the art" just means the latest innovation, does it not, or
is that a misuse of the term?

Yes - that's a misuse. Used by the admen.

The latest innovation does not necessarily offer the best quality.

It means the best currently available.

--


Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:

"Peter Duncanson" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 7 Aug 2009 22:44:57 +0100, "Agamemnon"
wrote:

Yes, MW on my radio is crystal clear,

A crystal set?

Even a crystal set sounds better than DAB.

A crystal set should get the best quality out of AM. Assuming you have a
strong enough signal. In practice it will get interference from other
stations.
But then I doubt you've ever listened to one - like AM and DAB.

Built the modern equivalent.

In article ,
Agamemnon wrote:
Even a crystal set sounds better than DAB.

A crystal set should get the best quality out of AM. Assuming you have
a strong enough signal. In practice it will get interference from
other stations. But then I doubt you've ever listened to one - like AM
and DAB.

Built the modern equivalent.

Then there's something wrong with your hearing as AM is band limited to
4.5 kHz. DAB isn't. But perhaps you like a 'nice mellow tone'.

--
*How many roads must a man travel down before he admits he is lost? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 08 Aug 2009 15:30:35 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

It means the best currently available.

In that case, what you were saying was that FM broadcasts in the
UKofGB&NI are not the best currently available FM broadcasts.