• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Can "processing" bring AM radio back from the dead?

Hardened Shelters

So what happened to the hardened shelters with 5KW Nautel transmitters that were supposed to be seeded around the country at existing tower sites? It seemed that FEMA was involved...I could be wrong.
 
stewie said:
The CBS stations stayed on the air and have been doing an excellent job at providing a simulicast on all their stations.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen, Houston wasn't evacuated. I saw the mayor say they can't tell 6 million people to leave town. I believe CBS Radio is in a tall building downtown, and wasn't in danger of being flooded.
 
semoochie said:
It's hard to tell if you're aware of this but KMJ is now 50KW directional. It looks like San Francisco south to about Santa Maria is fine but LA seems a little far away.
Click to expand...

You are correct. It just about serves the coast from just south of San Jose to just north of Santa Maria like a local during the day, even with all of the noise.
 
The FEMA station out here has over a 30 day supply of fuel. On Friday FEMA is sending out a contractor to check the tank and fuel.

I also have heard about the 5KW shelters that FEMA has proposed. I believe they are still moving forward with them.
 
Back on topic, for a moment.

To answer the thread's title... No. I don't think any processor can revitalize an AM station. People aren't going away just because of the restricted bandwidth. Creating a "wall of sound" these days is a dated concept that's nearly guaranteed to chase people away. On the other hand, I have no doubt that relevant, creative content that listeners feel they need, can still keep a marginally-processed station humming along... at least in some places.

I do think that "good" processing can help keep a listener around though.

I take care of a bunch of AMs like this. When one of them goes down, it's far more likely I'll get a concerned phone call then a disinterested one. I have very few (only one, actually) owners who might say, "oh... just get here when you can".

Declaring AM dead is premature and... wrong. Get out of the city and head East. There are plenty of small AMs out there that are dominant, local and support full-time staffs. A look at the FCC stats shows that, while the numbers are down, AM totals are still within sight of the number of licenses it had at its peak. It is true, however, that for what you get out of it, AM tends to be more maintenance-intensive than FM, the cost of which keeps it at the top of many managers' "grumble lists".

A lot of AM has moved to niche markets. The owners of those stations would tell you their listeners are far more concerned about hearing programming, provided specifically for them, than whether that content is on AM or FM. I take care of some of those as well and, so long as the bill is paid, their licenses and equipment is/are curiously similar to everyone else's.

Sadly though... KJR, Country KAYO and Colorful KOL are gone.
 
Last edited:
I actually thought HD on AM (when processed well) sounded wonderful.

But that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.
 
Agreed.

What chance stereo may have had went right out the window as the manufacturers squabbled over who's system would be "the one", whether Delco would put it in cars and whether the FCC would declare a winner and stick to it. Once the losers put their lawyers on it, you might as well have just turned the exciters off.
 
stewie said:
I actually thought HD on AM (when processed well) sounded wonderful.

But that seems to have gone the way of the Dodo bird.
Click to expand...

In the Fall and Winter with the shorter days, while driving around Northern Virginia, I frequently listen to some of the few AM-HD stations from the Midwest-East. One night I was on I-95 headed home (Northern VA) listening to WCBS-AM in NYC in full HD mode. As I got further South, the HD side dropped off when going around a corner, reverting back to analog. The difference having listened to the AM-HD side for almost an hour, then switching to analog was almost startling. One gets used to the FM audio quality of HD-AM, with the dramatic change in quality when reverting back to analog.

The curmudgeons and tiny percentage of DX listeners will never want AM stations to have the option of full HD, because everyone knows, there's nothing wrong with AM the way it is, right?
 
Grounded Grid said:
Agreed.

What chance stereo may have had went right out the window as the manufacturers squabbled over who's system would be "the one", whether Delco would put it in cars and whether the FCC would declare a winner and stick to it. Once the losers put their lawyers on it, you might as well have just turned the exciters off.
Click to expand...

There was only one objector to the 1977 approval process between five competitors: Leonard Kahn. He filed a lawsuit, and nobody got useful AM Stereo on the air for five years. It wasn't that stations turned stereo off... they did not get to turn it on until around 1982. By that time there was little music listening left on AM and fewer well programmed music stations that could benefit from stereo.
 
I have to agree with KellyA and Stewie, HD-AM has an FM like sound that is pretty cool -- basically between FM and a clean online stream. I recently got a used HD radio and HD radio is a great option, even on AM.

As for full digital on AM, I'd rather see that happen than see the AM band go completely away, as I see it at the very least as a national emergency resource.
 
boombox4 said:
I have to agree with KellyA and Stewie, HD-AM has an FM like sound that is pretty cool -- basically between FM and a clean online stream. I recently got a used HD radio and HD radio is a great option, even on AM.

As for full digital on AM, I'd rather see that happen than see the AM band go completely away, as I see it at the very least as a national emergency resource.
Click to expand...

I also have to agree that HD AM is far superior to analog AM. I listen sometimes to KMOX at night and their IBOC sounds really good! Going from analog to HD reminds me of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where the film changes from black and white to color...the difference is that dramatic!
Yes, you certainly hear the artifacts when music is played and with certain voices. If you want to hear ARTIFACTS...listen to some of the XM/Sirius channels. People actually pay for XM/Sirius!
 
wavo said:
I also have to agree that HD AM is far superior to analog AM. I listen sometimes to KMOX at night and their IBOC sounds really good! Going from analog to HD reminds me of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where the film changes from black and white to color...the difference is that dramatic!
Yes, you certainly hear the artifacts when music is played and with certain voices. If you want to hear ARTIFACTS...listen to some of the XM/Sirius channels. People actually pay for XM/Sirius!
Click to expand...

"Going from analog to HD reminds me of the scene from the Wizard of Oz where the film changes from black and white to color...the difference is that dramatic!" <-- fantastic analogy. Far far better audio than Sirius/XM IMHO. :)

An all HD AM band seems much better than the death of AM all together.
 
wavo said:
Yes, you certainly hear the artifacts when music is played and with certain voices.
Click to expand...

The main reason for that is the audio file was recorded in a highly compressed format, such as an MP3 file. The Ibquity radio codec and and some forms of common compression don't play well together. If the station was playing .wav files, it sounds much better.
 
The big problem with HD, (other than the interference it causes to your adjacent channel neighbors) is the up front cost to get in the game. It is a big deal for small to medium size broadcasters. It's true, the licensing costs have recently gone down. That is a step in the right direction, but that's not enough. If the HD radio folks really want to have this work, they should get rid of the initial and ongoing annual licensing fees to the broadcaster. For many stations, they are just too much to make it an attractive business proposition. It is costly enough to do the equipment upgrades without ongoing licensing costs to keep it on the air. It would be good business on HD Radio's part to make it very attractive for broadcasters to adopt the technology. After all, who wants to buy a new radio when there is nothing to listen to?
 
Kelly A said:
The main reason for that is the audio file was recorded in a highly compressed format, such as an MP3 file. The Ibquity radio codec and and some forms of common compression don't play well together. If the station was playing .wav files, it sounds much better.
Click to expand...

Spot on Kelly A. Storage is so cheap these days, I honestly don't know why stations don't use FLAC or WAV formats rather than any MPEG compression.
 
Chuck said:
The big problem with HD, (other than the interference it causes to your adjacent channel neighbors) is the up front cost to get in the game. It is a big deal for small to medium size broadcasters. It's true, the licensing costs have recently gone down. That is a step in the right direction, but that's not enough. If the HD radio folks really want to have this work, they should get rid of the initial and ongoing annual licensing fees to the broadcaster. For many stations, they are just too much to make it an attractive business proposition. It is costly enough to do the equipment upgrades without ongoing licensing costs to keep it on the air. It would be good business on HD Radio's part to make it very attractive for broadcasters to adopt the technology. After all, who wants to buy a new radio when there is nothing to listen to?
Click to expand...

Good point Chuck. Can a station in a mid/small market make money off investing in HD gear and licensing? The answer is most likely NO.
 
TheBigA said:
Unless you use it to feed a translator.
Click to expand...

Yes, if you are an FM with HD sub-channels, but I thought we were talking about AM. There isn't enough bandwidth on AM for any sub channels. I suspect that the AM version of HD was more of an afterthought so the FCC would go along with with the FM version.
 
stewie said:
Spot on Kelly A. Storage is so cheap these days, I honestly don't know why stations don't use FLAC or WAV formats rather than any MPEG compression.
Click to expand...

My guess is the costs involved with having an employee convert a station's entire MP2 or MP3 library to WAVs. They would need to pay someone to convert their library, and then hope the result (sometimes from 4:1 compressed MP2 or MP3 to WAV) would sound good. If they bought new files, they would probably have to do the same thing, as I think most online services sell some form of MP3, not WAVs (I could be wrong here). The costs would be similar if they transferred songs from CD to WAV (if stations still have CDs anymore).
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom