I am unaccepting of the non-cancellation of the IBOC sidebands, the impossibly critical center-tuning required, and the imposed
high-frequency cut-off, all these ruining my reception of the host analog everywhere WITHIN the defined market.
Bob Orban, in ba.broadcast, mentions the development of recent Optimods and a sample of consumer receivers: at 4.1 kHz, receivers were 10 db down! Rolling at 5, 6 or 7 kHz (the latter two are possible) produces no impact on consumer grade AM radios. In fact, in many cases, it improves it.
The muffling of AM analog is a totally manufactured problem.
It's much easier and cheaper to design a proper AM receiver with 10-15 Khz of IF bandwidth.
It's too late to change anything in this area. Manufacturers know nobody under 45 or 50 cares about AM, so they save money with the cheapest AM stage possible.
With such a complacent attitude about degrading standards and purity, it would be small stretch to think you might be accepting about
loosening other standards.
The biggest issue is the increase of man made noise. This forces stations to focus only on the most intense signal areas.
And as to changing standards, anything that might make AM viable in the future is a good idea. Staying as we are is not.
I don't see any justification for marginalizing any listeners, or relaxing engineering standards.
We are talking about changing standards to reflect reality.
AM standards were implemented when most listening was in the evening, and much of it by skywave, before TV changed the model. Today, AM gets practiacally no listening in the evening, and skywave listening is made irrelevant by 14,000 total stations in the US (when the band was reorganized in the early 30's, there were only a few over 500 stations.
There won't be any younger listeners until the content adresses them.
It has been proven that AM formats, when put on FM attract vastly more 35-54 listening. The fact is that younger listeners will not tolerate AM as it is in its analog form.
Do you not remember when AMs had to run proofs, back when they sounded good?
See how much better the radio sounds since engineers are no longer required?
Yeah, I remeber when equipment was not stable, and tube deterioration changed the specs of a whole station. Today's gear is reliable, and T1 STLs and digital processors and test gear pretty much obviate the need for a proof. In fact, I had some incredible sounding AMs in the 60's and never did a proof. I think most AMs today, at least the viable ones, sound better.
Put an SAS board fed by an uncompressed AudioVault, an Optimod, a T1 link and a Nautel RX 50 and you have a really nice sounding station... better than stuff of the 60's coming off Yards and through Audimax and Volumax chains fed into Marti STLs and high level plate modulated transmitters with unbalanced modulators.
Being in the business so long, you have completely forgotten that radio was never defined by the FCC as a BUSINESS, but a SERVICE.
My concern is for what th elistener wants. It all falls in place if you pay attention to listners. Since the 20's, radio has been a business, as that is the way the programming gets out of the speakers.
