Re: [ARSCLIST] FM reception way back when

[Michael Shoshani <mshoshani@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Cham wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> New to the list here.  I've been a recording and radio engineer for more 
> than forty years.  Speaking as the latter, I can tell you that FM Stereo 
> takes about ten times as much signal as Mono.  When I was with Vermont 
> Public Radio, we would turn off the stereo pilot whenever we broadcast 
> news shows to increase the reach of the stations.  When I first started 
> at WHA in Madison, in the early '70s, we would turn the pilot off for 
> mono music recordings.

That makes sense. I noticed when I was a kid that television stations 
would turn off the chrominance signal when broadcasting black and white 
movies, leaving just the luminence. Often when they came from color 
commercials back to the movie they'd forget for a few seconds, and the 
picture would be riddled with red/blue/green snow that disappeared when 
the chrom signal was killed.  Stereo FM, if the signal is weak, gets all 
kinds of phasing errors that disappear if you happen to be lucky enough 
to have a "mono FM" switch.


Let's not discuss "stereo wide"...if God intended for us to hear stereo 
with one channel phase-inverted, He'd have put one of our ears on 
upside-down. :-)

Michael Shoshani