Just got their new catalog and neat to see they now offer a small kit for bare bones basic audio processing for their FM kit transmitters. Guess enough people asked for it, or complained about the audio quality of their part 15 FM transmitters that they gave in and designed a kit to do some audio cleanup work.
Well I look forward to anyone here trying it in the future to see how it performs. It looks like it's a simple ganged gain/reduction audio limiter with a digital meter to measure G/R (gain reduction). Not sure if I'd like both channels reduction ganged together. I know classic broadcast processors are designed like that but I always preferred the sound of each channel being handled completely separately by the gain makeup, or at least at the last (fast) limiter stage like the early Orban units as I recall.
At 180$ it may be a nice entry unit for some of you. No affiliation lol, but just thought it was interesting that they whipped this up since the last time I got their catalog.
Still missing some things needed for professional broadcast like the 15kHz roll off filter, pre-emphasis (de-emphasis on output if needed), and clipper stages. Though their better transmitters themselves include those features, they are placed into the airchain at the wrong points if running this kit ahead of their transmitter kit. However it still could be a hell of a step up for hobbyist who want simplicity and can't afford the big boy toys.
Not their first audio processor kit. The first one they offered was the FM Stereo Companion kit. That unit featured the MAX 291 switched capacitor filter IC's for the 15Khz brick wall filter, a 3 band equalizer (low/mid/hi) and leveler/clipper.
It wasn't the greatest or very sophisticated but it did a pretty fair job in what it was intended to do.
Now if they (Ramsey) would finally get around to creating an AM C-QUAM transmitter kit.
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
Now if they (Ramsey) would finally get around to creating an AM C-QUAM transmitter kit.
Now that would be awesome and a long time coming! Sadly I don't have a single stereo am radio in my collection and there are only a few clear channel AM stations at night that would be using that in the first place. AKA Coast to Coast AM until 4am in the morning lol. If I wanted that I could just fire up a browser and iheart radio.
It is sickening that AM stereo didn't take off and IBOC did! AM is a hash of sizzle now because of that crap, but that's a conversation for another day
So true. AM C-QUAM blows away the "iBELCH" junk. All that HD nonsense is nothing more than a yearly cash cow for iBiquity in licensing fees to stations and receiver manufacturers.
Believe it or not, there were quite a few stations, both FM and AM running that crap and shut it down for two reasons, one being it did not improve a damned thing in audience loyalty or shoot up ratings as touted and second, cost too damned much in the yearly licensing fee.
Stations are barely hanging on already and to add another 25k year fee on top of everything else with no increase in revenues generated, it's understandable why the HD would be turned off!
The only real reason why C-QUAM got turned off...because of the 80's FCC blunder in not making the standard set in stone in those years. Made no sense to "let the market decide" when there was absolutely no "public awareness" to ANY of the formats being thrown around. Only two or three radio receiver manufacturers went through the expense of incorporating the different AM Stereo decoding chipsets in their radios, and at a great expense, and those radio makers did the majority of the public educating. Even vehicle radio manufacturers jumped ship not long after.
Much later...Sangean built two versions (HDT 1 and HDT 1X) and jumped ship with those and their radios were primarily focused on HD (iBiquity Belch).
Doesn't matter, digital or analog. As long as the program content sent down the pipe is like a clogged toilet, ain't nothing going to flush...just pile up and overflow onto the floor and stink like hell....not to mention make a big mess.
AM C-QUAM Stereo will live as long as there are those of us who keep the switch on and demonstrate it's excellent quality. I will NEVER shut off the C-QUAM switch on my station!
The ASMAX-1 built by ASPiSYS is an excellent professional quality AM C-QUAM exciter and comes in two flavors of power, a 100mW and 400mW version. If your intending to run 15.219, use the 100mW version. If your planning to push a linear, use the 400mW version.
The same company also makes an AM C-QUAM decoder card which is easily adaptable to most standard AM radios. It is best to install one of these in 60's to 70's vintage radios and not these new "all in one chip" front end radios.
For those who would just like to have a way to tune in to AM C-QUAM without having to adapt a module to an existing radio, check out the Meduci AM C-QUAM Pro 1K unit! Each unit is hand crafted and built with extreme precision in specifications. I use one that is custom built to include a -20db input port for direct TX monitoring and an IF tap to measure and monitor the IF envelope for the transmitter C-QUAM envelope adjustments/maintenance.
Often I see a Sony STJX-220A unit crop up on Ebay. That unit is a top notch AM C-QUAM tuner, though it does not include the X band, easily modified to go up to 1710 however. Neat thing about that tuner, like a few other Sony tuners with AM stereo, is that it has all of the AM stereo format decoding ability.
Other AM Stereo tuners show up on ebay as well now and then. But if you can't wait, just grab one of those modules from ASPiSYS or Meduci's tuner. You'll be glad you did!
Peace!
K-ROCKS RadioOne
ZeroPointRadio
AM Stereo 1670
FM Stereo 92.1
I just received my Ramsey catalog about 2 weeks ago. My intent was to purchase the FM Stereo companion to hook up to my FM100, I noticed that kit was not to be found anywhere in this catalog, although it was still listed on their website and in their on-line PDF catalog.
I also noticed that kit you speak of on the front cover, a stereo platform gain controller. It states to have a limiter, which I need since a lot of my stations MP3s are of various music formats. I'm talking soft rock, heavy metal to live concert recordings. There is quite a bit of variation in my music library, such as George Benson's "Breezin'" to ACDC's "Back in Black" or an occasional Black Sabbath tune. You get the point.
I may not get this get kit if I can get a good Behringer audio processor on ebay.
Also, some of the kits from Ramsey have circuit board design flaws and one would have to own one of these to see if any mistakes were made in the engineering department. I am not knocking Ramsey in any way. But flaws do happen to reach the public market when it comes to home made kit designs.
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