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
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