Getting A Rangemaster To Sound Really Good

[rickityone]

I've been fooling around for the last week trying to get our AM1670 Rangemaster to have a more pleasing sound. Never seemed to have enough bass for my personal taste. Our chain was was computer>mixing board>inovonics 222>Rangemaster 1000>millions of fans.

I bought a Behringer SX3040 with the exciting name "SonicExciter" and put it into the chain right after the mixing board, where it would be easy to adjust. Aside from the very poor instructions which pretty much leave it to you to figure out what to do I found that fiddling with it, I could really change the way GulchRadio's over the air signal sounds in a positive way.

I set up a medium quality portable Sony (quality being sound), a lousy sounding tiny, but very sensitive Sangean (when you hook headphones into it sounds great though) and a very nice Sony stereo receiver unit that is our studio monitor. After rewiring the mixing board I could sit in the studio, using headphones listen to the original audio, as it streams out of the computer for a base and then futz with the SonicExciter 3040, listening on the various AM radios I had in the studio to see what kind of difference the Exciter made on each of the radios.

Surprisingly it makes a big difference. The bass notes are much nicer, there is a clarity that was not there before with echoes and chorus sounds much clearer, mid range is nicer - in fact the station sounds really good and I am pleased - all for about $100 from Musicians Friend. I had the thing sitting around here for about a year before hooking it up and I see the prices are down on them through Amazon, MF etc since I bought this one.

I haven't gotten into super fine tuning the audio chain yet - balanced cables etc - used mostly what we had around here, but, I noted that the "instructions" recommend to not have 1/4 cables plugged into one jack while having XLR's plugged into another as it could increase audio interference - but I had to do that, as the line to the Inovonics>transmiter is a balanced shielded cable with XLR connectors and the only way I could get the mixing board connected to the SonicExciter 3040 was with unbalanced 1/4 inch stereo lines. Need two male - male lines to replace the stereo lines currently in use to get it balanced out. As the signal is very quiet, I wonder if the expense would really make any difference.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun, I've been able to back the bass and mid range off to neutral position on my car radios and the signal itself seems a little more solid as distance increases from the station - probably due to the bass boost (or maybe my hopeful imagination).

Inspiration for this project came from many posts by Tom Wells (whom I hope might have a little advice) insisting AM can sound really good, listening to a youtube of an AM stereo station in Japan, HBC, playing Every Breath You Take by the Police, which sounds awesome - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMAPKTnJtnA

Thought I'd share with you guys.

Rickity
www.gulchradio.com

 

[LibertyNT]

Thats Pretty Cool,
I might have to pick one up.

 

[RadioMan203]

Rickity,

The thing I noticed is that pushing the 222 hard makes things a little shrill sounding or, on the other extreme, very, very processed sounding. Using a processor in front of the 222 and only driving the final processing lightly would probably make a great deal of improvement. Also, you can always defeat the pre-emphasis on the 222 as it's not necessarily a requirement to run it with the Rangemaster.

With our the high school campus station I was lucky enough to have an Omnia AM Classic donated to them and the Rangemaster sings beautifully with plenty of bass and a nice, smooth sound with mids and highs. Processing can make or break your off-air product as much as the source material you feed into it.

As far as your comment on how good AM can sound I think we can all thank AM receiver manufacturers for all of us losing out there. I think most of them put their money into FM tuner section and come up with something low cost that passes AM and that's about it. I have a 1944 vintage E.H. Scott Marine Receiver (picture) and the AM band is nice and wideband. Considering its age it almost sounds as good as the audio I get out of a Belar AMM-3 modulation monitor I use to bench test the AM transmitters in my product reviews. I think the only "fairly modern" AM receiver I found that can show off how good AM can sound would be my Sony SRF-A100 portable. There may be other receivers out there but I haven't run across them.

 

[rickityone]

Rickity,

The thing I noticed is that pushing the 222 hard makes things a little shrill sounding or, on the other extreme, very, very processed sounding. Using a processor in front of the 222 and only driving the final processing lightly would probably make a great deal of improvement. Also, you can always defeat the pre-emphasis on the 222 as it's not necessarily a requirement to run it with the Rangemaster.

With our the high school campus station I was lucky enough to have an Omnia AM Classic donated to them and the Rangemaster sings beautifully with plenty of bass and a nice, smooth sound with mids and highs. Processing can make or break your off-air product as much as the source material you feed into it.

As far as your comment on how good AM can sound I think we can all thank AM receiver manufacturers for all of us losing out there. I think most of them put their money into FM tuner section and come up with something low cost that passes AM and that's about it. I have a 1944 vintage E.H. Scott Marine Receiver (picture) and the AM band is nice and wideband. Considering its age it almost sounds as good as the audio I get out of a Belar AMM-3 modulation monitor I use to bench test the AM transmitters in my product reviews. I think the only "fairly modern" AM receiver I found that can show off how good AM can sound would be my Sony SRF-A100 portable. There may be other receivers out there but I haven't run across them.

Hi Bill - Our past attempts a modifying the sound with other pieces of equipment resulted in a weird breathing or pumping effect we suspected as being caused by the 222 being over driven, probably the 222 clipping the over amplified audio as it attempted to control it.

While adjusting this thing I was able to somewhat create the same effect, then I could back off on the "mix" and make it go away. According to the manual, and I've included a link to the pdf you could down load - this device does not amplify signal, instead it reshapes the sound, so to speak.

I thought about posting my little review to your Part15.us page, but not sure if you wanted such.

Here is a link that should download the manual - there isn't much to it and I found it confusing: www.cintelcorp.net/behringer-sx3040-manual

This from the manual - Section 3. Practical Application

"The SX3040 is classified as a psychoacoustic processor. These devices improve sound with sophisticated signal modifications which are subjectively perceived as clearer and more sonically pleasing. Algorithms based on the human sense of hearing influence the quality and the time-based progression of the audio signals without changing the level ratio. The sound is thereby perceived to be more contoured and voluminous."

Wish I had an Omnia AM Classic to play with.

Regards,
Rickity
www.gulchradio.com

 

[RadioMan203]

Rickity,

You can do quite a bit to color your sound through the use of creative processing. Commercial broadcasters have been using this technique for decades to give them a competitive edge and to stand out with their target audience. I remember back in the 1980's when the "loudness wars" were in full tilt and having the New York metro market blasting their audio. Then again, I remember flame throwing AMs back in the 70's and was totally amazed when I visited one AM during my teen years - the meter from the modulation monitor just hung at 100% like it was stuck there.

The effects will be cumulative between your processors so you may want to start out back off on both of them and then start gently between the two. From my experience with the 222 I would try to limit how much processing and gain reduction it does if you're looking for a more open sound. If you're looking to have a highly processed sound the 222 can do it but you may sacrifice quality with more processing.

I wasn't aware of the Behringer unit being a psychoacoustic processor. You may lose some of that if you're using either a single channel or both channels strapped together for mono. I have a Carver processor that also claims to be a psychoacoustic processor but I was going to try it on the campus-limited FM sister station to the AM. It could make for an interesting test, especially for those listening with headphone-equipped portable FM radios.

I'd love to post your review on the HobbyBroadcaster.net user reviews. You're welcome to write what you want about it and if you have pictures to accompany your review so much the better.

I'd be interested in hearing how you make out with your audio. Audio processing is one of those topics where there's many different approaches to it as there are engineers and programmers. My student station presented three different challenges: AM, FM and webstream and they're all set differently.

 

[rickityone]

Rickity,

You can do quite a bit to color your sound through the use of creative processing. Commercial broadcasters have been using this technique for decades to give them a competitive edge and to stand out with their target audience. I remember back in the 1980's when the "loudness wars" were in full tilt and having the New York metro market blasting their audio. Then again, I remember flame throwing AMs back in the 70's and was totally amazed when I visited one AM during my teen years - the meter from the modulation monitor just hung at 100% like it was stuck there.

The effects will be cumulative between your processors so you may want to start out back off on both of them and then start gently between the two. From my experience with the 222 I would try to limit how much processing and gain reduction it does if you're looking for a more open sound. If you're looking to have a highly processed sound the 222 can do it but you may sacrifice quality with more processing.

I wasn't aware of the Behringer unit being a psychoacoustic processor. You may lose some of that if you're using either a single channel or both channels strapped together for mono. I have a Carver processor that also claims to be a psychoacoustic processor but I was going to try it on the campus-limited FM sister station to the AM. It could make for an interesting test, especially for those listening with headphone-equipped portable FM radios.

I'd love to post your review on the HobbyBroadcaster.net user reviews. You're welcome to write what you want about it and if you have pictures to accompany your review so much the better.

I'd be interested in hearing how you make out with your audio. Audio processing is one of those topics where there's many different approaches to it as there are engineers and programmers. My student station presented three different challenges: AM, FM and webstream and they're all set differently.

Thanks Bill for taking the time to respond. Audio processing is a real interesting topic to me and my radio project partner here at GulchRadio. We want it to sound good.

Like your student station we have several challenges, AM and a webstream. We do a minimum of processing on the webstream, mainly volume management which is a problem with digital recordings. Digital recording levels are not consistent like vinyl recordings are. This volume management effects both AM and streaming. We run Macs here playing AAC recordings and for years used a program called Volume Logic which is now, sadly dead software, but worked really well at smoothing out the volume level output from the computers. Now we use software called iVolume which goes in and analyzes the audio data and raises and lowers the level to a level determined by the user - but, it has a problem, it goes and looks for the loudest passages and pulls the whole song down, or up to that level, so if a song has just a few peaks and big valleys then it comes across too soft.

Our stream listeners frequently positively comment on our audio quality on both our 96 and 32 streams. Therefore I am reluctant to mess with the computer end of things with audio processing software to make the AM sound better for fear of negatively impacting the stream.

We want the more natural or open sound as you describe it, not the super processed loud sound common in both AM and FM. Using LED lights on the mix board we keep it cranked back to where it just barely flicks the second level of red lights at the loudest passages, stays mostly at the top of the green.

There is a Russian software company that makes an intriguing assortment of audio processing software for both Windows and Macs - Voxengo is the name of the company, check'em out at: http://www.voxengo.com/group/compressor-plugins/

These are plugins that will work with VST based audio software - like RogueAmoeba's Audio HiJack and and Nicecast - both of which we use.

After reading what you wrote I am a little more inclined to try applying some software approaches to our audio mix along with Behringer SX 3040. Fussing with this stuff is a little difficult. This morning during my live show, I'd pull off the headphones during songs I wanted to hear on the AM and work on the 3040 listening to the studio monitor with real nice speakers. Well - I thought it was sounding great. Got off the air, came into the office, read your letter and got a listener phone call saying it sounded "fuzzy."

I haven't messed with the Inovonics yet, it scares me a little, my partner is the Inovonics and transmitter guy as he can go up and adjust the Rangemaster, I won't go on the roof, freaks me out. I did watch a youtube video showing a Behringer> Inovonics>Rangemaster chain in operation and being adjusted : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyQzH6KzXpU I think the guy running this station has the Inovonics set a little more aggressively than we do, he's got more red flashing than we do. Maybe I'll climb up there to the radio room and mess with it a bit.

Regards,
Rickity
www.gulchradio.com

 

[RadioMan203]

I actually had two separate audio processing goals in the past. When I was running an Oldies-based webstream I wanted the audio to sound similar to the late 1960's or early 1970's audio processing chains with notable compression and a little bit of breathing - something we grew up with on the AM dial. It may be great for a novelty listen but pounding your audience with that all day will lower your TSL. I decided to go toward a more open sound with both over the air and online. I opted for Aphex Compellors to gently control the levels on both chains. The web stream had an Aphex FM2020 MKI (later upgraded to a MKIII) and then replaced with a Optimod 6200 DAB. The day I changed to the Optimod I had all sorts of emails asking which I did to the station as it "… sounded much clearer."

I believe SRS Lab's iWow is an offshoot of the now defunct Volume Logic program you have. I read that somebody had a "tweak" to allow the use of the old Volume Logic software via purchasing a license for iWow. I don't recall the particulars but that may possibly help you if you have a desire to run VL.

If you running Windows I would tell you to try the Breakaway Audio processing as I've heard amazing things about it here and elsewhere. I have a love of "old school" processing so I tend to gravitate toward hardware-based audio gear instead.

Remember, audio quality is quite subjective from listener to listener, depending on their radio and own tastes. People don't understand when I tell them it's not FM when I let them hear an AM transmitter while listening off-air with a Belar modulation monitor - it's wideband, doesn't muck up the audio and can sound outstanding.. Much of the today's crop of AM radios have such narrow bandwidth that you have to make a real effort to give them something that sounds good without ruining the experience of those who have decent receivers.

If all your settings are adjusted properly you shouldn't have to re-adjust the audio control on the Rangemaster. You should be able to adjust the output of the 222 or other processor so you have good audio levels feeding it without overdriving the transmitter. I don't have the links handy but I saw an article about off-air monitoring using a scope and an AM radio. I don't recall how accurate it was since it uses the radio IF strip but it should at least let you see if you're clipping the envelope with negative peaks.

BTW: thanks for the link. Those plug-ins look quite interesting. By chance did you experiment with those yet with the Rangemaster?

 

[cgbrock]

I suppose this is somewhat of a hybrid, but it works well.

Multi-band compression and DSP: Sound Solution by Alessandro Tomassini (much time spent tweaking to taste)
Aphex Compellor for final hardware compression
Innovonics 222 for asymmetrical modulation
Rangemaster transmitter

IMHO, the station sounds better than anything else in town.


www.victory1610.com

 

[Tom Wells]

All good advice so far. I've only ever tested one "aural exciter", a very cheap box that simply seemed to add a lot of
badly behaved harmonics. I convinced the user to abandon it.

There are a dozen routes to perfection, acheiving the best balance between stages/interaction is the
fun part of experimentation. All signal levels need to be a range that allow the most "full" signal possible without
asking too much of the subsequent stages regarding levels and very importantly, headroom.

If I run the "midpoint" levels too high anywhere, the audio loses the open-ness needed to sound loud, which is not the same thing at as being loud. I like to keep most levels on software sliders and hardware levels between 50 and 66 percent.

The goal of good processing is always psycho-acoustic. You want to fool the ear into thinking it's hearing something
louder than it really is, and still maintain a believable balance between loud and soft, as perceived.

More than one output for various routes sure makes things more complex.

 

[RadioMan203]

@cgbrock: I never had great luck with the Sound Solutions product, more than likely due to losing patience with fiddling with it. I always felt more comfortable diddling knobs on either an analog or digital box. My may revisit the software again but I think my next foray into software processing will be to give Breakaway a try.

@Tom Wells: It's hard to fool the ear, at least on AM, when you have to attempt to compensate for the different qualities of receivers. When I engineered an AM daytimer I have it sounding great on the station monitors but it lacked something in the car. It would take awhile before I got the processing set where it sounded great between the car, portable and desk radio and very good in the off-air monitor. Lucky for me that at the time I didn't have to contend with any additional programming channels like online streaming.

 

[rickityone]

@cgbrock: I never had great luck with the Sound Solutions product, more than likely due to losing patience with fiddling with it. I always felt more comfortable diddling knobs on either an analog or digital box. My may revisit the software again but I think my next foray into software processing will be to give Breakaway a try.

@Tom Wells: It's hard to fool the ear, at least on AM, when you have to attempt to compensate for the different qualities of receivers. When I engineered an AM daytimer I have it sounding great on the station monitors but it lacked something in the car. It would take awhile before I got the processing set where it sounded great between the car, portable and desk radio and very good in the off-air monitor. Lucky for me that at the time I didn't have to contend with any additional programming channels like online streaming.

I'm still fiddling with it - on some songs I can get it to sound great, others ... not so great - then the car thing, sounding good on various home radios, got the volume up having a great time thinking what a genius I must be, and then as Tom points out, in the car - horrible.

Bill checked out the Voxengo link and I spent Saturday downloading their manuals and came to the conclusion there was one I wanted to try and was about to hit the "pay" button to send $79 away and my brain just kept churning over the routing of the processing and realized that these are VST plugins so therefore they are going to have to be plugged into Nicecast, the VST based streaming software, therefore it's going to change the stream audio, and I don't want to do that. Then I read all sorts of threads about the Inovonics 222 and came to the conclusion that it is fussy and will not tolerate being over driven or it will start generating a puffing effect, that on some generes of music is just awful.

Saturdays ultimate solution was to set the 3040 so it was pumping all the bass it could into the chain, messing with the "tune" and "mix" setting in both elements of the device and then resort to fussing with the mixing board (Rane) and backing the the two mid range adjustments off center a bit (negative mid range) and the end result being, the signal sounds better than it has - but not the exactly the way I want it to sound.

Did a field test with a regular listener who had complained about the sound a mile or so away - discovered she had the Sony mini stereo system set to 1680 - not properly on 1670 - that helped a lot - and listened to it and it sounded real nice, even on the complex Moody Blues "Nights In White Satin."

As I said before, this is all real interesting to me and I appreciate all the comments. We'll have this thing sounding just great any minute.

regards,
Rickity
www.gulchradio.com

 

[RadioMan203]

I know the 'preferred pair" was to use an Aphex Compellor feeding the 222 as the Compellor is really transparent and can treat the audio gently while the 222 can be more aggressive.

Unless you have separate machines to handle the audio for your stream and your air product you may have difficulty finding a good software-only solution. That's one reason I love hardware boxes. I'm helping out another educational institution which I'm hoping I can get them an older AM Optimod for their station but some folks feel those old boxes are still worth a lot of money. Unless you're willing to accept having a door stop if it gets blasted by lightning since parts aren't available for them anymore, a 9000a isn't worth what people are peddling them for - especially considering since you're looking at 30+ year old devices!

Depending on your music you may be able to get some great audio using musician's audio gear exclusively. I know people who have used combinations of the Behringer processors to build a hell of an audio chain. If you have the patience I'm sure you can probably cull something together but keep in mind you'll still need something like the 222 to give you the 125% positive peaks since a musician's processor won't have an asymmetry control.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Did a field test with a regular listener who had complained about the sound a mile or so away - discovered she had the Sony mini stereo system set to 1680 - not properly on 1670 - that helped a lot - and listened to it and it sounded real nice, even on the complex Moody Blues "Nights In White Satin."

That reminds me of a time I was at a friend's house near Bloomington, CA (SW of San Bernardino) about a month or two ago. The lady of the house (whose eyesight isn't the best anymore unfortunately) was listening to 1070 KNX .... tuned to 1080. She thought it sounded better tuned there, and I noticed it did too. The sound seemed to "open up" more (better high-end response, although yes there was IBOC hiss too) tuned to 1080 than tuned to 1070, where by comparison it sounded pretty muddy. I don't remember what model the radio was, but I think it was one of those portable round shaped Sony Radio+CD players (not sure if it had a cassette player or not).

 

[RadioMan203]

I remember a few devious engineers use to run a pilot tone for AM Stereo strictly to fool radios and have them "open up" for better fidelity - the stations weren't even operating with any AM Stereo equipment at the time.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

I remember a few devious engineers use to run a pilot tone for AM Stereo strictly to fool radios and have them "open up" for better fidelity - the stations weren't even operating with any AM Stereo equipment at the time.

I remember reading about that "pilot tone trickery" on some AM Stereo fan sites.  Seems many of the bloggers were a bit annoyed with it and wanted them to actually RUN stereo. When AM Stereo started really plummeting on its usage, I remember at least one site saying things like "K*** has ended its pilot tone trickery - no, not by adding actual stereo, but by turning the pilot OFF."

Speaking of that pilot tone and AM Stereo ...  is there a way to play, for example, Organ music, including the pedal tones from the 32-foot (16 Hz) and 64-foot (8 Hz) pipes (yes, there are actually a couple organs that exist with 64-foot pipes!) on AM Stereo? (Also is it possible to broadcast in Stereo WITHOUT using a pilot tone? Or would it not interfere with music that goes to the lowest Organ pedal notes?)

 

[RememberWHEN]

I believe all the external AM stereo generators (Delta, etc.) or the Nautel or BE transmitters that offered AM stereo as an ordered option incorporate 50 hz. roll off filters so those organ notes (not pure sine waves, mind you) will be attenuated. I don't recall the attenuation rate. This would eliminate interaction with the pilot.

I have used an audio generator directly into an AM transmitter and gotten a stereo receiver to switch to the stereo mode but the "window" is very narrow. IIRC, the spec. on AM stereo calls for the transmitted pilot tone to be something like 25 hz +/-0.1 hz. so it is tricky setting the generator.

Regards,

RememberWHEN

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Interesting.

I had (and may still have but I can't find it) a Sony SRF-42 Walkman that would force the stereo reception to be turned on for almost ALL signals. You did have to tune pretty much exactly on frequency (or within a few tens of Hz if even that much), and blank spots on the dial would be mono, though. Even weak signals that were comletely unreadable on other ultralights would be stereo with copyable audio on the 42. I wonder if that might have been able to receive stereo (if the station was sending it over the air) WiTHOUT a pilot tone?

 

[Tom Wells]

Just don't play pipe organ selections,.....or the Ventures' "Telstar"....it's got a deep note that hits 25 or 50 hz and
it's a killer test for any transmitter or radio. I bet it would play hell with a CQUAM radio.

 

[RadioMan203]

Interesting.

I had (and may still have but I can't find it) a Sony SRF-42 Walkman that would force the stereo reception to be turned on for almost ALL signals. You did have to tune pretty much exactly on frequency (or within a few tens of Hz if even that much), and blank spots on the dial would be mono, though. Even weak signals that were comletely unreadable on other ultralights would be stereo with copyable audio on the 42. I wonder if that might have been able to receive stereo (if the station was sending it over the air) WiTHOUT a pilot tone?

I'm wondering if your 42 has an alignment issue as mine never did this. When I was engineering the AM daytimer I used an SRF-42 and SRF-A1 Walkman as well as a SRF-A100 tabletop and CFS-6000 AM Stereo boombox to monitor the station, which was broadcasting in Kahn ISB AM Stereo. I never saw any of them false trigger to stereo from what I remember. I also used a few of them to evaluation a Greek-made AM Stereo hobby transmitter that works quite well, even though I wasn't a fan of the C-QUAM system.

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Interesting.

I had (and may still have but I can't find it) a Sony SRF-42 Walkman that would force the stereo reception to be turned on for almost ALL signals. You did have to tune pretty much exactly on frequency (or within a few tens of Hz if even that much), and blank spots on the dial would be mono, though. Even weak signals that were comletely unreadable on other ultralights would be stereo with copyable audio on the 42. I wonder if that might have been able to receive stereo (if the station was sending it over the air) WiTHOUT a pilot tone?

I'm wondering if your 42 has an alignment issue as mine never did this. When I was engineering the AM daytimer I used an SRF-42 and SRF-A1 Walkman as well as a SRF-A100 tabletop and CFS-6000 AM Stereo boombox to monitor the station, which was broadcasting in Kahn ISB AM Stereo. I never saw any of them false trigger to stereo from what I remember. I also used a few of them to evaluation a Greek-made AM Stereo hobby transmitter that works quite well, even though I wasn't a fan of the C-QUAM system.

I actually like it doing that. On very weak signals, it seems to make them a little more readable - it spreads the noise throughout the soundstage, while the main program is in the center if mono. With stereo programs it also helps, too, as the noise and program will often still be different directions on the auditory soundstage. Also with graveyard channels it makes them a little easier to separate (well, except for the platform motion).

Speaking of that platform motion, what do you think causes it? I'm suspecting it's co-channel interference with the carrier frequencies being not exactly synchronized. (If a station has the frequency all to itself, it usually sounds clean, even with extremely weak signals.) Is there a way to eliminate platform motion while still maintaining stereo even on very weak signals?
As for weak signals, for a couple examples from what I remember, I would receive 980 KFWB (5 kW ND @ 116 mi, mostly over land) and 1290 KZSB (was probably KZBN at the time - 500 watts ND @ 195 mi ND, ~90% saltwater path) in stereo mode on the '42. KFWB had no platform motion due to having the frequency all to itself. I don't remember exactly now, but based on recent listening with other radios, I expect there would be platform motion on 1290, as I get a trace of co-channel QRM from KKDD San Bernardino (5 kW @ 95 mi DA, all-land path), even though I usually can't make out the program most times in the day. My Panasonic RQ-SW20 (radio+cassette, walkman size), however, barely even got any carrier trace on those two stations.