by Edward Tatnall Canby
I've been listening to FM radio again. Not that this is anything new.
My FM listening goes back to the earliest public broadcasts, 35 years ago and more. But being a record reviewer (and column writer) I am not a very systematic tuner-in, what with all those reproachful piles of unplayed discs awaiting their turn on my fi. So I come and I go. Unless, of course, there is some very special reason for radio listening.
Like, say, my own FM program coming out to me 100 miles from the " Big City." That turns me on quick. Or trying out a new tuner, to see whether maybe I can pull in Norfolk, Virginia, once again, from far Northwest Connecticut. 350 miles? Or Delaware. Or maybe our home city, Philadelphia, down there 150 miles SW. In the past I have often combined these interesting activities, for professional reasons, i.e., this column. Now after a considerable hiatus I am back. Same old excellent roof antenna but a brand-new tuner, the latest. And am I startled at what it can do. Though it can't cure all FM problems, nor can any other tuner for that matter.
You understand, some years back I suddenly found myself no longer emanating from New York's own station WNYC after exactly 25 years of weekly broadcasts. Shake up. One Sunday, I just wasn't there, and that is the last I ever heard. Not unsurprisingly, my 100-mile FM listening thereafter began to languish and "fade away. Should I listen to the XXXX Philharmonic "live" (on tape as of summer-before-last) when 20 other Philharmonics sit unplayed in their LP jackets under my nose? So I quit. News and weather via AM became my austere radio diet.
Also, around that time (the chronology is a bit confused) my powerful antenna rotator slowly ground itself to a halt one winter day at 10 below zero and never moved again. Leaving me hind-side-foremost, the antenna pointing away from New York, vaguely towards the North Magnetic Pole. Too much! Like the fig tree, my FM listening went temporarily dormant. I lost all my fig leaves.
In any case I tend to work in cycles, and it was now a good time for interests other than FM.
But then suddenly, unexpectedly, I was back on the FM air again. New station, also New York, also from the Empire State Bldg. Not at all to my surprise, I again discovered--after so long-a pressing need to listen to FM at 100 miles. And was I unprepared! I fished out an old FM tuner (no--not the Fisher) and hooked it to the leads from my Magnetic Pole antenna on the roof and to my current hi fi, hoping that the rear of the antenna array would still pick up New York. All too quickly, though, I found that my new program at 100 miles consisted of (a) a vast roar of hiss with an occasion al extremely faint ghost of my voice, just to prove I was there, and (b) a veritable traffic jam of loud, boisterous FM rock and country music, two adjacent stations elbowing their way rudely on each side, straight across and far beyond my own frequency. Outrageous! I have never felt so insulted, so squashed, so impotent. One station turned out to be 40 miles off to the right, at 90 degrees but it was LOUD.
The other was to the left, maybe 30 degrees and 50 miles. These distances rate (and sound) as nearby, in country FM. Together, these two fought it out full blast over my faintly gasping voice, a hideous mayhem of sonic struggle.
Atrophied Antenna
I figured I really ought to check that antenna. On the roof, I found it as you might guess. Both leads were neatly snipped off, no doubt by that last big ice storm a winter ago. Non-direction al pickup via long lead-in. No wonder the 90-degree monster came in so loud.
You will believe, though, that in very short order I was suggesting to our editor it was FM time once again and how about me trying a brand-new state-of-the-market FM tuner (with re paired antenna) to see what was going on now in the same old location, same 100 miles, via the same old ears? With my antenna once more aimed at New York, there ought to be solid improvements in tuner performance, I said, and I hoped. Result: The Pioneer TX-9500 II AM/FM tuner, the first of the current breed I've tried since the big hiatus, when I fell dormant like the fig tree.
This big machine (dimensionally the largest I've had) is, with its tricky new circuits and special controls, representative of the present and very advanced state of FM tuners. I have been astonished, delighted, exasperated, and intrigued by turns, as the unit has gone to work in my time-honored spot right where the great tuners of older days worked so well for me. But this one did better. It even brought me listenable 100-mile stereo. More on that at a later date.
Of course, it picked up my new New York station with ease. In fact, the first day I did a rush hookup to an indoor attic antenna that was orientated crosswise (to get a station I often used info) and even so I got instant complete limiting in mono for New York with no audible interference. Selectivity, in the narrow-band position--Pioneer and others offer wide-band and narrow-band i.f.--for precisely this sort of situation as well as the easy tuning sort. Ha! My two monsters had vanished.
When the repaired and re-orientated roof antenna was hooked in, I found that every New York station I knew peaked out on the signal-strength meter at between 3 and 5 on a scale of 5 (full mono limiting begins just be yond 1) and most were up in the near-saturation range (marked by a heavy black bar) between 4 and 5. That, my friends, is what sensitivity can do, along with selectivity, for us distant country listeners. At 100 miles! Right there, I figured my FM update was a success.
Citified Sound
It occurs to me, as I write this, that what most of us hear about FM is geared strictly to what's nearby and metropolitan. Reading the accounts, you wouldn't think there was any FM beyond those far-distant suburbs of the big and the little burgs, all of 20 or 25 miles out. (Same with the weather info. Rain in New York, they say, may be some snow in the Northern suburbs, and we get two feet up here.) FM, at least in words, is city bound.
Now it is true that most do live in cities and therefore us country folks are a minority. Who needs minorities in a booming market? (Well, even in a non-booming market.) But we do exist, and I often wonder how you people out in the great Western open spaces manage to get along with your FM. There is, of course, the universal law of diminishing returns: The fewer the inhabitants, the fewer the stations to interfere with your distance reception. With us, in the Northeast, it's war, a concentration of stations that leaves nothing to, shall I say, chance.
The slightest weakness, the mildest misalignment, the tiniest overproduction of transmitter signal, and there's a sonic massacre. Outside the city, I mean.
In the city, FM tends to be much like TV. You get only the city stations--everything else in the whole wide country is swallowed up and silent.
Every local station comes in whammo on the meter and like cat's paws out of your speaker via muting--which al ways works. (In the country, muting circuits neatly knock out all but the noisiest rock stations.) Your city problems are not a hundred FM competitors all over the place but very nearby things like trucks in the streets, elevators, refrigerators, and most of all, multi-path reflections from all those buildings. It's a world in itself, this city listening, and for us who are outside of ten strange and hard to believe. So it is no wonder that good tuner makers provide all the circuitry they can to help the city people with their special problems. Notably on the 9500 II, a 75-ohm unbalanced antenna input in addition to the usual two-way balanced 300-ohm connection. Also a whole section of multipath test circuitry, built right into the tuner. One part of it works by ear, at the flip of a front switch, so you can adjust your antenna for minimum multi. With more finesse, there's an output for a scope whereby you may look right at the multi-path element and, hopefully, do something about it. The circuit itself can't do a thing.
I flipped the multi-path switch a couple of times and hastily flipped it back again--such a roar of distortion! So we, too, have multi-path. But it isn't likely to be off buildings, if my geometry is any good. At 100 miles a sky scraper reflection near the transmitter might look like part of the point source. But we do have mountains.
And do we have planes! In the city, a plane every half minute is nothing but the signals mostly override, as they do on TV, and only a few get through to the screen or the ears. Out in the country, where signals are enormously attenuated (and more credit to the currently ultra-sensitive tuners), these transient multi-path plane reflections can be very annoying. Horridly pulsing swishes. You can't really adjust your antenna to them, unless you mount it on a telescope and lie in wait. So I'm leaving multi-path for later experiments, when I can get back up on the roof again.
Country Color
Country FM, in spite of all this, is a challenge and often intensely interesting when you put your mind to it. We get a lot more variety and plenty of variously local color, even if much of it is bedraggled with interference and/or drowned in sawtoothed noise. We even get distance, of a sort. I got Norfolk only once--a shortwave-type freak. But Wilmington, Delaware, used to pester me right next to New York's WNYC (and right behind it direction ally), sometimes overlapping its signal with ours. (What--there isn't sup posed to be any overlap? Says you!) And that's over 150 miles, maybe nearer 200. It does happen and often with (temporary) full limiting. In mono, of I am unable to hear a sound from the whole expanse of Northern and Middle New England because, unfortunately, there is a hill right behind my house to the NE and it must be made of solid iron; this is iron country and used to be a mining center in the early days. But to the South and West, downhill (I am up a few thousand feet), I have a whole panorama of the good and the bad, the best and the worst of the great Northeast Corridor.
Mostly, alas, the worst.
What I notice most of all now, as compared to a few years back, is the proliferation of--well, need I say more? I am aware that right now at those very stations, there are some of our engineer readers busy perusing this very page, so I must keep my big trap half shut. But really-! Such noises. Most tuners provide a good big signal-strength meter and another for tuning, and over the years I myself have learned to read meters even faster than music. What comes forth from some of these new stations not only insults my meters, but my ears too.
You should see the levels, for a similar signal strength, as I read my Sony 2010 (two and four channels, four meters, very useful switches). Without any doubt, my ears and eyes tell me, the louder the levels, relatively speaking, the uglier the sound. And I will NOT blame either Pioneer or Sony or any other element of my good hi fi for the hideous blasts I have been getting out of this latest FM listening. I'll say no more, for fear of sliding into a technical morass. You argue.
Yea, I know. The more the level, the more attention you get. Not from me, brother.
Curiously (and just to show you how impartial I am--well, fairly impartial), the "beautiful music" back ground stations within my range not only run at lower over-all levels, it seems, but also produce a far cleaner and nicer sound. This surely is deliberate and in the nature of the programming. Rock/pop/country music, auto mated or no, is not put out to lull any body to sleep at the receiving end, least of all the jumping teenager. On the other hand, "beautiful music" by its very nature is designed to soothe the troubled ear. Too bad I'm allergic to it. So, of course, the engineering department goes out of its way (with pleasure) to produce a lovely, smooth, gentled signal, with those silky violins sneaking along the top. So clean in deed that you don't even know it's there--not consciously, anyhow. Or am I crazy? That's what my ears tell me. When I am conscious, that is.
Classical Connoisseur
As for classical music, that vast area is my own favorite and my delight (when it is good), and we do have it in our region more than most, except on the other coast. Not only the three or four full-time outlets in New York but a number of Public Radio stations over to the West, 80 miles or more into New York State and even up into Massachusetts, at the edge of my iron hill.
Now, I have long understood, myself, that as an audio signal almost any classical music runs at an average level far below that of pop music, which is basically designed for efficient audio reproduction. In comparison, the classical stuff usually sounds weak, as it should. There's also the huge dynamic range of the heavier classics, meaning, a "ceiling" that puts the dynamic floor 'way down--or leads to vitiation via limiters. Problems for records, even worse on the air. But this isn't all. By its nature (not intended for audio sound) much reproduced classical music actually sounds less loud to the ear than it reads on the meter. Less punch, if more content.
You can hear all this only too easily as you wheel across the FM dial. The classical stations often sound thin and ineffective as you pass by them from noise stations (if you will pardon the phrase). Too bad, because a lot of new listeners think it's classical's fault.
Not really. It wasn't designed for broadcast. Yet even so, with (a) some understanding and (b) a maximum of technical ingenuity, both in the broad casting and in the receiving, your classical music can come very much into its own via radio as thousands of our readers know.
Who cares, after all, if that nasty station next on the dial is much louder just so long as it doesn't interfere when the classical music is playing.
You can always turn up the volume control. For this, the tuner manufacturers are helping us enormously with their newly high-selective circuit designs, to keep all that noise in its rightful place. Which means you can take it. Or leave it. Period. Even at 100 miles and the competition much nearer. Am I glad. And thanks, you tuner makers.
Well, I do declare. Speaking of fig trees, I have one right at my elbow.
When I brought it inside last fall it went dormant, dropping all its leaves. I just looked and, do you know, the thing is putting out green buds, right at the bottom of winter. It must be frequency modulated. More on FM next month. And on 100-mile stereo.
(Source: Audio magazine, Apr. 1979; Edward Tatnall Canby )
= = = =