The future of my FM tuner is uncertain

[jma2]

Besides computer based audio listening and streaming I still listen to a great sounding Creek FM tuner which is connected via coax to my local provider (Internet, digital radio/TV and cable FM service).

I mainly listen to FM radio stations located outside the country, which cannot be received using an outdoor antenna on the roof for example.

End of the year my cable provider will remove analog FM from the cable, which is also happening in other countries in Europe to free up bandwidth to increase the Internet access throughput over the cable (via Docsis 3.1(?)). (Rumor has it that in 2030 FM broadcast in general will go away to release part of the spectrum for other purposes)

 

The foreign radio stations I listen to also provide streams to tune in (I have them as favorites in my LMS server), but the bitrate (and quality) of the streams is very poor compared to the way I'm used to listen. An A/B comparison makes you really cry 😞 So for the moment computer based audio unfortunately appears not to be helpful in this case.

 

Many people also refer to DAB+, but that's not an option with the foreign stations. A DVB-C radio tuner might be an option (some digital transmitted radio stations will remain on the cable) but I haven't seen any decent listening tests with those.

 

I'm not sure to what extent cable FM service is available outside Europe and if other people are confronted with a similar problem? If you have found or worked out solutions to somehow keep your FM tuner operational, let me know. I would hate to see my perfectly working, long-time companion FM-tuner on a large pile of other write-off working equipment, but for now I am pessimistic.

 

 

 

[gmgraves]

On 2/15/2020 at 5:46 AM, jma2 said:

Besides computer based audio listening and streaming I still listen to a great sounding Creek FM tuner which is connected via coax to my local provider (Internet, digital radio/TV and cable FM service).

I mainly listen to FM radio stations located outside the country, which cannot be received using an outdoor antenna on the roof for example.

End of the year my cable provider will remove analog FM from the cable, which is also happening in other countries in Europe to free up bandwidth to increase the Internet access throughput over the cable (via Docsis 3.1(?)). (Rumor has it that in 2030 FM broadcast in general will go away to release part of the spectrum for other purposes)

 

The foreign radio stations I listen to also provide streams to tune in (I have them as favorites in my LMS server), but the bitrate (and quality) of the streams is very poor compared to the way I'm used to listen. An A/B comparison makes you really cry 😞 So for the moment computer based audio unfortunately appears not to be helpful in this case.

 

Many people also refer to DAB+, but that's not an option with the foreign stations. A DVB-C radio tuner might be an option (some digital transmitted radio stations will remain on the cable) but I haven't seen any decent listening tests with those.

 

I'm not sure to what extent cable FM service is available outside Europe and if other people are confronted with a similar problem? If you have found or worked out solutions to somehow keep your FM tuner operational, let me know. I would hate to see my perfectly working, long-time companion FM-tuner on a large pile of other write-off working equipment, but for now I am pessimistic.

 

 

 

You certainly have reason to be pessimistic. Let me digress for a moment, if you will. Here in the States, FM, years ago, became essentially useless. A victim of its own success. When I was growing up and a young burgeoning audiophile, I lived just south of Washington DC, in Virginia. I had, as a teen, an excellent FM tuner (for the time). It was made by a company called EICO (Electronic Instrument Company) and was bought as a kit. HiFi was inexpensive in those days and even kid could afford a decent system with proceeds from a Saturday or after school job. We lived about 20 miles south of DC, so we had a roof mounted VHF antenna for me to tap into for FM. 
In those days (early ‘60’s) even in a fairly large metropolitan area like Washington, had only a few FM stations and they were fairly distributed across the dial from 88 to 108 MHz. The kids all listened to “rock-‘n-roll” on “Top-40” AM and hadn’t yet discovered FM, that would occur later in the decade. On FM one had college stations, Classical music stations, and what was then called MOR (Middle Of The Road) stations playing Sinatra, Steve and Edie Gorme, Dinah Washington, et al. There was a folk station that played Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary etc., but that was about as diverse as FM got in those days.

The main point was that FM, like AM was mono. Stereocasting wouldn’t officially begin until mid January 1962. Stations were so far apart, that nobody cared if a station over-modulated. When they did that, they used more than 260 KHz of bandwidth that each station was allocated by the Federal Communications Commission, but they didn’t seem to mind if stations over-modulated even in their own town! There was little chance, in those days, of an over-modulating station running into their neighbor’s bandwidth.

As a result, FM sounded Great! 20-20,000 Hz frequency response, better than pro audio tape S/N ratio, and most importantly, no audio compression, no modulation limiting. I used to listen to live broadcasts of the National Symphony, the President’s Army, Navy, and Marine Corps bands (symphonic, jazz and dance bands). It was glorious. 
Then, With the advent of stereo, four things happened: 1) The pop music crowd discovered Stereo FM, 2) The Zenith/GE stereocasting system (adopted by the whole world) lowered the FI of FM all across the board. Reduced Frequency Response, signal to noise, a smaller prime listening range, and the effects of multi-path distortion all took their toll. 3) The dial in most cities became so crowded that the FCC started to take bandwidth abuses VERY seriously. This meant audio modulation limiting, to eliminate over-modulation. These limiters turn any audio signal that exceeds 100% are clipped turning them into square waves. 4) Next, as Car Radios begin to fit FM reception, broadcasters, in order to accommodate the high levels of background noise inherent in motor vehicles, started to compress the dynamic range of the audio to make certain that the quiet bits didn’t get lost to car listeners. The final nail in FM’s coffin (at least here in the USA) was that pop stations, started to compress their music as hard as they could, working on the assumption that if their station was ALWAYS louder than their competition, dial twirlers would tend to stop on the loudest station. 
The result of all this is that FM is now a vast wasteland of unlistenable, distorted garbage. I have a classic Yamaha T-85 tuner. One of the best performing and best sounding solid-state tuners. I haven’t had it in my system for more than a decade! There’s nothing on the dial worth listening to, not even Reno’s new state of the art classical and jazz station!

[Ralf11]

Here in the States, FM, years ago, became essentially useless to those not near a PBS or similar station.  I have 3 high quality FM stations in a town of 166,000 people; one is all classical.

[gmgraves]

10 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Here in the States, FM, years ago, became essentially useless to those not near a PBS or similar station.  I have 3 high quality FM stations in a town of 166,000 people; one is all classical.

It’s not that the stations don’t exist. Obviously they do, and in this country, they are not in any danger of going away as they are in Britain and maybe some EU countries. But because modern FM broadcast standards, here in North America, are so poor, none are worth listening to (Even PBS stations)  except, perhaps, in the car.

[Solstice380]

We are lucky in my area.  I can get 2 different HD NPR stations and a handful of other HD stations.  There are a couple of the stations with 2 or 3 HD channels playing deeper tracks, including 1 Classical, 1 Oldies, and 1 Classic Rock.  One station I can’t get in HD all the time will flip to the standard station and it’s obviously crap SQ.  

[Nathan15]

Woefully, it does seem to be an inevitable issue at one point, and it will be a sad day too.

[jma2]

I have always been pleasantly surprised about the quality of cable distributed analog FM. It was like that with the hifi-set of my father and it is the same today in my set. I will enjoy it as long as I can...

 

Thank you all for the reactions! @gmgraves thank you for the historical perspective as it happened in the US... I liked it a lot!

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, jma2 said:

I have always been pleasantly surprised about the quality of cable distributed analog FM. It was like that with the hifi-set of my father and it is the same today in my set. I will enjoy it as long as I can...

 

Thank you all for the reactions! @gmgraves thank you for the historical perspective as it happened in the US... I liked it a lot!

Glad to do it. I loved FM as a kid. I used to record a lot of the live concerts from DC, on reel-to-reel tape using an Allied Radio “Knight” tape transport (built by Viking for Allied Radio) and a “Knight Kit” tape recorder record/playback “preamp”. I had dozens of tapes of live concerts taped off of FM from the Watergate Barge tied-up on the Potomac River in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I would love to have access to those concerts today, but alas, when I was away at college, my parents moved from the house and town In which I grew up to Richmond Virginia, about 100 miles to the south. My mother threw all of that kind of stuff away:  tapes, books, magazines, photographs, etc. “Oh, I didn’t think you wanted all that old junk.” I never forgave her!

 

Watergate barge tied-up at the first lock of the old C&O canal, Washington DC ca. 1960. People either sat on blankets on the grass, sat on the marble steps leading down to the landing quay, sat in the folding VIP chairs on the quay itself, or pulled their private boats up around the barge to listen. That’s the George Washington Bridge in the background.

[gmgraves]

19 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

We are lucky in my area.  I can get 2 different HD NPR stations and a handful of other HD stations.  There are a couple of the stations with 2 or 3 HD channels playing deeper tracks, including 1 Classical, 1 Oldies, and 1 Classic Rock.  One station I can’t get in HD all the time will flip to the standard station and it’s obviously crap SQ.  

What, pray tell, is an HD station? I haven’t followed broadcast FM in decades. How does HD FM differ from regular compressed and limited over-the-air FM?

[AudioDoctor]

I still listen to Minnesota Public Radio often, it is why I bought a receiver. I don't know what to do about your problem, I guess you'll have to stream stations over the internet.

[Ralf11]

Sure but all your MPR stations are above average

[AudioDoctor]

4 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Sure but all your MPR stations are above average

 

Even more so now that Garrison Keillor is gone.

[Ralf11]

he was too naughty

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

What, pray tell, is an HD station? I haven’t followed broadcast FM in decades. How does HD FM differ from regular compressed and limited over-the-air FM?

Never Mind. I looked it up. It's a euphemism for Digital Broadcasting piggybacked on the analog signal. I had just never heard it referred to HD radio because it isn't HD. The signal, as I understand it, goes through the same compressor and limiter as the analog broadcast signal. Hardly HD! 

[AudioDoctor]

6 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

he was too naughty

 

Did you not hear?

[Ralf11]

was he exonerated? or kicked out?

 

I heard which, but it hard to keep track of all the bad actors and accusations...

[AudioDoctor]

12 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

was he exonerated? or kicked out?

 

I heard which, but it hard to keep track of all the bad actors and accusations...

 

He was let go because the investigation found even more bad behavior...

[gmgraves]

16 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Sure but all your MPR stations are above average

I suspect you mean NPR. Well, we have a new Classical and Jazz National Public Radio FM station here in Reno, NV, and It's supposedly, technically,  SOTA. I visited their facility soon after they went on the air. Sure, their brand new equipment is top of the line and they have a spanking new Orban OptiMod limiter/compressor. It certainly sounds better than the old Motorola VoluMax and AutoMax which were only marginally less awful sounding than the Fairchild junk that they replaced, but still, there is no getting around the fact that FM is dynamic range compressed and hard limited both of which add huge amounts of distortion to the broadcast signal. In spite of the fact that almost all Internet Radio is MP3, I find that high-data rate (190kbps or higher) MP3 Internet radio is much easier to listen to than over-the-air FM. I don't hear any compression or limiting on either the Internet feeds of WCRB in Boston (190 kbps) or BBC Radio3 in London. I listen to live symphonic broadcasts from the Boston Symphony all the time from the former, and the live Proms in the summer from the latter and neither have any discernible audio artifacts!  

BTW, we do have several so-called "HD" radio stations here but our classical/jazz station, KNCJ, isn't one of them!

[AudioDoctor]

He was referring specifically to Minnesota Public Radio with a Garrison Keillor Prairie Home Companion reference.

[Solstice380]

10 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Never Mind. I looked it up. It's a euphemism for Digital Broadcasting piggybacked on the analog signal. I had just never heard it referred to HD radio because it isn't HD. The signal, as I understand it, goes through the same compressor and limiter as the analog broadcast signal. Hardly HD! 

but definitely better SQ than the analog signal!  No, it’s not our definition of HD or what we listen to at home but it’s better. 

[jma2]

19 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Never Mind. I looked it up. It's a euphemism for Digital Broadcasting piggybacked on the analog signal. I had just never heard it referred to HD radio because it isn't HD. The signal, as I understand it, goes through the same compressor and limiter as the analog broadcast signal. Hardly HD! 

Now that would be one hell of a check to do...  Digital Broadcasting piggybacked on the coax analog FM into my tuner 😉

Any such interface device for sale somewhere? The analog signal then might (?) inherit some sound-color from the tuner.

 

[Clarification: in my case that would mean "DVB-C digital audio over cable -> converter DVB-C-DAC-to-analog FM over cable -> Creek Destiny", also called the "Utopia" interface]

[jma2]

22 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

I still listen to Minnesota Public Radio often, it is why I bought a receiver. I don't know what to do about your problem, I guess you'll have to stream stations over the internet.

I'm afraid that will be my destiny... not sure what destiny awaits my Creek Destiny.

I'll see if I can lobby somewhere to convince my sources to provide higher bitrate radio-streams.

[gmgraves]

9 hours ago, Solstice380 said:

but definitely better SQ than the analog signal!  No, it’s not our definition of HD or what we listen to at home but it’s better. 

Could be. I seem to recall it’s at least 16/44.1 and not MP3! That would make it full frequency response on both channels (20-20K) and better S/N than analog FM. I suspect that it would be pretty immune to multi-path distortion as well! But if the signal goes through the same signal processing as does the analog audio signal prior to broadcast, it wouldn’t be much of an improvement. Maybe two steps forward and 1.5 steps back?

[Solstice380]

3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Could be. I seem to recall it’s at least 16/44.1 and not MP3! That would make it full frequency response on both channels (20-20K) and better S/N than analog FM. I suspect that it would be pretty immune to multi-path distortion as well! But if the signal goes through the same signal processing as does the analog audio signal prior to broadcast, it wouldn’t be much of an improvement. Maybe two steps forward and 1.5 steps back?

Definitely not what it could have been, and with not much more required to do it. 

[gmgraves]

36 minutes ago, Solstice380 said:

Definitely not what it could have been, and with not much more required to do it. 

Amen, brother! It could have been so much better. But the “marketplace” usually picks the wrong system as a standard when there is a choice. For instance, inferior VHS over Betamax, Blu-Ray over HD-DVD, Zenith/GE FM Stereo over the Crosby stereo FM system, etc.