NEXT YEAR MARKS my 20th anniversary as a critic, and as you might expect,
I have accumulated zillions of recordings. As the stereo disc era became
firmly established, out of sheer lack of storage space, I gave away or sold
thousands of mono discs. Tape recordings have been piling up since 1949,
and today we have open reel tapes, cassettes, and cartridges both stereo
and quadraphonic. Plus quadraphonic discs of all the matrix formats and CD-4
discrete as well. In short, I have an almost infinite choice of music, and
since, very frankly, all these tapes and discs were "freebies",
there is a tendency to treat them in a rather "offhand" or "cavalier" fashion.
Now don't misunderstand me. There is no lack of respect for the music, the
artists, or the technological accomplishments represented by the discs or
tapes in my collection. There just isn't that sense of "possessiveness" experienced
by those who have plunked down their hard-earned dough for a disc or tape
recording. Let's face it . . . even with the discounts available today, discs
average out to about 4 dollars each and the various tape formats more than
that, so that even a very modest collection of say, a hundred or so recordings,
can represent a sizable investment. Needless to say, for a person truly interested
in music, whether his tastes run to pop or classical or both, he wants to
sample a much broader spectrum of music than that which he can afford to
incorporate in a collection. Not too surprisingly, this person turns to FM
stereo radio and acquires either a receiver or a tuner to pick up broadcasts
in this medium.
In any case, although changing tastes have had a profound effect on FM programming (mainly, sad to say, in the diminution of classical music broadcasting) there are more FM stations going on the air every year, and for a great many people, more and more reasons for acquiring a receiver or tuner. Now I have owned many FM tuners over the years. In the early days of mono FM, the principal reason for incorporating a tuner in one's hi-fi system, was that with live symphony orchestra broadcasts, you were getting the highest quality sound available. In the case of the absolutely superb special broadcasts provided by Major Edwin Armstrong (which I related to you earlier this year) the fidelity of the sound was far beyond any disc you could buy, and indeed was better than master tape recordings of that time, since the signal-to-noise ratio of the recorders was poorer than the FM signal! In spite of this we still did a lot of "off-the-air" recording. One fondly remembers using the REL "Precedent" tuner, the "Rolls-Royce" unit of those days, teamed up with a 15 ips Magnecorder.
Nowadays I live about 60 miles from the FM transmitters atop the Empire State Building in New York.
Over the past few years I have used a fairly comprehensive sampling of the better quality FM tuners. At that distance from the transmitter, and using a high quality log periodic antenna I got what I would describe as fair to good reception. But frankly, it just wasn't good enough for me to warrant much listening to this medium. I am particularly bugged by ignition noise, and in spite of fancy shielded cable and very "sanitary" wiring and lead-in practices, all of the tuners I used had this problem in varying degrees. Then too, the signal-to-noise ratio and the "quieting" on quite a few stations was less than satisfactory. One must note that because the G.E./Zenith system of FM stereo multiplexing was chosen over the technically superior Crosby system (in large part because of the aforementioned SCA) the FM stereo signal-to-noise ratio is somewhere between 16 to 23 dB poorer than FM mono SNR. As I pointed out earlier, I have an almost limitless choice of music on very high quality discs and tapes from my collection, as an alternative to FM. This, plus some of the technical shortcomings I encountered, have made me feel what may best be described as "indifferent" to FM stereo these past couple of years. In fact, I have not even had an FM tuner in my home for over a year.
You will recall that some months ago I reported on the use of the Dolby B Type noise reduction system in FM broadcasting. Essentially, a B Type encoder is installed at the transmitter before the FM signal is pre-emphasized, and the complementary B Type decoder (such as those made by Advent, Teac, Concord and others) used in reception. The result of this is an overall 8-9 dB subjective reduction in noise level, which increases the station's effective coverage area with acceptable SNR, which coverage could not ordinarily be obtained without an approximate 8-fold increase in transmitter power. Various stations around the country such as WDCS/ Portland, Me.; WAKR/Akron, Ohio; and WVUD/Dayton, Ohio have inaugurated Dolby B Type broadcasts, and the prestigious WFMT/Chicago is presenting several hours of Dolbyized broadcasts every day. Some months ago WQXR, the New York Times renowned classical music station, announced it would be broadcasting Dolby B encoded programs on a permanent round-the-clock basis. At about the same time as the WQXR/ Dolby programming went into effect, the enterprising people at Harman/ Kardon introduced their Citation 14 stereo FM tuner with built-in Dolby B Type noise reduction . . . the first tuner specifically designed for this advance in FM broadcasting techniques.
I have "lived" with a Citation 14 for some months now, and must say I am impressed with the performance of this singularly well-engineered tuner.
Now I am not about to compete with the inquisitors who will minutely dissect and discuss the inner workings of the Citation 14 in a typical Audio Profile. Let the technocrats wax enthusiastic about the "phase-locked loop circuits", the 5 section gang FM front end", "I.f. filter with sealed 9 pole phase linear LC network", "I.f. strip with 2 extremely high gain IC's", etc. etc. I leave to others the nit-picking about sensitivity figures. All I know is that I have picked up listenable stereo programs from Philadelphia, from parts of Eastern Pennsylvania, all sorts of burgs in Connecticut, and from little one-lunged college radio transmitters. Freaky? Perhaps, and I would be the first to confess that the program content of these stations was quite inconsequential. The important thing is that the stations that I am interested in . . . WNYC, WQXR and several other "good music" stations, "pop in" instantly, 60 miles from the source, rock-steady and with a cleanness of sound I have not previously encountered in FM listening.
Physically, the Citation 14 is a departure from the "traditionally" styled tuners. For one thing there is no long tuning scale. Instead there is a large window with the station frequencies in brightly luminous numbers, which are actually on a drum, which is controlled by a very smooth-acting knurled flywheel below the window. To the left of the dial scale is a center channel tuning meter, and to the left of it, the Citation 14's unique "quieting" meter. This meter "reads" signal-to-noise ratio . . . the quality of the received signal, rather than merely an indication of signal strength. In use, you strive for maximum deflection of the meter to the highest number, which represents the best listening position, even if the tuning meter is not at the center of the pass band. The front panel has an array of controls for function (mono, auto, stereo only) stereo noise filter, sliding gain controls, mute switch, power switch, etc. There are several controls unique on this tuner. One is the Dolby switch, which activates the B Type decoding circuits, and a little "double D" Dolby trademark lights up on the panel to indicate you are in this mode. The other control is a level set tone switch which activates a generator which produces a 400 Hz sine wave test tone at a level equivalent to 50% of full modulation of an FM signal. This is for use in making "off-the-air "recordings", in which the test tone is fed into recorder input level controls and the controls adjusted to read "O" VU. This will generally insure optimum SNR, but depending on the overload and input characteristics of the recorder it may be necessary to experiment a bit to find the right setting of the controls in case the reference level is too high.
It is also useful in maintaining correct "left/right" balance. I think this level set tone is a long overdue convenience and in conjunction with the handy front panel tape output jack, it makes recording from this tuner a cinch. The rear panel has the usual input/output facilities, plus an output for a quadraphonic decoder, a scope output, and a stereo threshold control and a mute threshold control, which according to their setting will permit the reception of all stereo signals irrespective of strength, or which may be set for varying degrees of signal quality.
The Dolby facilities of the Citation 14 worked very well with the Dolby B Type encoded signals from WQXR. As expected, the sound of the undecoded broadcast was a bit on the bright side, but a modest treble roll-off was all that was needed to cope with this characteristic, and it seemed to cut noise a little. With the WQXR signals decoded, there was a very audible improvement in SNR, and for the most part at least as quiet as FM stereo stations very much closer to me than 60 miles. Of course, one must not forget that the Dolby B decoder cannot overcome the basic noise of poor records or tapes. A hissy tape is still a hissy tape, but at least the noise problem isn't compounded with the noise I would be picking up from a non-Dolby broadcast which would be in effect like increasing my distance from the transmitter by a factor of three.
Getting back to the Citation 14 tuner, I am happy to report that I have yet to encounter any of my pet peeve, ignition noise. This is the first unit I have ever used in which this annoyance is apparently fully suppressed. Probably the most impressive aspects of this tuner are the really effective quieting on most of the stations I pick up from New York, and the extremely low distortion as evidenced by the cleanness of the sound.
However, it must be noted that these qualities also impose certain penalties . . . to wit; the Citation 14 is mercilessly revealing of the poor program material and technical inadequacies of many FM stations. I am utterly appalled by the rumble I hear from poor turntables, and the wow and flutter as well. And from tape machines too! And the terrible cacophony of ticks, clicks, scratches and hiss from the recordings. I suppose part of it is my fault. Probably a great many people use their FM for background listening, and thus at the usual low levels don't hear all these terrible noises and distortions. Plus the fact that few of the tuners are of the quality of the Citation unit and some masking occurs. I am not one for background music, except perhaps if it murmurs politely and unobtrusively at a cocktail bash. When I listen, I listen at a good room-filling level, and thus I hear the noises of all that junky equipment and bad recordings.
Fortunately, most of the stations I like to listen to, have pretty fair equipment and distracting sounds are minimal.
In summation, the Citation 14 Dolby FM tuner is a magnificent piece of equipment, which already has partially restored my faith in the FM medium.
While I will still draw heavily on my record and tape collection for the highest quality sound, I now know I can be confident of hearing those Boston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra tapes over WQXR with optimum quality via the Citation 14.
One final note . . . wouldn't it be nice if the musicians union would lessen their broadcast fees, so that once again we could hear the New York Philharmonic ... LIVE!
(Audio magazine, Jan. 1973; Bert Whyte)
= = = =