R.F. Burns said:
Chuck said:
semoochie said:
One possibility is that the radios were switched to the "analog only" position. I can immediately tell the difference at freeway speeds.
A more probable answer is one that I've noted in my some 40 years making a living in audio related fields:
The general public is remarkably ignorant about audio quality.
It's not that they can't tell a difference if you train them, but most people simply have not learned how to listen.
If this is true what happened to all of the AM music stations?
Most people can tell the difference when it is drastic. They can
learn the subtitles, but most never take the time to do it. Learning how to listen is an art in itself and it is not on most people’s radar screens. In these days of 5 KHz AM bandwidth anyone will notice a difference, but it is probably not foremost in their minds as they listen to a program. For most folks, it’s
“good enough.” I will submit that most of the general population simply does not care that much about ultimate audio quality. It may be hard to swallow for radio geeks, but it is true.
How else do you explain 64 KBs MP3 players?
It’s also why 65” HDTV sets have a pair of 4" x 2” speakers in them. The vendors figure that most people who care will connect them up to outboard audio equipment. Some do that, but the reality is most people, even if they do have it connected up to the stereo, do most of their TV watching using the set’s built in speakers. It seems that for a lot of people, they are “good enough.” It's too much of a bother to turn on the audio system when all they want to do is watch the news and tune in "Wheel of Fortune."
What happened with AM did have something to do with audio quality, but mostly it was because many broadcasters eventually moved their more popular offerings to FM and left AM to fend for itself. In some cases, it was a "chicken and egg" situation.
In the early days, it was the broadcasters who lead the way, saying FM sounds better, but it took a long time for most of the public to catch on. Of course, there were early adopters. In fact, in those days, FM didn’t always sound better on most radios. A lot a of AM stations sounded fine, or at least "good enough" for the receivers of the time. The first AM-FM car radio I ever owned was in a ’66 Mustang. It sounded almost exactly the same in AM as it did in FM. About the only difference was the kind of interference you got. FM suffered from multi-path and picket fencing. AM was subject to static and fades. That car radio was mono, so there wasn’t much ‘wow” factor to it. Being an audio geek, to get “wow” I had to install a Muntz 4 track tape player and four new speakers. Even that was hardly High Fidelity, but my friends were sure impressed.
Back to a historical perspective of “What happened to AM:”
In the early 1960's when I was in high school, I was a huge fan of FM, but most of my peers listened to AM because they preferred the
content. They were OK with the sound of AM at that time. It was
content that they wanted, not fidelity. Even if FM did sound better, there was nothing they wanted to listen to on FM.
When the FCC put an end to simulcasting AM & FM signals, someone took a brave step and put some top 40 music on FM radio. Those programmers took a really big chance and even offended some audio purists who were unhappy that the riff-raff had now penetrated their inner sanctum. As they say, “there goes the neighborhood.”
Since they could no longer simulcast their AM programming, some stations owners found they could hire a few $2.00 per hour employees who happened to be well versed in the world of "underground rock." It didn't cost very much to do, so they put them on the air. That programming decision coincided with the Viet Nam War and all its ramifications. Meanwhile, a large civil rights movement was underway as was the birth of the "Free Love" era. Those were a lot of changes happening simultaneously. Some of them had a lot to do with the availability of lots of pharmaceuticals, both legal - the birth control pill - and illegal which I won't bother to innumerate here. It was a time of big change, and the content that was wanted by the people who were involved in those movements happened to be on FM. Why? Because the station owners found it was cheap to provide. To many people’s amazement, it caught on. It seems there were a lot of us baby-boomers.
Thanks in parts to "better living through chemistry" stereo became important, and we even got into things like Quad. Some of it did sound better, and a lot of people learned to appreciate better audio as a result. Many GI's who found themselves stationed in Southeast Asia at our government's expense, took their paychecks to the PX on the base and came home with exotic audio equipment from companies like Pioneer, Kenwood, Sansui, Akai, TEAC, etc. Prior to that time, those brands were relatively unknown in the US. Many were marketed under the names of their importers (Roberts tape recorders for instance were really from Akai). The influx of all this bargain price mid to high end audio equipment did a great deal to fuel the interest in high fidelity in the home and car. FM came along for the ride. It was at the right place at the right time.
FM's success wasn’t just because of the better audio quality. It was manly because the content these people wanted to hear was on FM, and they
LEARNED that it also sounded better. It was not an instant revolution caused simply by better frequency response and higher signal to noise ratio. Most people still don't know what those terms mean. They've never taken the time to learn.
As it turns out, what happened to AM is a lot more complicated than “FM has better frequency response.” It was as much a socio-economic phenomenon as anything. A lot of seemingly non-related events happened simultaneously with the popularization of FM. They are interrelated. To be sure, technology was involved, but to say that FM flourished and AM withered solely because FM sounds better would be ignoring a lot of history.
R.F, - From our Internet discussions I know that you are enough of an audiophile to realize that your standards in audio are quite different than most people's. You like listening to your vintage high end equipment that you've worked hard to accumulate. In fact, I’ll bet that accumulating it has been part of the fun. On the other-hand, your neighbor is probably quite content listening to his plastic boom-box that is running on low batteries, producing awful amounts of distortion.
Living proof that there is a level where most people think sound is “good enough” can be found at most large stores. We've all seen the $99-199 all-in-one surround sound systems for sale at mass merchandisers. These things include a DVD player, a 6 channel 100 watt (or so claimed) amplifier, AM-FM tuner, wireless remote, and a compliment of five tiny speakers and a subwoofer. It is quite remarkable for the money. Many sound terrible (although some aren't too bad for casual listening). It doesn't matter. They sell very well. Do you know why? It's because they are cheap, and the public either can’t tell, or just
doesn't care enough about audio quality to spend any more money. In short, they are “good enough.”
For 99% of the population, there is a level where "good enough" is all they want. They have no interest in taking the time to learn to listen. It is hard for those of us who are very close to the issue to realize, but not everyone wants to be an audiophile.
