Where I live I can pick up several AM stations and more at night, but none I really want to hear.

Yes its garbage........ I love analogue and do not like digital audio @ all really.... Yes I listen to streams online but I am grateful I have much better things to listen to! (My records,cassettes and 8 tracks in 100% analog)


No I prefer MONO and always have.... Im grateful my FM tuner has a MONO switch.. (But I dont listen to it much,its all mostly digitally processed crap which to me doesnt sound that good)

RE: CD quality sound: I prefer that to MP3's with artifacts or other sound loss due to the compression, but for average listening (YouTube videos, etc.) MP3's at least get the job done.

RE: new radios in cars per year: I think 10% of the cars on the highways are new. So, it would take roughly 10 years for all radios in cars to be new. Either 30% of 50% of the radios in new cars are HD AM capable (can't remember the percentage).

Even at the lower end of the percentage estimate, it's close to Sirius satellite radio penetration. Not humongous, but not trivial, either. And it will probably go up, in time.

By the time AM analog radio is more or less trivial (i.e., 30 years from now), perhaps HD AM will be cost effective for those stations on the air that use it. And, I still think there will be some analog stations on the air. Perhaps using the subscriber model (donations, like KBRD 690 in Olympia, WA, that plays 20's-40's music and has stayed on the air for over 15 years).

I'll add my vote for keeping AM analog. It's fun listening to 3 stations on the same frequency at night. For you audio people, listen to Mary Wells on "Bye,Bye ,Baby. " It sounds distorted,like they used a bad mic element, or something. Also sounds like it was recorded in someone's garage. Anyone else agree?

Early Motown recordings were a technical/audio disaster, period. The energy and talent of the artists is what made them great. It was a low-budget operation in the beginning - - with inexperienced techs. It got much better as the years passed, but they never lost that "garage" sound, as you put it. It became a signature.

Dan

All the Motown stuff sounded good on wknr and cklw when I was listening to it on a single speaker mourned in the dashboard.

From an article about Motown history:

“........one of Motown's secrets was that when a song was recorded, the engineers would make a master and then listen to it over a car radio speaker. If it sounded good on a car radio, then the engineers knew they had the right mix of vocals and instrumentation and a good chance the song might become a hit.”

I was only referring to that one Motown song, not anything else. I agree that Phil Specter knew how to make a mono song great. Another example is "Jam up and jelly tight " by Tommy Roe. You can find the original "hot mono mix" on YouTube. Definitely recommended.

A lot of the mono stuff Phil Spector did was also available in stereo, but the mono versions sound better to me.

The math isn't quite that linear. Today, the average age of a vehicle is 11 years old. This indicates that in 10 years, less than half of vehicles have new radios.

AM is really good here i can usually pick around 5-6 stations in the daytime with all of them being music and one talk/news.
Night time is a mixed bag i can pick up some other stations i like but most of time i can't a added bonus is my favorite station is still using the same analog equipment from the early 60's mind you plenty of rebuilds and repairs but it keeps going.

Point taken, but linear or not, it still is a growing number of HD-capable radios.

A lot of radio enthusiasts who dislike the idea of HD on AM say "where are the HD radios?" The fact is that increasing numbers of people don't buy standalone analog radios. They listen to radio either in the car or on their cell phone. That's why the number of car radios that are HD-capable is significant. It doesn't mean that HD on AM will be an easy sell, or even succeed, but I think the stations that want to try should be given the chance, even if its a few years down the road.

Right now there are AM stations reducing power and going off the air. It's not a massive number, but it's a disturbing trend, especially for those of us who like AM radio.

Strange you said am is reducing power as my local station has been using the same wattage since 1953. 1800 watts day and 59 night.

All of my AM locals are the same power, but in another metro on the other side of my state there are two relatively high powered stations (a 10KW and a 5KW station) which are reducing night power, because they are depending on their FM translators. I have heard of other stations in the US doing similar things. A CBC station just over the border in Canada reduced power from 50KW to 25KW. They didn't want to fix or replace the transmitter which was damaged during a fire.

Reducing power at night has been going on forever, with local stations. Our local KSUR/1260 goes from 20K daytime to 7.5K night time, as one example. Even though I am in their prime coverage area, the change in reception at sunset is very noticeable.

The FCC switch to digital TV broadcasts made all of our Casio TV-470B pocket televisions obsolete and unusable while the digital broadcasts (which were advertised to be the wave of the future) were total crap. If I had a nickel for every time a "No Signal" message appeared on the screen, I could purchase Fort Knox. In fact, I think that this transformation was to no one's benefit except perhaps the big cable companies.

Fortunately, the AM band would be a different case as people with existing radios would simply tune onto the FM band, or forgo radio listening entirely. As far as some ARF members and many others are concerned, they would just transmit their own AM broadcasts.

I already transmit my own AM and use a local FM for the input. This works fine around the house but I have this 1954 Packard amd I can only get the single AM station not doing talk which simulcasts their FM.

I suppose I could find a converter for FM on AM but the packard is a 6 volt positive ground car.

I have ranted about this before so Sorry.

I live near Phoenix AZ which is the fifth largest Metro area in the US with upwards of 5,000,000 people.

There are several AM,s on the air but most run some kind of boaring talk. We even have one doing Gun Talk. I believe most have shut off the Iboc (HD radio) due to the buzzzzzzzzz it puts in the audio. There are none running AM Stereo. You really don't need much bandwidth to do Talk-Talk.

I can't think of a good use for AM other than what it is and why not just leave the band alone and let the market decide.

Jim

There will always be analog AM stations, even if the FCC approves the idea of letting stations go all-digital.

Part of the reason will be cost of installing digital technology at the transmitter, and part of it will be a business decision -- any time a medium changes in how it's delivered, there is a trade off. When a couple local newpapers went all digital, they lost circulation anyway, although the decision may have extended their life in the long run.

I've come in a bit late to this party, but have a comment or two.

First off, there is no need to replace the AM broadcast band in the same manner as TV, since the entire band is only a tiny fragment of the size -- and there are literally billions of radios that would become obsolete overnight if the analog AM were to be turned off. Okay, so most radios made in the 1980's and later have FM, not totally obsolete, but still we have a band that would create problems if it were to disappear.

But there's another consideration, the result of an experiment: A station in Baltimore has been transmitting all-digital as an experiment, and it has been so successful that they've been petitioning the FCC to continue. They've found that listeners in cars have been "discovering" this station on the AM side (I believe they also are on FM) when tuning across the dial in their cars, and suddenly discovering the improved audio quality of this station -- and are listening. Of course not all cars receive HD, but they've determined that 20% penetration in HD brings better results than 100% penetration in normal AM. Plus, all-digital reduces bandwidth over IBOC.

Now -- I've heard both sides of HD AM radio. Some say it sounds lousy while others say it sounds great. I have HD now in my 1964 Thunderbird, but have yet to find an HD AM station in my area to listen for myself.

There is also the proposal for FM to change to HD -- which gives each frequency the ability to handle 8 stations instead of 4. All HD Radios must be built to accommodate the non-analog, 8-station format, but I personally don't see this ever, ever happening. Consumers are moving away from local radio and going toward Sirius/XM, Pandora, and whatever else, so where's the advantage of making radios obsolete so they can have more stations?

Personally, on the AM side, I wouldn't mind the concept of stations going all-digital if they wish, but requiring them to move the a channel in the 1600-1700 kHz range if they do. This simply won't hurt anything! Then, if that little band gets crowded because of high interest, this digital band can be adjusted further to 1500 and above.

You must admit, all things considered, that the FCC has overall done a great job of keeping the airwaves such that a 100-year-old radio can still be useful. Maybe unable to get your favorite station, but it still receives.

There was no real need to do it to TV, but they did it anyways.




Yes as that may cause people to not bother with replacing their FM radios and FM would lose listeners fast.



With radios definitely. They one time were that way with TV until it went digital.

Yes there was a reason, and it was the usual, $$$. The government then sold the then available spectrum to cellular providers and other buyers.

The AM band, by contrast, consists of 1 Meg of bandwidth; nowhere near the size of even one TV channel, and there's probably a good billion AM capable receivers in the country, so those numbers simply don't make sense to remove it from it's present use.