Does anyone else like FM?

[Mark1]

I have to admit streaming SiriusXM (bitrate probably 192kb-320kb) on the Yamaha does sound better than FM. The ESS Sabre DAC probably helps. It's not that FM couldn't sound as good, the resolution seems equivalent. Mostly it's broadcasters loudness compression and EQing, and maybe their sound processing is imparting some harmonic distortion, plus the FM tuner imparting some harmonic distortion. This Yamaha tuner while pulling in stations well certainly isn't the best. I imagine some high performance vintage tuners could do as good or better than the streaming, but you can't do much about broadcasters mangling the FM sound quality.

I'd still like to some day find a really good vintage tuner and have it aligned and verified it's working to specs.

The FM tuner is still to me a better user interface. The streaming could be the same or better with a few little changes but it's just not set up right and can't change it.

I don't know what was wrong with the Sony's tuner, but it wasn't preforming to its specs. I'm not sure if it even did new but seems to gotten worse.

 

[Doodski]

The ESS Sabre DAC probably helps.

A DAC is a DAC is a DAC. (A cliché is a cliché is a cliché.)

 

[Mark1]

A DAC is a DAC is a DAC. (A cliché is a cliché is a cliché.)

I'm starting to question whether a DAC is a DAC. I don't think my PC sound card or even some CD players DACs I had in the past sounded as natural and not as harsh as the ESS Sabre .

 

[Doodski]

I'm starting to question whether a DAC is a DAC. I don't think my PC sound card or even some CD players DACs I had in the past sounded as natural and not as harsh as the ESS Sabre .

You're dreaming...LoL. I don't doubt the Yamaha sounds different as it is a discreet amplifier design and the Sony has a STK IC in the audio path but the DACs are all so good in spec that they sound the same.

 

[Mark1]

You're dreaming...LoL. I don't doubt the Yamaha sounds different as it is a discreet amplifier design and the Sony has a STK IC in the audio path but the DACs are all so good in spec that they sound the same.

I agree the analog audio path in the Yamaha is better and part of it. I can't tell if your serious about DACs sounding the same or half joking. I haven't done enough valid testing but it sure seems like I heard a lot of harsh and unnatural digital audio that is maybe not due to bitrate or source, the analog path or distortion specs. Maybe a DAC isn't a DAC and distortion isn't distortion .

 

[Doodski]

I can't tell if your serious about DACs sounding the same

I am serious but trying to be gentle...LoL.

 

[Mark1]

I am serious but trying to be gentle...LoL.

OK fair enough . I'm not going to say there's a DAC difference, maybe it's the bitrate, but maybe the DAC could be under or overdriven or something about its design, or maybe it's something downstream in the analog audio path. All I know is the harshness and unnaturalness can be there on the same sound system and not there with an analog source even though the analog source distortion and noise is audibly worse. .

 

[Doodski]

OK fair enough . I'm not going to say there's a DAC difference, maybe it's the bitrate, but maybe the DAC could be under or overdriven or something about its design, or maybe it's something downstream in the analog audio path. All I know is the harshness and unnaturalness can be there on the same sound system and not there with an analog source even though the analog source distortion and noise is audibly worse. .

Well... All in all it's nice you got a new Yamaha. Should provide many years of service.

 

[mhardy6647]

A DAC is a DAC is a DAC. (A cliché is a cliché is a cliché.)

Gertrude Stein is Gertrude Stein is Gertrude Stein.

OK... was... work with me here, OK?

 

[Mark1]

I was reading a book from the late 1980s about digital audio on worldradiohistory.com. Discussing digital sampling and quantization, mentions that if one thinks it's a gross distortion of a wave,

The idea of carrying an audio wave by making use of samples is not in any way new, and is inherent in amplitude modulation radio systems which were considered reasonably good for many years. It is equally inherent in frequency modulation, and it is only the use of a fairly large amount of frequency change (the peak deviation) that avoids this type of quantization becoming too crude. Of all the quantized ways of carrying an audio signal, in fact, FM is probably the most satisfactory, and FM methods are often adopted for digital recording, using one frequency to represent a 0 and another to represent a 1.

I never thought of it that way being analog that the carrier wave is in effect sampling and quantizing the audio wave or maybe the audio wave is sampling the carrier.

 

[mhardy6647]

I was reading a book from the late 1980s about digital audio on worldradiohistory.com. Discussing digital sampling and quantization, mentions that if one thinks it's a gross distortion of a wave,


I never thought of it that way being analog that the carrier wave is in effect sampling and quantizing the audio wave or maybe the audio wave is sampling the carrier.

Pretty sure that good ol' dial-up modems use frequency modulation to transmit a digital datastream.
Well, OK, I was close! FSK (frequency shift keying).

As far as quantization and (analog) FM - take a look at how multiplex stereo works. It is beastly clever, rather sophisticated, and quite demanding stability and state of tune of the circuitry employed to decode the multiplexed signal from the broadcaster.

source: https://transmitters.tripod.com/stereo.htm

 

[Mark1]

Pretty sure that good ol' dial-up modems use frequency modulation to transmit a digital datastream.
Well, OK, I was close! FSK (frequency shift keying).

As far as quantization and (analog) FM - take a look at how multiplex stereo works. It is beastly clever, rather sophisticated, and quite demanding stability and state of tune of the circuitry employed to decode the multiplexed signal from the broadcaster.

View attachment 430610
source: https://transmitters.tripod.com/stereo.htm

Pretty interesting. I'm not sure if it's a good comparison for the book to compare analog AM and FM modulation to digital audio sampling and quantization since the audio signal remains analog in FM , but I thought it was an interesting comparison, and I can sort of see the similarity.

 

[RoyRoyRoy]

If you live in Ottawa (Canada), there's a station 95.7 Element FM that transmits in "HD" that doesn't have much commercials and plays lots of good music (to my taste). Great quality. My second being 91.5 CBC HD 1 and HD 2, where the HD 2 is actually 103.3 CBC Radio 2 and 91.5 is talk radio.

The 3rd station transmitting in HD is 100.3, which put 580 AM (talk radio) and 1200 AM (talk radio/sports) in the HD 2, and HD 3 sub-bands, respectively.

If you have an HD FM Receiver in your car, you can actually hear the quality improve as it first tunes the radio in FM, then takes 2-3 seconds to acquire the HD signal. Nice quick A/B test.

Does anyone know what is the bitrate of HD FM? I personally think it sounds great. Definitely better than regular FM. Unfortunately, in my home I don't have an HD FM Receiver, but my trusty old Yamaha RX-596 (reviewed here in ASR). I've also had analog Sony STR-6800, (excellent) Onkyo TX-18 (ok), and still have my digital Denon TU-550 (excellent) which sounds great, and an old NAD 4225 (excellent), which I gifted to a friend, that I also found to be an excellent digital tuner.

The Sangean HDT-20 (https://www.sangean.com/en/product/hdt-20-black) looks very nice. I don't have it, but I can see myself buying it if Ottawa gets more than 3 stations in HD.

 

[Mark1]

If you live in Ottawa (Canada), there's a station 95.7 Element FM that transmits in "HD" that doesn't have much commercials and plays lots of good music (to my taste). Great quality. My second being 91.5 CBC HD 1 and HD 2, where the HD 2 is actually 103.3 CBC Radio 2 and 91.5 is talk radio.

The 3rd station transmitting in HD is 100.3, which put 580 AM (talk radio) and 1200 AM (talk radio/sports) in the HD 2, and HD 3 sub-bands, respectively.

If you have an HD FM Receiver in your car, you can actually hear the quality improve as it first tunes the radio in FM, then takes 2-3 seconds to acquire the HD signal. Nice quick A/B test.

Does anyone know what is the bitrate of HD FM? I personally think it sounds great. Definitely better than regular FM. Unfortunately, in my home I don't have an HD FM Receiver, but my trusty old Yamaha RX-596 (reviewed here in ASR). I've also had analog Sony STR-6800, (excellent) Onkyo TX-18 (ok), and still have my digital Denon TU-550 (excellent) which sounds great, and an old NAD 4225 (excellent), which I gifted to a friend, that I also found to be an excellent digital tuner.

The Sangean HDT-20 (https://www.sangean.com/en/product/hdt-20-black) looks very nice. I don't have it, but I can see myself buying it if Ottawa gets more than 3 stations in HD.

I think HD Radio has 96kbps of bandwidth or 120kbps with extended hybrid. So usually there is 2 channels and maybe 3 with extended to divided the bitrate. HD1 is usually highest bitrate, probably around 64kbps. Some people prefer the sound quality of even low bitrate digital to analog FM. There might be less harmonic distortion and noise with digital but I prefer the definition of analog FM unless the digital's bit rate is over 160kb or at least over 128kb.

 

[RoyRoyRoy]

I think HD Radio has 96kbps of bandwidth or 120kbps with extended hybrid. So usually there is 2 channels and maybe 3 with extended to divided the bitrate. HD1 is usually highest bitrate, probably around 64kbps. Some people prefer the sound quality of even low bitrate digital to analog FM. There might be less harmonic distortion and noise with digital but I prefer the definition of analog FM unless the digital's bit rate is over 160kb or at least over 128kb.

I have to say, when I listen to analog FM on my Yamaha Receiver, it sounds great! It's too bad I can only listen to HD FM in my car...which is a Subaru Forester with the OEM radio and amplifier. All baseline equipment and nothing special.

And yes, you did remind me that the more HD sub-channels there are on a HD station, the more they have to divide the bandwidth among those channels, thereby lowering quality. I guess that's why the 2 other stations just put talk radio on their sub channels as they probably give those the smallest bandwidth, and and give more to the music one.

HD FM in Canada has been super slow to uptake and most users don't even know it even exists.

 

[Mark1]

I have to say, when I listen to analog FM on my Yamaha Receiver, it sounds great! It's too bad I can only listen to HD FM in my car...which is a Subaru Forester with the OEM radio and amplifier. All baseline equipment and nothing special.

And yes, you did remind me that the more HD sub-channels there are on a HD station, the more they have to divide the bandwidth among those channels, thereby lowering quality. I guess that's why the 2 other stations just put talk radio on their sub channels as they probably give those the smallest bandwidth, and and give more to the music one.

HD FM in Canada has been super slow to uptake and most users don't even know it even exists.

I'm also using a Yamaha receiver now. It's brand new and FM tuner sound quality is pretty good but I don't think it's as great as past tuners. You might have a previous model with a better tuner. My Yamaha receiver though sounds great when you play a somewhat higher bit rate digital source like around 160kbps-320kb.

Here in the US at least in my city there's a lot of HD Radio broadcasting, but strangely almost no home receivers or automotive radios have HD Radio tuners. Home audio FM tuners seemed to be really decontented from in the past. My home receivers don't even display any RDS station information but all my car radios do.