MUSIC on AM Radio:

[Radio_bored-Op]

In this day and age, music on the AM Band
is not a bad idea - before you have a knee jerk
reaction, I happen to have it on [wwws] am1400
and played "REAL LOVE" mary j. blige. . and it sounded "GOOD"

-it wasnt what I was used to, on am radio (IE: the oldies, or adult standards)
and I first typed "this day and age" while SOO MANY "kids" listen to
processed music d/loaded and ripped to a box-(ipod,player,etc)/ satellite radio,
or cd - it is SOO COMPRESSED it doesnt sound like . . . well, not when I
was a kid, but how it sounded when most older folks here still had their hearing, lol...

but seriously, it being a more current song - had more 'range' and it sounded fine to me.
... just a thought, now the question ::: who would flip for a top40, a/c or country format
on the AM Band ?

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

the previous post was just a passing thought,
(maybe after WJJL is passed on) a top40 format could
return to the station ( if any one cares)...

 

[spm1036]

Buffalo still has music on 1080, 1270, 1300, 1400 and 1440, plus you can get music on 630, 820, 740 and 1150 out of Canada. That is a lot of music on AM in 2012.

 

[Tom Wells]

I would always rather hear music on a well engineered AM signal than an FM.

Music never "peals" like a bell on FM.
Those who don't understand or refuse to consider that their experience with poor AM radios
has given them this impression are just being duped.

FM could sound a lot better but would need to "grow up" and forgo the current "overblown" processing which removes all the "air" from the mix.
You can't sound huge when all proportion has been lost.

Mathematically, it's a second derivative function, harder to sense and control.
Just being loud is the first derivative function. Much easier to do thar but the gradients are smashed into irrelevance.

If you've been paying attention, Omnia is working on processing to bring this level of realism to FM.

The difference is like that between a living butterfly vs a dead one on a pin in someone's collection.
The beauty is still "there", but it's inanimate.

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

sorry,
i meant [top 40] on am.Radio,
more pop, versus an urban driven format

 

[chas108]

Tom I agree, but even the best AM station still has to deal with levels of atmospheric RF that just didn't exist 75 years ago when we weren't so reliant on electrical/electronic devices.

Interesting to see this discussion here on this board. Although my point of reference is mostly 'YRK and Kiss when traveling thru Buffalo, and 'PXY/'BEE when the Buffalo stations fade out...processing overall seems more transparent than in my market.

93Q/Syracuse sounds very good to me while WBBS is flat and one-dimensional. Sounds like old-school late '70's AM processing, always has.

I do remember how good AM could sound. Back in my teens listening to 'KB, WABC, WRKO, CKLW...seems like 1973-74 was the turning point when stations began cranking up the processing. Before that it seems like they managed to sound "big" yet with a lot of perceived dynamic, warmth and definition. My at-home listening was on a 1941 GE console unit, which helped.

Listening to old airchecks online...even with the corruption brought by bad sample rates, reinforces my teenage perception.

One more thing bored-op...pull up the waveform on some current pop and country hits versus stuff from 20 years ago. (Caveat that both must be ripped, not manually recorded) You can observe that music itself is more compressed across the board, and even remastered oldies are made this way nowadays. (although those newly remastered oldies usually sound less tinny and more like they did on record, at least to my ears.) Gonna have to process current music in a very transparent fashion or it's gonna sound reallllly bad.

Just my 2 cents fwiw...

 

[Radio_bored-Op]

I have a few old [actual] air checks..
does sound awesome!

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Music on AM is a precarious thing these days, an acquired taste or re-acquired taste. I think Oldies is an acceptable music format for AM, but others strenuously disagree. Chas108 writes about "the old days" and mentioned KB. Savage wrote one of the best posts a while back about KB's antiquated equipment and remarked (paraphrasing) if anything sounded good on KB, it was a tribute to the guys who were producing it, because the equipment wasn't anything near "hi tech."

Could be there was something to "flat and clean" that translated into "sounding real good" when listened to on a good AM receiver. In the 60s and 70s, there still were a lot of good AM receivers in the field, at home and especially in cars. KB did have one big, beautiful Westinghouse transmitter that was capable of deep, rich modulation and proofed out pretty flat to 10 kHz. It was usually posted on the control room wall. There were louder, brighter, cleaner AM stations on the dial and CKLW was one of them. The Big 8 may have had the best processing on AM (was that Ed Butterbaugh's baby?) Some AM purists argue that WLS was just as clean and equally loud as CKLW, but only the Big 8 had "how the hell do they do that" processing. CHUM AM also sounded good, but not as rich as CKLW.

In Buffalo, 1400 WYSL had a hot audio chain. Amazing considering what could be done with an Audimax-Volumax combo, a Gates Sta-Level and a touch of EQ. It later employed an AM Modulimiter. It made the audio loud, but it was a noisy, crunchy piece of crap. WGR, back in its gold-based AC days, when it was a ratings leader, employed a Soundcraftsman graphic EQ and a few UTC matching transformers feeding an Audimax-Volumax combo. It later switched to a Durrough 310 DAP, which was infinitely better. Maybe I was brain-washed by engineer techno-babble, but I thought the Durrough DAPs (310 and 610) produced some great audio. Remember, WGR had to push music audio through a pretty hairy network of ATU's in that KB-GR antenna matrix. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought the station always sounded better daytime, even with a short stick, than night time with four sticks.

A few days ago I was at a news event near Canisius College (Main/Scajacuada) and tuned in WNED. NPR was airing a feature that had plenty of music. I was amazed at how good WNED sounded because it never sounds that good in my home. I'm in the middle of one of the station's many nulls. But in north Buffalo, WNED-AM sounded damn near great. (Of course I was in a major lobe with about 20 kw of RF storming my car radio.) Maybe Canisius and Medaille should look into buying WNED-AM if it's ever put on the market.

 

[Nick Gerard]

I'm going to have to get a Rosetta Stone to decipher the equipment-speak in JustPast's post - it's way beyond my ken - as in "I don't think I ken ever understand it!"

Nevertheless, I do remember great music audio on AM. I was working at WDEL in Wilmington, DE in the mid 80's during that ephemeral moment when AM stereo could've gone either way. I was not involved with the engineering of the station, but when they fired up C-QUAM, the crystalline audio was breathtaking on those Delco radios in GM cars. At that moment, I became an AM Stereo believer, not just because of separation, but also because of the wonderful audio.

Of course, because the gummint chose not to designate a standard....well, you know the rest of the story. (sigh)....what might have been.

Nick Seneca

 

[chas108]

I'm going to have to get a Rosetta Stone to decipher the equipment-speak in JustPast's post - it's way beyond my ken - as in "I don't think I ken ever understand it!"

Nevertheless, I do remember great music audio on AM. I was working at WDEL in Wilmington, DE in the mid 80's during that ephemeral moment when AM stereo could've gone either way. I was not involved with the engineering of the station, but when they fired up C-QUAM, the crystalline audio was breathtaking on those Delco radios in GM cars. At that moment, I became an AM Stereo believer, not just because of separation, but also because of the wonderful audio.

Of course, because the gummint chose not to designate a standard....well, you know the rest of the story. (sigh)....what might have been.

Nick Seneca

Back when KDKA was still playing music during the day, I got to hear their AM Stereo in a Cadillac Sedan DeVille.

Amazing.

Warm, great separation, full, clean...and this was Motorola's C-QUAM system, which if you'll recall was said to be sonically inferior to Leonard Khan's system.

JPB, what I liked about 'KB technically must have been the "flat & clean" when heard on my old GE console tube set. It came across warm and full. Again that was before everyone installed Optimods turned up to 11.

In 1974, my teenage standard was if you could hear the tambourines in the bridge of Andy Kim's "Rock Me Gently" when tuned to the center of the signal, it was cool by me. At that point in time, even 'KB failed that test. Only WABC's audio could be tuned in and still hear the tambourines. (I admit to not listening to much CKLW that year so I can't compare)

Gotta admit I loved the tightly compressed sound, initially. But over the years I came to the conclusion that too much of a good thing is, well, too much. When you end up with muddy and/or tinny highs, that's a big bowl of not good to my ears.

Still...the average listener spends how much time listening to crappy-sounding mp3s over their crappy-sounding mobile device????

Times like these make me wonder if the original question - about music on AM - might not be a perceptual one more than anything else. Yes there will always be the static issues...but still...

 

[Paul_Warren]

...KB did have one big, beautiful Westinghouse transmitter that was capable of deep, rich modulation and proofed out pretty flat to 10 kHz...WGR had to push music audio through a pretty hairy network of ATU's in that KB-GR antenna matrix...

Also worth noting that all else being equal, for a given type of antenna (especially diameter) and ATU setup, the bandwidth the system will pass is proportional to frequency. So, KB started with a 3:1 advantage passing 10 kHz audio at 1520 vs 550.

The DAP processors were a breakthrough for their time, but all mutiband audio processors produce an effect like a remix would, bringing to the foreground instruments which may have been intended as subliminal influences by the artist and producer.

These processors were also designed to optimize music loudness, sometimes with little regard to the artifacts they produced on voice audio. If run too hard, boxes like the AM Optimod, Innovonics MAP series and others could make everyone sound as if they had a cold.

 

[Paul_Warren]

...when they fired up C-QUAM, the crystalline audio was breathtaking on those Delco radios in GM cars.At that moment, I became an AM Stereo believer, not just because of separation, but also because of the wonderful audio...

Nick, the "crystalline" audio wasn't a result of the stereo. It was a result of the receivers being designed with wider bandwidth. The theory was that if you had enough signal to decode stereo, you also had enough signal to overpower interference from adjacent channels. So the receivers were made to limit bandwidth in mono, and perform more like older radios if they detected the stereo subcarrier.

I always wished they had a way to select wideband mode and mono mode independently, because strong mono stations could have sounded great in wideband, and many stations suffering interference at night could have been much more listenable without the wideband coming on when you didn't want it.

And few things sounded worse than a station auto-switching back-and-forth during intermittent fading!

But, I guess separate controls were a bit much to ask, especially since the mono switches on the Delco radios didn't even work on FM, which would have been great for areas affected by multipath, or signals which kept fluttering back and forth between mono and stereo.

 

[RBW]

Buffalo still has music on 1080, 1270, 1300, 1400 and 1440, plus you can get music on 630, 820, 740 and 1150 out of Canada. That is a lot of music on AM in 2012.

You left out 1230.

 

[RBW]

I grew up listening to Buffalo/Toronto radio. But spent many hours tuned to WABC in the 70's as well. They always sounded pretty good to me, and I had a variety of radios.

I'll answer the question at hand with my own experience. I'm in the eastern end of the state... and we have access to AM music via 15 stations! (incl., a couple from MA.) One of the top rated FM's, until about 16 mos ago or so, was a standards format, which downshifted to AM, when the AM dropped the talk format. There was a human cry heard louder than Glenn Beck on a tamtrum by those devoted talk radio fans. Since then, the standards on AM gets solid 2's & 3's! Their audio has been cited by some as pretty decent. (i'm no engineer so i dunno what they use) Their "new" FM format is in the crapper! As you can imagine, standards, oldies and AC are what the AM's are playing and the majority are out of the metered market.

I think top 40 might have a chance in Buffalo, probably better on 1440 than 1400. It's unfortunate that WECK is at the bottom of the pole. Granted their "sound" on 1230 is only marginal, and the FM can't get out of the city, but I've enjoyed their format since its reincarnation.

 

[DaveMasonsd]

Ohh if it could be re-done the way it was, music on AM would be a good thing. If anyone says anything, just remind them of CKLW in the 70's and 80's. WENE (Endicott, NY) in the 60's and 70's. Two of the most outstanding AM stations for music ever. Never worked at CK, but WENE's Chief Engineer was a prince. Jack Fischler was very proud of what he put together, and was more than eager to keep the jocks happy with a good sounding station. Back in the 60s he installed a guitar reverb in the audio chain, but no one noticed it rolled off at about 120 hz, so while the station had great highs, it never had the bottom end. Until one day in 1971 when the reverb hacked up a transformer and they bypassed it. Boom!! Bottom end that wouldn't quit. They bought a new reverb and bridged it -so the reverb was back and the low end stayed even til this day. Of course he had 2 radio stations in the 70's-WENE and WMRV. 'MRV was an afterthought (signed on at 10am and off at 10pm) -because the AM had the ratings. We were an ABC contemporary affiliate and everyday they would send out a series of tones for stations to check their network line frequency response. I had noticed a couple of other stations sounding better with ABC so we checked ours. It rolled off at 3k. It was supposed to be 5. We got that fixed the very same day.

Overall, AM started getting the short shift in 73 or 74. My first new car was a Toyota Corolla with my first AM/FM radio. The FM sounded great (even though there wasn't diddly to listen to) and the AM sounded awful. I took it back several times to the dealer and they swore there was nothing wrong with it. In 74 we bought our 2nd Corolla-this one with an AM only radio. It sounded great. This was my first exposure to the "roll off" filters in the AM radios that would be commonplace in the next few years. It was supposed to increase selectivity-but just destroyed the good ol' AM sound we grew to know and love. Enter the world of AM stereo in the 80's. Sony's little AM stereo radio had a bandwidth switch that brought the highs back. My Father in Law had an Oldsmobiles with an AM stereo radio -and while driving through Columbus one day we heard WCOL-AM. AM stereo. The pilot opened up the "wideband" mode--and it was difficult to tell the difference between that signal and an FM signal. (This was before the digital processing, you know). In the old days of the proof of performance requirements, you'd want your station to be flat to 10k. Enter NRSC. Bandwidth goes to 7.5. Enter "bandwidth filters" in the AM radios and you'd be lucky if they were flat to 3k. Then there's Clear Channel and their 5k filters for HD. Oh sure, the bandwidth splatter went away, but AM became little more than lower band CB. It's obviously still that way. If you throw out the filters and get better AM receivers then the problem will subside, but you can't affect the interference factor. FM can cover that with the narrowing of the stereo signal as you get further from the transmitter-yet the response still remains. Then there's the choice factor. Many AM/FM radios make switching bands nearly impossible. The switch is in the back, or on the top or nowhere to be found. Rochester had 6 AM stations in 1970. At least twice as many FM stations. Now it's even more crowded on the FM band and AM hasn't grown at all. Finally, with spoken word radio migrating to FM-you'll someday see AM as nothing more than "real estate" radio or (as Canada has begun) traffic reports and the hokey NIS system. No one wants to invest more into AM radio because it's an antiquated system that's expensive to build, maintain and tough to pick up. You may see the same issues arise with FM when the internet becomes widely mobile. In many (smaller) cities, they don't need over the air TV anymore thanks to cable. You don't REALLY need HBO now with Netflix. (Happily HBO has seen it an advantage to produce exclusive programming that keeps it competitive.) But, music on AM? It's as endangered now as police calls on 1700 were in 1966.

 

[Element9]

A fine summary, DaveMasonsd. The total Persons 12+ share, Fall 2011 for all AM music stations in Buffalo is less than 6.

 

[chas108]

And, my gut says FM on mobile devices will be another blow to AM. At least perceptually...you'll have agencies avoiding AM buys for that very reason before long...whether their perception matches reality or not.

Tom Wells brought up that Omnia was working on a new type of processing that would add depth and realism to FM. Maybe that's the future.

It is a shame. If the FCC had simply adopted Leonard Kahn's AM stereo system...which I understand was submitted in 1969-1970, AM might be in a whole different situation.

Then again...there is the little matter of the FCC allotting more channels than most markets could ever support, once you factor move-ins, Docket 80-90 and all the other things that have been done over the years.

 

[jefflaurence]

I contracted with a local antiques mall to lease for trade..an old drover railroad caboose..as an auxiliary studio. My deal with the mall is that I would put an LPAM part 15 radio station on the air, and in between nostalgia music..run nothing but produced commercials for the merchants and vendors at the antique mall. So we get the caboose. I outfit it with spare stuff from our pile of lesser-used equipment, and I have a place to meet guests..record voice work for clients..and hang out. My wife added a futon, a good coffee pot and area rugs..it's sweet!

So we got a pro-level part 15 transmitter from Chez Radio in Canada..unit mounts on the mast with the legal antenna and clamps to the roof of the caboose..audio and power fed by cat 5 cable. When we fired it up, and tuned it..I was astonished as to how utterly amazing a well produced Nat King Cole, or Nelson Riddle song sounded on AM! It's a nostalgia format..sure..it serves an antique mall, but the merchants and mall owners love it! And it gets out..about 3-4 miles, and local neighbors have started listening..bottom line is that music can and does sound amazing on AM, and still can garner listeners.

The two full power stations in this area sound flat..lifeless, and dull compared to the true hi-fidelity of this little peanut station.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Really enjoyed Jeff's story for two reasons: AM Part 15 results and the caboose story. (There's three generations of railroading in my family.) Paul's post is equally informative:

... The DAP processors were a breakthrough for their time, but all mutiband audio processors produce an effect like a remix would, bringing to the foreground instruments which may have been intended as subliminal influences by the artist and producer. These processors were also designed to optimize music loudness, sometimes with little regard to the artifacts they produced on voice audio. If run too hard, boxes like the AM Optimod, Innovonics MAP series and others could make everyone sound as if they had a cold.

And here's where ears, eyes and brains converge to make the processing sound right. Good PDs and Chiefs put their heads together to make the station processing sound great. Some PDs think they can do it themselves and all it takes it turning everything up to "11." Some engineers think PDs are loudness junkies and won't let them near the processing rack. It's a matter of trust and mutual respect. Maybe it's luck, but over the years, I've worked with great RF and audio engineers. The Buffalo readers and posters know who they are. Bill, Tom, Al, Vic and Lynn deserve to take a bow.

 

[wrsg915fm]

Getting back to Jeff's excellent post...why doesn't every mall do something like this? Every one I've ever visited has at least one area that never lasts, or you could acquire a small corner of an existing store and promote every business. Folks could listen for special deals and events even before entering the store.

I've got an automation system that would be perfect for this-we moved on to SIMIAN.