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TIRED OF THE DAB HYPE? LOVE YOUR FM TUNERS? HERE'S A NICE HOME FM TRANSMITTER....
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The dreaded UE technical laws (most of them conceived to force us to throw away perfectly good old stuff and spend more money to buy new equipment for the profit of its manufacturers...) are going to make our beloved FM tuners useless and I thought that a counteroffensive, albeit very modest, had to be effected. The quality of the FM transmissions in and around Bologna is already quite poor, both from the musical and technical point of view; the only exception is the excellent RAI-Radio 3 channel on 93,9, but even this one will be shut down in the long run by those hateful Eurocrats. DAB+ radio, that they are forcing down our throat (this is why they want to suppress FM broadcasting) is at the present time absolutely unsatisfactory: programs are scarce and signal is often insufficent for a decent reception, so I did look for an alternative to avoid bowing to this detestable system. Internet radios offer a much more varied choice of music and they can be of a passable quality, but the tuners available now are not exactly classic stuff...
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An answer to the idea of listening to the hundreds of channels of Internet radio while not renouncing to the romantic 'face' of our beloved tuners may be the installation in your house of an FM transmitter like this one, that I bought on Amazon Prime for Euro 90,30. I chose a black one but the same little transmitter can be found anywhere on the Web for the same money (or even cheaper on AliBaba, but then you'll have to wait ages for it to arrive) |
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This transmitter will broadcast in a limited range (ideally your house) the output signal of any source, in my plans a good Internet receiver like my Hama DIT2000 that offers access to Internet radio, FM, DAB+, USB, Spotify etc, with analogic and digital outputs. The setup was very easy. I chose 99,60 as my broadcast frequency as my main tuners (Revox 260, Sony S505ES, McIntosh MR78 et al.) didn't pick up any station there, but you can choose any frequency between 76 and 108 Mhz. The signal coming from the analogic (RCA) outputs of the Hama, or from the Tape outputs of a Sony ES2000ESD preamp, is brought to the transmitter via a normal stereo cable with a 3,5 mm stereo jack plugged in the front panel |
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Signal strenght is good enough with the transmitter on the 'low' power setting, i.e. around 1W. There is also a more powerful setting that gives out around 6W but I don't need it at home, as 1W is more than enough to cover the 15 meters from my studio to the living room where the 'good' tuners are located |
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The McIntosh MR78 locked into the 99,60 frequency without any problem and it sounds good. The MPI-4's scope showed a clear stereo signal, but I did expect that. Clearly the sound is not as good as it would be if it could deal with a good unfiltered FM broadcast but it's IMHO an acceptable approximation....and it would allow us to keep in use our tuners and keep on delighting in their fascinating dials and lights |
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Manutenzione+Restauro |
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Service+Restoration |
