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FM Stereo

I am pretty lucky where I am located. There is a terrific NPR station around 30 miles way that plays Classical daily from 9-4. Jazz from 8-11 and Classical from 11 PM to 6 AM. No commercial interruptions except for the quarterly fund drives , as the station is 90 % listener supported . The Program Hosts are knowledgeable and the depth of their selections are astounding. They also offer information regarding the composers and artists of the particular pieces.

I use a Terk powered indoor antennae with a Mcintosh MR 7084 tuner and the sound is terrific. I also get a great sound using another Powered antennae , split for a 15 year old Onkyo receiver and an older Marantz sr7000 receiver. There really isn’t any reason for me to even consider streaming with this resource available. They do stream on their website www.nepr.net .
Just fantastic.
 
I also enjoy the sound of FM on my vintage receivers and tuners.
So, even if the station's source is digital, consider all of the electronics involved before the content gets to the transmitting tower.
Do they still use huge, water-cooled tubes in FM transmitters? In a vintage receiver FM front end, look at all of the individual passive components, including coils, as well as individual transistors or tubes.
And, pretty sure that the FM signal itself is analog (I think).
Could any of this contribute to the "FM sound"?
 
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peterp1 said:
^^^^^ THIS ^^^^

All of the on-demand streaming services are great where you can play anything you want to play, but it isn't a replacement for having music curated by a station -- and it's not that easy to do yourself. I have a gazillion of my own playlists, but they are not a replacement for a good station. Pandora can be great in terms of randomizing songs around your artists/genres -- though Pandora channels do get randomly repetitive over time.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Pandora and anything else that uses an algorithm can maybe create a playlist of stuff that you'll probably like, but unlike a DJ it isn't really likely to turn you onto stuff that you didn't even know that you might like. A human actually has taste and if his or hers matches your own, you could really learn something and come away inspired by hearing something that's entirely new (not just something pretty similar to what you already know). I have friends who have been into this satellite radio stuff for a number of years, but those playlists seem to be pretty automated and on any given station the music is more or less what you'd expect it to be... so to me, not nearly as exciting as a real, live, very creative DJ type at the helm. Before I went with something like that, I'd probably just hook up a computer to my system and download broadcasts n the internet that are free... but different strokes...
 
If you want unobtrusive jazz background music for a party or dinner -- trust me on this -- pick the "Jim Hall" channel on Pandora. It is excellent -- maybe too laid back and sparse for dedicated listening for some (definitely not for me), but as background music, it cannot be beat (in my opinion).

Other channels I love on Pandora are Willie Nelson, Van Morrison. For newer music, the Jason Mraz channel is surprisingly good (made this channel for my wife, but ended up really liking it).

I think Spotify used to have "radio", but I don't really see it on the menus now (or maybe I'm just missing it).
 
I wonder if what you're liking is the analog sound from FM vs FM as a source. By that, I mean FM is rarely harsh like digital can be with a rolled-off high end. Could the DACs at the radio station be better than the one you're using? Using the same DAC, Amazon Unlimited from my PC sounds much worse than from my iDevice. I can't remember why, but there seems to be a known reason for this.
I finally hooked up a simple antenna to my Luxman R-115, which is reported to have a good tuner. On decent stations, it really does. I was quite impressed, though I still don't care for the commercials (obviously NPR and a couple others are exceptions here). In my cars, I use SiriusXM. I get variety that way and exposed to new sources. For me, it's basically replaced FM, though I'll probably check out some more stations. There are a ton in this area (SoCal), but I've found quite a few are predominately talk and not in a language I can understand! ;)
 
I didn't get proper sound on my 1972 Rotel until I cleaned the tuner because the NPR station is not very strong. As far as sound quality -- I think FM somehow does mellow out the sound, but it's really in the high-end "sparkle" (cymbals, brushes on symbols in jazz) where FM just beats the crap out the stream of the same FM station (I think the stream for that station is low quality -- probably 128kbps or worse via TuneIn, so not quite a fair comparison). Nonetheless, the sparkly highs on FM are opposite of what you'd expect looking at specs where 15khz is max. That's why I pay almost no attention to specs and measurements except to help me understand what I hear (and then I place a lot of value in them to help understand -- but it's listen first, then try to understand it by looking at measurements/specs).

Some things are not intuitive at all -- the reduced dynamic range on FM can make things sound better. Technically, more dynamic range is always better -- but recording engineers do a lot of intentioanl dynamic range compression as part of the recording/mixing/mastering process to make elements of the song sound better. The reduced dynamic range of FM probably helps the sound sometimes and makes it worse others. That's why I just listen to evaluate everything, then use specs to understand. There is nothing that is universally better or worse -- usually they are both, situationally.

DAC-wise, I have a high-end DAC on my dedicated 2-channel system, but for this FM Rotel, I'm just using the Chromecast Audio's built-in DAC to stream TuneIn radio through the Rotex Aux input. The CCA DAC is obviously not high-end, but sounds pretty good nonetheless.
 
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Saturday Night Live is playing on my local station tonight. Live Stones, Doobie Brothers, and more. Quite nice to sit back and have somebody else choose the playlist. Especially since I've never heard this live stuff before.
94.5 KOOL FM for those in my area. Phoenix AZ. Rock on!
:beerchug:
 
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