Kudos to KONO 860 for Amazing Audio

[Robert Douglas]

All honor, glory, and acclaim should go to KONO for completely turning off the dreaded audio squashing devices and restoring high fidelity to AM Radio! Imagine this, I get in my old Camry today and put on KONO 860. The volume is a bit lower than the other stations on the dial. So, I turn the bass and treble up all the way and crank up the volume. What I hear is near CD quality from a simple 5000 watt AM station playing oldies!

At first I hear that song about "killing me softly with his song". I don't know who sings it but the intro is extremely soft. All dynamics are there right on my car radio. Then later I hear the ubiquitous "bye bye miss American Pie" by the guy who the previous singer is singing about. It has an extremely quiet last verse which KONO reproduces perfectly. Amazing. The punch in the audio is restored. The ability to hear little bells and stuff in the background is there!

Radio is truly one of the most confusing businesses out there. All we have is audio, and all we do is screw it up by removing the dynamics. It's no wonder AM and FM are dying for music radio. It's fine to boost audio for talk, sports, and preaching, but music listeners can only take so much of the amplitude distortion, in my opinion.

Of course, I don't expect the quality of KONO to last. After all, they spent most of 2022 spewing out massive harmonic distortion, and their sister AM, KKYX is a squashed nightmare. And, they are still rebroadcasting IHeart's 760 on unlicensed 960 because of some fault in their antenna system. But for now, this is quite a treat to hear HiFi again on AM.

 

[davideduardo]

Just so you know, you likely need a hearing test. I am not joking.

AM in the US must be "filtered" so nothing over 10 kHz in audio can even be broadcast. An FM goes, at least, to 15 kHz.

And most AM receivers in cars today roll off around 7 kHz or less.

Stations, going back to the 40's, used peak limiters to avoid illegal overmodulation. Today's devices are much cleaner and more sophisticated and can elevate the audio above the noise level one always experiences in cars without, at the same time, overmodulating.

 

[Miss Tuned]

We have an alt/rock station near me. I enjoy the music and the programming, and the stream sounds great, I can listen for hours while working. The FM, on the other hand, I can tolerate for only a few minutes before I have to switch the 🤬 thing off. It's compressed to the point where you can't hear half the instruments in the music - to my ears, it just sounds like intolerable white noise, especially when the guitars start up.

I don't know why so many FMs use this level of processing - it's always been "to get over vehicle noise" but it's not the 90s, cars are much quieter than they used to be, especially the new electric ones. I so rarely listen to FM nowadays unless the programming is available literally nowhere else (which is very unusual, everyone streams) because it's such poor quality compared to streaming and DAB. It's like the station operators are running down the FM asset and not performing any maintenance or upgrades because everything is moving into the digital sphere.

 

[ContinuousWave]

Wish KONO would put CQuam on

 

[davideduardo]

I don't know why so many FMs use this level of processing - it's always been "to get over vehicle noise" but it's not the 90s, cars are much quieter than they used to be, especially the new electric ones.

It's not the vehicle noise... it's the road noise from the cars moving, including wind, tire friction, other vehicles, ambient noise.

 

[Deleted member 108832]

Wish KONO would put CQuam on

I tell you what, KFRO has it in neighboring Longview, and the station has likely never sounded better. The facility had degraded severely over the years, but Scott Rice has really worked wonders with the old girl. A tip of the 10 gallon for all of his effort. Find yourself up this way, CW, do yourself a solid and lend KFRO an ear.

 

[kevtronics]

Perhaps they're using a backup transmitter with different processing. I've also heard of AM stations temporarily reducing their audio processing level while antenna work is being carried out.

 

[ContinuousWave]

I tell you what, KFRO has it in neighboring Longview, and the station has likely never sounded better. The facility had degraded severely over the years, but Scott Rice has really worked wonders with the old girl. A tip of the 10 gallon for all of his effort. Find yourself up this way, CW, do yourself a solid and lend KFRO an ear.

Scottie and I talk on a daily basis almost. I've known Scottie for some time...

 

[Robert Douglas]

Just so you know, you likely need a hearing test. I am not joking.

AM in the US must be "filtered" so nothing over 10 kHz in audio can even be broadcast. An FM goes, at least, to 15 kHz.

And most AM receivers in cars today roll off around 7 kHz or less.

Stations, going back to the 40's, used peak limiters to avoid illegal overmodulation. Today's devices are much cleaner and more sophisticated and can elevate the audio above the noise level one always experiences in cars without, at the same time, overmodulating.

So how do people listening in the car to CD's, MP3, Spotify, or whatever with high dynamic range, overcome that noise? Your argument makes no sense.

Regarding frequency response, I've come to realize that the gorilla in the room might not be that, but rather dynamics of the music. Music radio is slowly killing itself with the squashed audio. Of course, car manufacturers are helping to kill AM by chopping off both the highs and the lows on that band.

Regarding your constant complaint about AM background noise, I think you need more evidence. Sure, it's real but mostly limited to light dimmer switches in the home. And we've all known about this for 50 years. In any case, let's not confuse carrier strength with modulation level. If the carrier signal is adequate, there is no significant noise. But squashing music in order to be a "louder" station is long-term suicidal for the industry, in my opinion.

 

[davideduardo]

So how do people listening in the car to CD's, MP3, Spotify, or whatever with high dynamic range, overcome that noise? Your argument makes no sense.

By increasing volume. Have your tried to listen to a classical music CD in a car? You end up with it always too loud or too soft.

Regarding frequency response, I've come to realize that the gorilla in the room might not be that, but rather dynamics of the music. Music radio is slowly killing itself with the squashed audio. Of course, car manufacturers are helping to kill AM by chopping off both the highs and the lows on that band.

The AM band is restricted by the FCC to a 10 kHz absolute wall. And the restriction on low frequencies tends to be road noise, not the band or cut-offs on low frequencies.

Regarding your constant complaint about AM background noise, I think you need more evidence. Sure, it's real but mostly limited to light dimmer switches in the home. And we've all known about this for 50 years.

No, the ITU has come out with a statement that the minimum signal strength for clear AM reception is 15 mV/m. In the 50's, and even the 60's, it was somewhere around 3 to 5 mV/m. The biggest source of noise "back then" was the adoption of fluorescent lighting. Today, it starts with cheap "wall warts", and goes on to anything with a CPU. Computers are very noisy, as are many home security devices, light dimmers/timers, exercise machines with a CPU, and on and on.

Again, the ITU has declared that we need vastly more signal strength to listen to AM. They are the "world authority" in communications. About ITU

Here is a quote from another post, in the Houston board:

" "Strong" AMs like 610 are struggling in-market more and more with electrical noise. Not Houston specific, but I was reminded of it today and that is before the downgrade to the new site."

In any case, let's not confuse carrier strength with modulation level. If the carrier signal is adequate, there is no significant noise. But squashing music in order to be a "louder" station is long-term suicidal for the industry, in my opinion.

A big part of "squashing" in today's audio processing is not to gain loudness, but to avoid over-modulation which is illegal. In the case of AM, negative over-modulation causes carrier suppression. Audio processing today is so perfected that the gear "looks ahead" and seamlessly adjusts levels to maintain a constant one while avoiding over-modulation.

If you look at the waveform of most recently released CDs or MP3s, you will see that it is horribly compressed, almost square waves in some cases.

 

[011nerve]

These days anyone can install an audio processor on any computer and use it for a station or even personal use or for a party or something. I use a nice processor to listen to music at home. I sometimes play Spotify through it and vastly improve their quality.

 

[011nerve]

If anyone wants info on the processor, PM me. It runs on Windows Mac and Linux.

 

[kevtronics]

The AM band is restricted by the FCC to a 10 kHz absolute wall.

Not quite absolute. That's how IBOC works, by sneaking its digital sidebands into the skirts of the NRSC mask that were originally designed to allow for some low-level analog splatter.

 

[davideduardo]

Not quite absolute. That's how IBOC works, by sneaking its digital sidebands into the skirts of the NRSC mask that were originally designed to allow for some low-level analog splatter.

OK, the absolute roll-off at 10 kHz applies to analog audio. Since we are discussing the fidelity of that process, 10 kHz is the absolute limit.

 

[Greg Strickland]

My opinion- For AM analog station is it not so much about audio frequency response. It is about making sure radiated emissions are attenuated as described in FCC rule 73.44.

 

[radiofan2023]

OK, the absolute roll-off at 10 kHz applies to analog audio. Since we are discussing the fidelity of that process, 10 kHz is the absolute limit.

What’s the limit for digital AM?

 

[davideduardo]

My opinion- For AM analog station is it not so much about audio frequency response. It is about making sure radiated emissions are attenuated as described in FCC rule 73.44.

And I will add something else... when we did not have computers to design the ATUs, particularly the directional multi-ATU systems, it was made system design easier to have very sharp tuning of the carrier frequency. That generally meant a nasty high on one side and low on the other j at +/- 10 kHz. The audio was not only restricted by the narrow, high Q tuning, but it was not "equal" on either side. That could make an audio system that was pretty flat up to the transmitter be nastily narrow banded coming out of the antenna/s.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

AM radio's problems go well beyond the noise level. People started fleeing AM radio in favor of FM nearly 50 years ago due to its poor fidelity before computers and switching power supply wall warts came along, and the radio receivers have only gotten worse since then.

AM sounds so bad on some radios now that it's hard to even understand speech, let alone enjoy music. AM receivers that can hear anything remotely close to the FCC's 10 kHz cutoff probably number in the tenths of one percent.