Well I certainly could here the differences in the old days listening to Radio France transmitting right off the Eiffel tower. They had so many good quality live and recorded sessions. Even material they got from other networks and other countries. I had friends at la Maison de la Radio and used to go over there to tinker sound on tape. All the gear was top notch, much of it Studer. These days, I don't know.
Heck, at the end of the 20th century the Parisian telephone system was so good that I could tell what type of phone the other person was on and what the room was like. Connections to London were not quite that clear, but good enough that Londoners always thought I was in town. If a telephone system can do that, certainly FM can.
These days we are stuck with the weird phasey sound of mobile phones.
Heck, at the end of the 20th century the Parisian telephone system was so good that I could tell what type of phone the other person was on and what the room was like. Connections to London were not quite that clear, but good enough that Londoners always thought I was in town. If a telephone system can do that, certainly FM can.
These days we are stuck with the weird phasey sound of mobile phones.
On air talent usually pick up on it quickly without.
Wrong in this country, but my long profession experience is only with the top two. Maybe markets 3 and 4.
The .11 might be the most common major market processor in Canada.
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No doubt. Probably true in the US too. Mine is a personal preference. With Nautel marketing "Orban Inside", that could slowly flip. Our next TX will probably have that option.
We have an AM in the group with an Optimod 8100 on the air, beats the loud/clean pants off everything else on the dial. Can't quite figure out why, but no reason to change either.
Completely agree!
My experience differs because the processing in a little consumer FM stereo transmitter, if any, is quite unsophisticated, very poor indeed. That means average mod is lower than typical stations. Those things without processing cause a different issue because receivers really don't have all that much headroom above 100% mod. But glad yours works! What unit do you use?
Me neither. It's a 1980 FM analogue processor without the band filtering required to meet the FCC's mandatory regulatory mask or the NRSC preemphasis curve. The processing power is roughly equivalent to the front end AGC/compressor section of a modern DSP processor, minus the latter's loudness generating multi-band and clipper functions.
Nautel packages the 5500. It's far down the product line but still very nice to have as an emergency backup or when budgets are tight. We use the Importer/Exporter version on HD2 and HD3 channels for voice programming only. No chance this $1200 add-on ever competes with the $15K 8700s, .11s or Vorsis powerhouses.
I use a Ramsey FM25B, it was shipped in kit form due to FCC regulations.
Ramsey discontinued them, but some (leftover stock) are still available through other sellers.
But they seemed to have raised the price enormously since.
PLL synthesized, dead-on frequency, selectable across the full FM band (88-108Mhz), dead quiet background with no hum, and variable RF output levels.
It's also got adjustable input levels to eliminate overdriven distortion.
Even with the RF level set "low", it transmits several hundred feet from my home clearly with just its built in whip antenna, capable of much longer distance with a rooftop/mast-mount antenna.
The reception is excellent, and reminds me of FM radio in the mid 1960's when FM stereo was at it's peak of quality, without all the annoying "bass boosting" and enhancement that current FM seems to have.
Comparing the audio from a CD player directly connected to a stereo receiver versus broadcast from the transmitter at the other end of the house, I can hear virtually no difference, even though headphones.
I'm quite pleased with the FM25B.
My speaker are sensitive enough that I can sometimes hear the compression envelopes used in certain studio recordings. Amusing to distinctly hear the attack / decay of that process, so obviously modulating the vocal (or whatever).
So I'd say yes - if you're familiar enough with the natural sound of something. Like someone singing where it starts briefly louder, then gets quieter, then tails back to loud again. Sometimes it's pretty obvious.
One question, do highly sensitive speakers (db spl / watt) tend to exemplify this? In other words, just a little envelope modification of a sounds natural "ADSR" is more audible when using a high efficiency speaker?
So I'd say yes - if you're familiar enough with the natural sound of something. Like someone singing where it starts briefly louder, then gets quieter, then tails back to loud again. Sometimes it's pretty obvious.
One question, do highly sensitive speakers (db spl / watt) tend to exemplify this? In other words, just a little envelope modification of a sounds natural "ADSR" is more audible when using a high efficiency speaker?
When I say signature, I am referring to character, as in my speakers have character because they are not perfect. I don't know what an LDC mic is, maybe an electret capacitor lavalier mic, and IMO they are terrible.
I had no idea that small changes in Optimod were so obviously detectable to a relatively ordinary system.
I really only wanted to know if any of those changes were detectable to we listeners, and you have confirmed that, thank you.
In about '75 I had Tannoy Gold Lancasters, a Quad 33 with a home built Nelson-Jones 10+10, a decent record deck, and an A77 mk4, and could not hear the difference between any source, and that source replayed from the Revox. How things have improved.
You experiences correspond with mine to a large extent. I remember being in Frankfurt and auditioning a Pair of ESS Monitors against Tannoy Ardens, and the demonstrator saying that FM was the best source, but not on air at that time, haven't things moved on?
Telephone lines were under the P.O legally obliged to be controlled with repeaters to be within tightly controlled limits, and that seems to have been lost now.
Mobiles so often sound as if under water, or are phasey or warbled.
I can hear those envelopes as well, pumping quite badly sometimes.
I've also pondered the differences between the more and the less sensitive speakers, obviously more sensitive allows greater flexibility during design, and a 100% efficient speaker will have no distortion.
What "they put out" these days is forced continual advertising, with music being secondary.
It's annoying to sit through FIVE MINUTE LONG ad commecials for crap that I don't need or want...
I realize that the sponsors require some time, but it's WAY overblown these days.
And it seems that FM stations play the SAME 15 or 20 songs over and over.
Thank god I have other sources like CD, records, tapes, MP3's etc, to use when I want just pure music.
Agree, and when music is played it is to me usually ephemeral and pallid, and of little significance musically or poetically.
The ads are extremely annoying partly because of their vulgarity, I do not want to be shouted at, or listen to the equivalent of a shrieking housewife.
As I write there is a 'concert' on BBC R2, and the technical quality is abysmal.
Thank you all for your perspectives, I am now at greater peace of mind about FM quality, but it is a shame to lose what was once a cultural gem.
During the FM mono era, program material often was very good. The first degradation was the change to stereo, adding 20 dB of noise while eliminating everything above 15 KHz. That was unpleasantly audible ("metallic" sound) apart from the interference of 19 KHz with the bias generator of tape recorders. A further reduction in quality arrived with the invention of cassette recorders, which were deemed "HiFi" with an upper frequency limit of only 12.5 KHz although later on, cassette recorders improved. During the early 1970's there still were transmissions like those from France Musique (classical music): much music, little (explanatory) talk, no advertising. Commercially operated stations changed this, to the extent that for instance in this part of Central America, the most needed device would be a speech silencer. The last time I heard good quality (mono) FM was in 1994, from African stations (Radio Nacional de Cabo Verde (RNCV), Radio Nova (Cabo Verde), Dakar FM (Senegal), Gambia, Guinea-Bissau) which I could receive in Tenerife (Canary Islands). Especially RNCV was great, playing entire albums during the night. No joke, see copy of letter received.
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That shrieking housewife might have been good ole Hyacinth Bucket...(Bouquet)
"Richard!...... mind the pedestrians!"
I love Patricia Routledge.
I love Patricia Routledge.
She actually wasnt bad looking in her earlier films.
Film and television Routledge's screen credits include To Sir, with Love (1967), Pretty Polly (1967), 30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968), The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom (1968), Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968), If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969) and Girl Stroke Boy (1971).
We used to have a very old radiogram in the early 1960's and that had an amazing sound. Picked up radio from all over Europe.
Had a magic eye tuner.
I was a DJ at a top rated top 40 FM station in the 70s. "More Music, Less Talk". We did keep that promise, but our playlist wasn't very long. Top "40" was stretching it. And yet our dear listeners would call in to request the same 3 songs over and over.
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