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Does anyone else like FM?

Almost no choice at all, but - thankfully - two good stations. :)
I used to get one of the good school stations a long time ago in the bay area, but have moved to a couple different places since....with no such reception. Where I live now there's maybe two FM repeater driven stations but the content....meh.
 
I used to get one of the good school stations a long time ago in the bay area, but have moved to a couple different places since....with no such reception. Where I live now there's maybe two FM repeater driven stations but the content....meh.
Definitely the mode (statistically speaking) nowadays. :(
I still love the technology of mono compatible MPX stereo FM. Beastly clever -- way more interesting than tweaking code. :eek: (edit: plus ;) )
 
Definitely the mode (statistically speaking) nowadays. :(
I still love the technology of mono compatible MPX stereo FM. Beastly clever -- way more interesting than tweaking code. :eek: (edit: plus ;) )
Definitely what mode? Not surprising its more interesting than tweaking....
 
I still listen to FM a lot where I live, in France, close to the border with Belgium.

In France, and generally in Europe, there are good radio stations, without ads or to much of them, and which are broadcasting classical music (I think of the public radio station France Musique or the local radio station Accent 4 in Alsace, where I used to live, and Klara and Musiq3 in Belgium) and great legacy pop music (Classic 21 is the best, broadcasted from Belgium).
Here in the Netherlands we have a fair number of good quality national public radio stations with only minimal advertisements and some good programming of news and discussion, plus one station with classical music. These stations all broadcast simultaneously in FM, DAB+ and on the internet. However, the FM signal comes via the cable company because in most places we are fortunately not allowed to have an antena on the roof because it is so ugly. At home I have now moved to internet radio because that is better than FM in my experience, and provides me with radio from all over the world (if something happens in Germany I tune in to German radio, for France to French radio, etc). In the car we now have a quite basic DAB+ radio which is a lot better than FM in the car. DAB+ is also a bit better than sending an internet radio stream via BT from a phone.
 
Here in the Netherlands we have a fair number of good quality national public radio stations with only minimal advertisements and some good programming of news and discussion, plus one station with classical music. These stations all broadcast simultaneously in FM, DAB+ and on the internet. However, the FM signal comes via the cable company because in most places we are fortunately not allowed to have an antena on the roof because it is so ugly. At home I have now moved to internet radio because that is better than FM in my experience, and provides me with radio from all over the world (if something happens in Germany I tune in to German radio, for France to French radio, etc). In the car we now have a quite basic DAB+ radio which is a lot better than FM in the car. DAB+ is also a bit better than sending an internet radio stream via BT from a phone.
I thought europe largely just discontinued radio broadcast vs DAB....or is it a period of providing both for a while still? I'm on the other side of the pond so just curious....
 
Definitely what mode? Not surprising its more interesting than tweaking....
Mediocre to poor content is the mode (not in terms of fashion.... it's the most common single 'result' in the dataset for broadcast radio stations).
as in mean, median, mode.
 
Most countries in Europe still have FM concurrent with more and more DAB+. We are eagerly waiting for more widespread DAB+ (most countries never had ordinary DAB). The FM frequencies are much in demand for other applications such as mobile phones (same with TV).
 
Mediocre to poor content is the mode (not in terms of fashion.... it's the most common single 'result' in the dataset for broadcast radio stations).
as in mean, median, mode.
Not sure I understand what you mean. I was just trying to ascertain what you meant by mode....
 
I listen to FM daily: news in the morning then Jazz-a-la-mode at night after work. Only piece of vintage gear I still use is this McIntosh MR78, which my tech (who was part of the outside team that did testing during its development back in the 70's) biased the reception to favor the lower end of the dial so I could better pick up 88.5 out of Springfield, MA, a public station roughly 45 miles away with a bunch of hills and trees in between. I could barely pull it with every other tuner I tried, but now on relatively clear days I can get a good strong stereo signal and don't need to use the noise filtering. I have A/B many times between the live broadcast over FM and the same program streaming (usually about 30 seconds behind) and there is a pretty stark difference. The FM is full bodied and has better articulated bass, while the stream sounds thin and a little off tonally. It's probably because its a highly compressed MP3 stream, but its pretty much unlistenable compared to the FM broadcast.
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Not sure I understand what you mean. I was just trying to ascertain what you meant by mode....

Where I live now there's maybe two FM repeater driven stations but the content....meh.
my responses are to your comment "but the content... meh."

On (commercial, in particular) broadcast radio in the US, "meh" content is the mode, in a statistical sense.

From Google AI (and this is the first time I've ever quoted Google AI) :p
In statistics, "mean" refers to the average value of a data set (calculated by adding all values and dividing by the number of values), "median" is the middle value when data is ordered from least to greatest, and "mode" is the value that appears most frequently in the data set; all three are considered measures of central tendency, indicating the "typical" value within a data set.
 
my responses are to your comment "but the content... meh."

On (commercial, in particular) broadcast radio in the US, "meh" content is the mode, in a statistical sense.

From Google AI (and this is the first time I've ever quoted Google AI) :p
I meant by meh content to be the typically bad corporate radio content. As well as the consumer angle I suppose. Hard to judge particular musical tastes by any algorithm, tho
 
Yes, of course. Meh rules the [air]waves. Used to be Britannia.
;)
 
Wouldn't surprise me FM reception better than internet unless perhaps in a large city. As to using spotify in the car I have used a cord to plug into the aux on my head unit, using saved spotify downloads, but just is more work than its worth really. Not about quality but convenience/ease of use. I never had Sirius or other sat services but comments about such kept me away plus the limited use I'd have for such (just don't drive as much as I used to). OTOH most of my FM experience was with real dj's spinning vinyl over the air....
Yeah SiriusXM in the car, unlike at home unless you have a SXM tuner and not streaming it, is very convenient on most car radios. It's just like using FM. I do think the sound quality is digitally compressed below FM quality, but it's not a huge difference really, and you get used to it. One could argue that it sounds as good or better in a sense than FM because it seems FM stations-air is being bass and treble boosted-annoying. I accept the lackluster sound quality for better content and no commercials vs FM. SXM can be kind of pricey ~$22 months for being low fidelity if you don't get a discount. So FM wins on costs.

My FM experience started with djs spinning vinyl when I was a kid and I been using FM to date.
 
Definitely the mode (statistically speaking) nowadays. :(
I still love the technology of mono compatible MPX stereo FM. Beastly clever -- way more interesting than tweaking code. :eek: (edit: plus ;) )
I find radio technology fascinating in general. Heterodyning seems clever especially when you consider it was developed in what the 1920s? I have love hate view of digital and coding :p.
 
I find radio technology fascinating in general. Heterodyning seems clever especially when you consider it was developed in what the 1920s? I have love hate view of digital and coding :p.
Totally (re: heterodyne)! :) But even way, way back to spark gap transmitters. Imagine the overwhelming thrill of detecting the first trans-Atlantic transmission.

Oh, @Chrispy
If I hadn't been busy eating dinner :) I'd have mentioned this shortly before the program started... With the caveat that my taste in music is my own alone, and de gustibus non est disputandum, ;) If you are inclined tonight or any Sunday evening from 7 to 10 pm Eastern US Time (00 to 03 hrs Coordinated Universal Time) give a listen to All the Traditions at https://www.vermontpublic.org/
Do I like everything the host plays? No, but on the other hand, the program's introduced to music I love and never would have heard otherwise.
Much of it isn't hard to find, but why would I have been looking for it? ;)

Some examples (best I can do in terms of links and quality):

OTA, their program sounds very good, too. :)
 
That's another knock against streaming cell phone user in cars are a hazard to us motorcyclists :p. I wonder if car touch screen are much better in regard to distracted drivers. It's illegal to use a cellphone not hands free in a car here to. I think one needs Android Audio or CarPlay to really make cell phone integration in your car very workable. Anyway, I listen to FM at home, SXM in the car. FM is probably a better situation here than in many other countries.
yes car play is what i have otherwise it would be a danger to answer the phone
 
Isn't there a relation between FM signal strength and loudness? Isn't that why FM broadcasters use dynamic compression, to equalize the quiet and loud parts of the music so they can turn the FM transmission signal output up to the max without worry about exceed it resulting in louder music playback (with an annoying loss of dynamic range as a side effect).

Actually I'm a little unclear how the loudness vs the frequency of a music signal and carrier signal power modifies the carrier frequency.

For example, I notice that an oldies station plays quieter, but I notice its FM signal must be weaker because I usually only tune mono. Other stations that play loud and seem dynamically compressed also seem to have a strong stereo signal. So I wondered if loudness could be a reliable indication of audio compression.
 
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