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Is FM still worth it?

This matter has been dealt with a couple of times in the last year or so & the arguments in favour of each do not seem to change much. I have FM for radio 3 & the signal is slightly better than a year ago after chasing the BBC, although live concerts can be quite compressed. I have also moved into internet radio from around the world & found a few useful stations, & also use the BBC Sounds for catching up. Classic FM is not as strong as Radio 3 because it comes from a more distance source but is OK for casual listening.
Personal choice at the end of the day but for Radio 2, I would limit it to internet.
 
A six element Yagi is as good as it gets, those Ron Smith style bling antennas have been discussed here and are a waste of money
 
foxwelljsly said:
Having been a little disappointed with the fidelity of R4 via the bbc radio app a CCA, I’m contemplating getting an aerial installed and buying a classic tuner.

Before I proceed further, can anyone here comment as to whether the fidelity of FM transmissions still merits this kind of investment?

Cheers
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FM sound is excellent in NW London especially BBC 3 using classic Technics tuner ST-G90L
 
DimitryZ said:
Multiple discreet antennas (Godar) pointing in different directions for best reception.
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What you need is a good heavy duty rotator, Dimitry. I've two in my loft !!! :D.

linnfomaniac83 said:
I really only listen to Classic FM now,
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People dismiss this station, which has been increasing its listener complement year by year. Okay, s.q. isn't up to R3 (but which station is ?), but it has improved over recent years, if my 01 is anything to go by. Range of music used to be fairly narrow; mainly pot-boiling stuff, but they now range far and wide, with concerts as well. Even the ad's don't seem to grate as much, but maybe that's just me !
 
davidsrsb said:
six element Yagi is as good as it gets, those Ron Smith style bling antennas have been discussed here and are a waste of money
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'You can fool all the people some of the time; some of the people all the time but never all of the people all of the time ' Ron Smith created an enviable reputation for his aerials somehow. Either it was because they were better than others or because he was clever at hoax marketing. I believe the former. So did Naim Audio in Salisbury, which had (I think) three Galaxies installed. I had a G23; my friend has had a G17 for 20 years high up on a cliff-top facing the English Channel. I currently use a common 6 element, which is adequate here, but adequate is not as good as the best ! If my chimney had been a little more robust, a G17 it would have been.

Ron Smith aerials rubbish ? A heck of a lot of informed people might not agree with you, David.;)
 
Nothing conveys the sense of ambience and air like a live FM broadcast through a decent tuner and valve amp. You do need a good signal though.
 
"You can fool all the people some of the time; some of the people all the time but never all of the people all of the time ' Ron Smith created an enviable reputation for his aerials somehow. Either it was because they were better than others or because he was clever at hoax marketing"

A high quality Ariel especially on a rotator can make a big difference. At my previous house in East London I had an 8 element Scandinavian Fuba antenna mounted on a large Stolle rotator. Reception quality and discrimination was supberb using it to feed the FM section of my Yamaha CR1000 receiver. I often pulled in French and Italian in Stereo at high quality. It was all built like a tank as well. The famous English Hurricane of 1987 ripped it from its mounting on our chimney and it crashed on the roof causing more damage to the roof than the Ariel and rotator. I put it back up with a new mounting pole and brackets and it worked as before. I eventually sold it to the guy who brought our house rather than move it.
 
Mike Reed said:
'You can fool all the people some of the time; some of the people all the time but never all of the people all of the time ' Ron Smith created an enviable reputation for his aerials somehow. Either it was because they were better than others or because he was clever at hoax marketing. I believe the former. So did Naim Audio in Salisbury, which had (I think) three Galaxies installed. I had a G23; my friend has had a G17 for 20 years high up on a cliff-top facing the English Channel. I currently use a common 6 element, which is adequate here, but adequate is not as good as the best ! If my chimney had been a little more robust, a G17 it would have been.

Ron Smith aerials rubbish ? A heck of a lot of informed people might not agree with you, David.;)
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Well, the laws of physics show that the claimed gain figures I've seen are dubious. :)

I'm not sure how well 'informed' all the people you refer to may be regarding having a good understanding of the relevant EM theory or practice, though.

I wouldn't say the RS 'Galaxie' antennas are 'rubbish'. But I would suggest they are likely to be over-sized for the performance, and that the gain/directionality values I've seen claimed seem implausible to me, indeed, seemed self-contradictory given the link between gain and directionality. (1)

Being over-sized they'd need a much wider 'free space' around them, and being heavier/bigger, they have higher weight and wind loading requirements. And the chances are almost all domestic users would find a 3 to 6 element Yagi would work as well in terms of what the output sounds like. Cheaper, less likely to be affected by objects nearby to the side, etc.

(1) If you want to understand this I'd suggest the relevant pages on the 'Scots Guide' which give the standard EM/Antennas textbook analysis of the relationship between gain and directionality. Two sides of the same coin.
 
matt j said:
Is FM not digitally fiddled with anyway prior to being broadcast? It's not fully analogue is it?
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It goes though NICAM to get to the transmitters. The 'exciters' at the transmitters also process and level compress it to some extent. However most FM stations apply a fair bit of level and peak compression before they send to the distribution. Even R3 does this during the daytime more than it does at night. Past measured comparisons I've done show examples. A lot of studio kit these days will be digital I'd guess. As all BBC recordings will be. Their standard submission format is IIRC 44.1k or 48k rate 16 bit.

So in reality FM for the BBC and many others hasn't been 'pure analogue' for decades now. Note also that NICAM and FM stereo limit the bandwidth to 16kHz whereas the iPlayer can reach over 20kHz as it is based on 48k rate. Being 16bit it also can give a wider dynamic range than NICAM/FM. So is less level compressed.
 
MikeMA said:
Nothing conveys the sense of ambience and air like a live FM broadcast through a decent tuner and valve amp. You do need a good signal though.
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I think some of FM's very pleasant sense of ambience and air may be due to the mild level compression in the signal path, as needed to keep the FM radio signal within the allotted radio bandwidth. Such processing raises ambience-level signals a little relative to peak levels.

A good few years ago I was regularly able to compare experience of being in the Royal Albert Hall with live FM and early DAB broadcasts. The FM signal path had the most ambience, followed by being in the RAH, followed by the then uncompressed DAB signal path.

Ambience is certainly very powerful in giving a sense of being there. These days the FM and DAB signal paths are the same up to the different transmitters, and there are more modern common pre-modulation signal processors. To me, the old FM sense of ambience was euphonic but probably exaggerated. These days, FM ambience is not as great as it was and I have to say I now prefer the 320 kbit/s AAC stream.
 
Mike Reed said:
'You can fool all the people some of the time; some of the people all the time but never all of the people all of the time ' Ron Smith created an enviable reputation for his aerials somehow. Either it was because they were better than others or because he was clever at hoax marketing. I believe the former. So did Naim Audio in Salisbury, which had (I think) three Galaxies installed. I had a G23; my friend has had a G17 for 20 years high up on a cliff-top facing the English Channel. I currently use a common 6 element, which is adequate here, but adequate is not as good as the best ! If my chimney had been a little more robust, a G17 it would have been.

Ron Smith aerials rubbish ? A heck of a lot of informed people might not agree with you, David.;)
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I never said that they were rubbish, but the claimed gain and directivity figures cannot be met at the same time and realistically a big Galaxie will not give much more gain than a well engineered 6 element Yagi-Uda
It is an unfortunate truth that going from a 6 element (>5dBd) to a 13 element (>8dBd) of twice the length only gives and extra 3dB of gain. As the number of elements is increased, keeping the 88-108MHz bandwidth gets harder and harder.
There are plenty of examples on the link http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/index.html
These days modeling an antenna is fairly easy and gives accurate predictions. Actually measuring antennas required very expensive test equipment until the cheap SDRs came along recently.

Spending your budget on a good antenna and getting better quality coax is a better balance

I am a RF engineer and design radio network coverage for a living. I have always been horrified by the snake oil claims of a lot of the set top and "amplified antenna" sellers.
 
Mike Reed said:
What you need is a good heavy duty rotator, Dimitry. I've two in my loft !!! :D.



People dismiss this station, which has been increasing its listener complement year by year. Okay, s.q. isn't up to R3 (but which station is ?), but it has improved over recent years, if my 01 is anything to go by. Range of music used to be fairly narrow; mainly pot-boiling stuff, but they now range far and wide, with concerts as well. Even the ad's don't seem to grate as much, but maybe that's just me !
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If you airplay Classic FM HD feed from their app it sound much better than their regular 128 stream.
 
Just downloaded the app for Scala Radio which starts of 4th March. This is similar to Classic FM in that if you sign up the HD stream is available. Listening now to the test transmission and is sounds nice.
 
davidsrsb said:
I never said that they were rubbish, but the claimed gain and directivity figures cannot be met at the same time and realistically a big Galaxie will not give much more gain than a well engineered 6 element Yagi-Uda
It is an unfortunate truth that going from a 6 element (>5dBd) to a 13 element (>8dBd) of twice the length only gives and extra 3dB of gain. As the number of elements is increased, keeping the 88-108MHz bandwidth gets harder and harder.
There are plenty of examples on the link http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/index.html
These days modeling an antenna is fairly easy and gives accurate predictions. Actually measuring antennas required very expensive test equipment until the cheap SDRs came along recently.

Spending your budget on a good antenna and getting better quality coax is a better balance

I am a RF engineer and design radio network coverage for a living. I have always been horrified by the snake oil claims of a lot of the set top and "amplified antenna" sellers.
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I use one of these with a rotator for FM listening and DXing:

http://ham-radio.com/k6sti/korn92.htm

I've had amazing results with it via summer Sporadic-E, from as far away as Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and even Iran once.
 
poco a poco said:
The famous English Hurricane of 1987
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This is how I became acquainted with R.S., his son and Galaxies. The insurance companies just nodded through claims like this, and R.S. & co drove down from Luton to Ramsgate to install a G23 on a 12' mast with rotator and miles of multi-strand cabling to one of five chimneys some 60+ feet from ground level which itself was about 100' above and overlooking sea level. Silly thing is, I only had a Nat 101 then; the 01 came later. Still have the cabling and rotator(s). I only had (I think) an Antiference 8 element before that.

Bought a R.S. 30 element band C aerial for my TV when Nicam came in, together with about the best Nicam tuner then current. What a foolish person I was; I should have waited for technology to catch up !
 
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