I have noted before that the quietly of sound that I’m getting from FM broadcast, or even from the regular FM transmissions of the regular CDs, is insultingly beautiful and not really compatible with Sound that I get out of my CD and LPs.

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=1330

It is not about the fact that one of other specific characteristic of sonic reproduction is more interesting with FM but rather that FM has juts presents VERY different sound, radically different in its entirety. I would like to point out again that when I taking about the fact of FM superiorly am not taking about the “better bass”, or “wider soundstage”, or any other typical crapolla. I’m taking about the very deferent sound!

The situation truly could not be described by any other world then “insulting”. I use very primitive, in-house antenna and the few of classical radio stations that I usually listen I receive at no more then 40% of full strength signal, according to the signal-meter on my tuner. I use a consumer-level tuner that is build without any high-end prejudges. So, where this superbly musicals quality of Sound is coming from and why this quality is so munch more interesting then my other source?

A few days age a friend visited my place and after observing what FM was capable of he suggested me to feel a signal form my LP into the line-stage of my tinier and see what happen. If sounds like foolishness, isn’t it? Not so much. Let to think.

A tuner has a demodulator and output gain stage/s. I do not know how good the output gain stage/s in my Sansui TU-X1. I have a schismatic but it hard to approximate the musical qualities looking at this amplifier. Still if the reason of the phenomenal FM musicality is in the output stage of my Sansui then feeding it with eternal signal would be defiantly an interesting experiment. Interesting that I did have few high-end tuners before but none of them reached the same level of “performance differences” that Sansui TU-X1. Is anything spacial with the Sansui output? I do not know the answer but I do not think so.

Perhaps the reason of the FM musicality is because the signal got modulated and demodulated? Perhaps something is in the nature of demodulation that makes the sounds to become Sound? Then it would be interesting to make a high-quality modulator and high-wired feed it to Sansui using my CD for instance as the source. Will I have then this “FM broadcast effect”?  Or perhaps it would be interesting to try a separate modulator-demomodulator……here is where the Dima’ invention of a “perfect” none-digital time delay coming form…

Anyhow, would some of you who are familiar with the subject to elaborate on the secrets of the FM quality?

Another point:  will this “FM quality” be preserveable and transferable if to record sound to a tape. It is not big deal to get the CR-7E or Dragon and try but I really do not want to hassle with tapes again…

Rgs,
Romy the Cat

who worked for a while in a FM station. He said that some good quality broadcasting stations have tube bassed compressors and that they process de signal quite a lot. Maybe what we hear coming from the FM is a highly processed signal, which might have some phase alterations that after the modulating-demod process gets aligned and quite satisfactory.

Rgrds,

A

This is a very interesting thread.

Many times, while driving around I listen to classical or jazz fm stations.  Occasionally, I stumble upon some performance so beautiful that it pulls me in and I find myself completely paralyzed and unable to get out of my car and continue with my intended tasks (shopping, work, etc).  This has no just happened once, but quite a few times.  In fact I completely refuse to turn the radio off in the car until I reach level of complete satisfaction at the end of such performance.

I have always wandered why, with modest stock audio system in a car, one can find this meaning of music much more easily than on thousands of "hi-end" or "hi-fi" systems.  Once I had a chance to hear the famous top of the line Magnum Dynalab tuner.  To me, in that system and at that moment, it was nothing special.  Sweet hi-fi sound is what came to mind.  No comparison to what I experienced in the car.

Can anybody explain what is happening in my car?

Amperidian,

Those “evens” that you experienced I your cars are well known to me - the auto sound is very different subject though and I would not mix in into FM thread... The phenomena of car sound has nothing to do with FM in particular, you might have the same experience form car CD, car playback of absurd quality, from car tape or from whatever. So, it is not a surprising that you had no similar effect from room-located Magnum Dynalab (that is not a good tuner to begin with)

Wojtek wrote:

With the stock radio-CD and buzzing fulrange speakers in my Civic I often find myself puzzled how pleasant and musical this crap sounds. If only I could get close to it at home -fruitless pursuit so far .Romy when it comes to tube tuners is it a high output impedance unsuited for passive pre that puts you off ?

I do not use any passive pre and it is not what puts me off. I generally do not like tube at line-level as I feel that they under-perform. I feel that a tube is devise to be use in output stage in power amps – here where tubes are glorious. At line-level (if it’s not input or driver stage) tubes have issuers…

The Magnum Dynalab has tuber with output  tube stage do not sound very poorly; in fact any Magnum’s tuners sound poorly and I would not blame the output tubes as their SS tuners sound identically wishy-washy. The last Magnum that I tried sounded like you take a ball of cotton, submerged it in chicken broth, apply salt and paper and then eat…. Yeak! Ugly…. Many consumer-level tuners without any high-end paranoia are way more interesting sounding then Magnum. Among the tuners among those that I owned (I owed Magnum as well) the flowing consumer-grade tuners were incontestably more attractive: Yamaha CT-7000, Yamaha T-2… (I do not even mention the Sansui TU-1X that is a very different beast)

glaesemann wrote:

How deep can one go with FM signal analysis? I'm interested in what instruments people are using to analyze their FM signals. Here in Westchester County just north of New York City we have a few good stations. I use a Winegard FM antenna and rotator with remote control. I want to analyze the signal as the rotator turns to find the best degree for rotator setting.

http://www.ham-radio.com/k6sti/sam.htm

I personally do not feel that it is necessary. A good antenna, a good tuner and a pair of ears is all that is necessary. I might be wrong though. BTW, the distortions and problems that A/D process brings are much lower than FM. So, you might analyze not FM but the recorded file and make judgment about the FM reception based upon it.

After listing yesterday the Kalinnikov’s First with Jarvi leading Scottish National and making this post:

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=7866

I was very encouraged how good in trim of sound it was. So, I did something stupid:  right the way I took the very same Chandos CD from which the WCRB broadcast the music (does broadcast has a past tense? Shell I say broadcasted?) and played it on my CD setup. Well, believe me or not but the CD did not sound as exciting as it was via the tuner. Here is even more fun: I am not even convinced that WCRB run broadcast off a CD – it might be a computer-backed up file or even some kind of MP3 extract, compressed and limited. Yes, I detected from CD cleaner HF but… it was not as thrilling, arousing and engaging as it was “live” of the FM air… I live you with this thought…

I have directional rotatable antenna the runs ~150 feet of coax cable; I think it is 6dB lost in cable. Then I have 4-way splitter that eats another 12db. I deal primary with 3 stations.

The WGBH is right next to me, one mile away and at the location what there are no other big stations. WGBH has 100kw transmitter and antenna 242 meters above sea level (I live at 50 meters above sea level). I receive them very well and their signal destroys the Sansui’s front end – the TU-X1 is faulty for overload by design). The signal maxes out the TU-X1’s signal meter. For the sake of do not let the TU-X1’s front end to drive itself in overload I attenuate signal for another 10dB, making it ~ 65% on TU-X1’s signal meter. There is practically no Multipath measuring with WGBH.

The WHRB is 2 miles away. It is a small station with 1.5kW small antenna right next to other big stations However; they are just across a river from me, so there is nothing between me and the station.  If I tune the antenna right to them then I get them very strong with TU-X1’s signal meter way out there. I attenuate signal for 18dB db for WHRB and uselessly make it ~ 85-90% on TU-X1’s signal meter. I have very little, if any Multipath with WHRB and the Multipath needle just slightly shakes around 0-5% with the strongest signals.

The WCRB is a different story. It is 25Miles away; it is 25kW transmitter and a lot of “mean” stations around. It has 238 meter antenna and located in kind of industrial town… I need to super tune antenna to WCRB, not in the station directly but in some strange offset to get it with less noise. I need to attenuate the WCRB for 22dB to kill the noise, making the signal at 50% on the TU-X1’s meter (yep, the manual attenuator is the TU-X1’s best friend). The Multipath meter in the best conditions hit 25% mark in the modulation picks, in bad FM weather even more…. I prefer to use the Rohde & Schwarz  for WCRB – no attenuation needed and no noise on reception when I get WCRB. With WHRB and WGBH the Schwarz and properly attenuated Sansui are comparable. With WCRB the Schwarz does better.

BTW, Clark the Miserable told me that there was a time when there were 8 classical stations in Boston…

peter foster wrote:

The station that I most listen to is 105.9 MHz that broadcasts from one location 50 miles away at 100kW power and that is detected by 2 FM aerials mounted as a parallel array with rotator and ~ 40 feet of coaxial cable to the TU-X1.  The best signal strength that I can get on that frequency is ~ 82 dBf on the signal meter, and it sounds very fine

Did you try to use external attention – it will reduces any FM hiss is you have it. You might buy a cheap $10 TV 75R 20dB attenuator and it will be VERY useful with TU-X1.

peter foster wrote:

However, when I have compared a broadcast with the same recording on one of my CDs, then personally, I prefer the CD playback, on my system.  The difference is minor but noticable to my ear and the best way I can describe that difference is that the FM broadcast appears to have some very subtle or minor equalization happening that reduces some fine detail like being pushed further away from the stage of a live performance.  I am not complaining, because they both sound great to me, just slightly different.

Well, this subject is of course upon a specific station and it is very hard to make any generalization. When they broadcast a live thing then nothing can touch it. The best of the stations that use no compression output the FM stream that is unimaginably good. What they spin not live music they do engine a lot of garbage into the feed, like limiters, sensor filters and so on. I do admit that I also recognize the reduction in fine details, much worsening of HF + compression and some coloration but I am not too convinced that it is so bad. In addition to all audio-nasty things it has, as you correctly pointed out, a feeling that it is further away from the stage. More details are hidden but also mode details are exposed to imagination. If the station people do not over-zeal with those idiotic compressors then FM sound has that caramel-sesame texture that I found so dream lucrative!!! In addition the fact that I can’t stop event does something very positive to my listening attention. It is like watching live a football game (I mean a real football not the American stupid surrogate) – if you miss something then there is not instant replay… That all make me to have more fun from CD via FM then from CD off my playback… Or perhaps my CD playback is just too crappy…

A correction or two:

The WHRB transmitter is not at their studios, rather atop One Financial Center downtown, across from South Station. The antenna height is 186m.  For you it's nearly in line with WGBH.

Clark the miserable reported 6, not 8, classical FM stations, formerly, in Boston:

WCRB-FM (all day)
WHRB (most of the day on weekdays)
WGBH (half-day)

And earlier:

WBUR  (half day)
WBCN (all day, began playing rock late at night, March 1968, then the next year all-rock)
WXHR (all day, flipped to "beautiful music" in 1967)

Also there was:

WCRB-AM (different programming from FM per FCC rules)

clark

Referring to my post in the Electivity themed:

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=8020

I was tempted today to listen one CD that I brought from my work, so I fired up my CD player (I do not think I use if for a couple month, since the Bidat story was over). I listened what I needed and the electricity was quite bad – flat, compressed and granny sound with clouds of white noise.

Then I did something insane…. I connected to Bidat’s out my FM transmitter. It is a cheap 5W $100 transmitter that I use for calibration, I think that one that I have do not work even works good.  I set the transmitter to the frequency that is more of less free and tuned the Rohde & Schwarz to it, feeding the entire system from the Schwarz’s output, effectively bringing the signals via the modulation-encoding and demodulation-MPX-decoding chain.

To my big surprise it was quite good sound BUT the most important was that the sound it was much less impacted by bad electricity. This really made me to think about the nature of FM….