There's nothing contradictory about the term, "Soft Rock"! It doesn't fit into any category that came before it. "All My Loving" is Soft Rock. Simon & Garfunkel and countless others built an entire career around it! Older people wouldn't have touched any of it with a ten foot pole and dismissed it as "rock n roll" or some negative term!
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Are there any big AM music stations anymore?
- Thread starter radiogal
- Start date
That's definitely true. Last time I was in Brisbane (2017), right in the middle of the city, I scanned both AM and FM and it was mostly empty. Brisbane is their 3rd largest city. Imagine so few stations in Chicago, our #3 market.
But again, 3 AM music stations right in the center of a city. Awesome for a radio geek.
I will expand on this to add that there are still some AM stations that sound pretty good (mostly small ones that are owned either by individuals or small, regional corporations; the big corporatiuons (Audacy, Cumulus, etc don't seem to care much how their stations sound (KCBS AM has been sounding intermitently rather bad lately, almost like there's some faulty equipment), as long as they make money). KVOL near Lafayette, LA and WION in Ionia, MI are two examples I've come across lately. KVOL, in particular, makes good use of the full 10kHz that the FCC allows, and sound very good. I've compared their OTA signal (via the ScratchMoney SDR – which is one of those wide bandwidth SDRs that opens up to the full 10.2kHz – to the stream, and they actually sound quite similar (the stream is fuller and has stereo, of course). The OTA signal would undoubtedly sound much better through a decent hifi radio with wide bandwidth capability, but the SDR isn't bad. Perhaps the only thing they could do to improve their sound further would be to broadcast in AM stereo. Then it'd be a perfect example of AM at its best.
c
You're absolutely right. My late step-father thought anything beyond Sinatra, Bennett, Clooney, Andre Rieu, et al. should not even be considered music, and he himself was a musician who was an excellent violinist! On the other hand, a great musician of the same generation, Mr Leonard Bernstein, for example appreciated the Beatles overall talent, and thought that their harmonies were excellnet!
It's very hard to find a wide band AM receiver these days. I'm lucky to have three such tuners: a Sony, a Sansui, and a good old GE Superadio! Here in Greater Los Angeles there are still a few AM stations that do sound particularly good in a wide band receiver: 1260, 1330, 1430, and 1540 as examples. There are others that in the past were truly Hi-Fi but now their modulators are tweeked only for voice frequencies and overall loudness. Actual fidelity is irrelevant. It's true noise levels have increased, but nearly noise immune receiving antenna designs do exist. There just has to be a market for them along with good tuners. Ah but we're just dreaming...
4WK - Wikipedia
IIRC, Australia selected C-QUAM for AM stereo broadcasts - how's the sound quality from 4WK AM stereo?
Kirk Bayne
Thread moved to "National Radio" as it has become at least that and even has references to other nations.
AMAX is a proposed and never adopted AM "improvement" standard that is a third of a century old and impractical.
- Nobody is buying new home or "at work" or portable radios.
- Radios in cars are no longer interchangeable.
- Nealy no AM stations even cover their own market adequately day and night; even with nice new radios there is nothing to hear.
In terms of triage, AM gets a black tag.
Good question, but it isn't easy to find an AM stereo receiver. They can't possibly have many listeners who have an old AM Stereo receiver around.4WK - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
IIRC, Australia selected C-QUAM for AM stereo broadcasts - how's the sound quality from 4WK AM stereo?
Kirk Bayne
In addition to 963 khz, they used to have a lower power AM to cover Toowoomba proper. It was somewhere up near 1500 khz, but evidently now have an FM frequency for Toowoomba and shut that high end of the dial AM off.
About thirty-some years ago was attending NAB and stopped by the AMAX booth. Put on headphones which was playing music via a small AMAX-modulated transmitter in the hall. Couldn't help but notice there was a significant whistle about 7Khz. Several of the sales folks were waiting for my impression, and after removing the headphones, my first comment was: "What's up with that awful whistle??" Their answer? Most people can't hear frequencies that high. AMAX= complete and total fail.
Or a toe tag.
I made sure to mention "Free Bird". Disco was popular when I was a teenager and album rock was known for very long songs.
If I haven't said that here, the one in my car works. I can hear some instruments or voices from one speaker, and others from the other, with some songs.
Don't know who Andre Rieu is, but I pretty much agree.
I had to develop a taste for softer Beatles music because even the stations playing Sinatra and Bennett play them. Clooney was never on America's Best Music for some reason.
Ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. The listener, Chimp.
You have got to be kidding! They couldn't hear this?:
I went back and listened to more of this. I can clearly hear 11KHz but 12 is beyond my reach. It seems to me that I used to do better.
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I suspect they heard it, but in what amounts to a 'sales' environment like NAB, didn't want to acknowledge it. A colleague of mine sat down right after, put on the headphones, and pulled them off almost immediately: "He's right! What the Hell?".
The folks working at the booth turned around and started looking for more potential advocates.
AMAX was a total joke.
That's like fingernails on a blackboard for me at the very start. Couldn't stand any more of it.
860 KONO San Antonio Oldies.... Listen to them Saturday on the way back from Belton Texas. Great coverage but their audio was horrible!! Too much bass and not enough mid or high end.. other stations I listen to sounded a hell of a lot better
It actually can be worse...folks who went to one of the official GM sponsored demos of AM Stereo radios they were putting in their cars back in the early eighties, quite a few people pointed out that the cheapest units did not have a switchable IF bandwidth control like the best ones so those particular radios essentially sounded no better that than GM's regular non AM Stereo units. The reply: Most consumers have no conception of what's good or bad sound and are only interested seeing whether or not the red stereo pilot light is illuminated.
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