😂 nice!

It's like on a fishing boat. They never call the person in charged of the bait the "Master Baiter"

They should have called it "Whistle Out"

"Sometimes you just gotta 'choke the chicken' when recording AM radio" ~ every AM radio recording enthusiast ever.

Kinky

Agreed. I would’ve paid to know what the beat cancel button meant on my boom box on 1980!

Lol, would have been helpful three decades ago! 😂

I figured it out a few years in to my adulthood and experimentation with radio receivers (building them and such) that they were referring to "beat frequency". But, when I was 10, I was just as perplexed as to what is this "beat" switch for as switching it on or off did nothing.

Before the internet you just had to ask around. Any book at the public library which might have helped was already stolen and that was that. Nowadays no one on You Tube even knows what a library is any more.

Exactly!

Sony got close: ISS "interference suppression switch"

@@rijjhb9467 The term Beat is technically correct it is a beat frequency.

@@GaryKeepItSimple And the technically correct term for what Dolby Noise Reduction does is compansion, but they sure as hell didn't market it as a compander to the general public.

The all new (beat) function allows you to cut the whining noise when recording AM stations lol Marketing timing 50 years too late lol

Why would they. It's like "2000W PMPO" found on boom boxes in the late '90's, early 2000's. No one actually knew what that meant, either - except maybe for people like me. Another fictitious marketing measurement of perceived output power. It's interesting that they can get 2000 watts from an amplifier that was running on 12V maximum producing under 3 watts.

The 19kHz can also interfere with Dolby noise reduction when recording tapes. I also discovered another use for the MPX filter, some CD's and even LP's were very hard to record, they'd produce distortion on cymbals when recording. Changing the bias and recording levels reduced but would not eliminate the problem. Other cassette decks and even reel to reel would also have the problem. I finally realized frequencies in the cymbal sound were mixing with the tape bias in a nonlinear way and producing an unpleasant sound. I don't know if this was intentional analog copy protection or just an artifact. MPX filter would almost completely solve the problem even though the recording was from CD or LP and not FM stereo.

@@davidg4288 Did this happen mainly with rock music recordings? I guess the reason is because the drum sounds and cymbals are always very compressed on that genre of music making them consistently loud at a relatively high level. That would do it.

@@circattle This was a long time ago, I recall it happening in progressive rock and fusion jazz which was NOT very compressed but did have all the highs they could record. Recording at a lower level did not fix it, it was more frequency than loudness related. I no longer have working tape machines to test with.

BNMRR .. Beat Noise Mitigation for Radio Recording!😉

So it did what it said, it "cut your beats".

😂

I think you had a Mission Impossible tape recorder

Pilots of multi engined bombers during ww2 used to synchronise their engines to prevent the loud "pulsing" of the beat frequencies between the engines. Allegedly the Germans didn't bother so much and people could tell the difference between formations of German and allied planes because the German aircraft had a distinctive drone caused by the beats.

100%. If it's of interest: before the days of digital tuning meters this is exactly how pipe-organ tuners used to "lay down" the middle octave of a set of pipes, playing fifths and fourths - each interval between 2 notes should have a specific number of "beats" (different for each two notes) in the same way as you describe. Once you've laid the bearings of that reference octave, you then simply tune the rest to exact octaves of each note with no beat audible.

Irc another example is when you see wheels or propellers in films, slow right down or even reverse as the vehicle is moving. This happens because the "frame speed" or frequency of the camera is interacting with the frequency of rotation of the wheel or propellor. When the frequencies get close to each other, you start to see the beat frequency or difference between them. This is what gives the odd looking effects and can often be seen best in old movies with stage coaches or steam trains with spoked wheels.

In music I have heard it referred to as "beating" which can be a clearer term

@@crabby7668 not true. Germans used tiny propelers on their wings that would create siren-like sounds during high speed dives so they can psychologically dominate over people by frightening them further more. Look it up

Yes, sort of a related topic but different.

Yes please, if anybody can make me understand MPX it is Mr VW 👌

MPX is FM stereo. It works with a nearly inaudible 19kHz carrier tone which could beat with the recorder's bias oscillator. The MPX filter removes this high frequency so this doesn't happen.

MPX is short for "multiplex". An FM signal can have up to 6 signals mixed together - L+R, 19kHz pilot, L-R, 57kHz RDS (scrolling text) plus 2 hidden subcarriers at 67kHz & 92kHz. I've never seen an MPX filter button but it would work on the same principle. I have seen MPX line-out sockets on vintage Sonys (mid-70's). This was when FM was new and allowed outboard equipment to decode the stereo or subcarriers.

@@Anon-fv9ee wow, that’s very cool. As fascinating as the Beat Cut issue although I never saw an MPX marking on the many radio recorders I had growing up, unlike Beat Cut which was a constant mystery. I’d love to know what the optional FM subcarriers were used for - audio? Surely not? Do the illuminati have their own commercial free versions of popular radio stations? Military use?

AC/DC

everything's still a scam.. the target just moved away from sound systems a bit

I am your age. I have misophonia, and I have very sensitive ears, but I also have extremely good hearing. I can hear people whispering across a room when I teach classes (I am an RN trainer, and sometimes surprise my students when I hear what they say). The point is, my ears picked up everything when the music coming out of a cassette or record player was good or bad. My parents had both good and bad stereos, and I had a good Walkman growing up. There weren't scams, unless you bought from a less than reputable dealer who gave you a fake product. There were, however, limitations in the technology available back then. We didn't have the dehissers that we have now, the ability to compress like we do now, etc. It was limited in the recording, so the sound coming out was less than ideal, therefore, the sound we heard was less than ideal. Stereo was a newer concept, and the mono songs were being converted. Some hiss was expected, because that was part of the original recording process, and needed to be removed by using the dials on your equipment and dialing the treble and bass, etc. Audiophiles, such as myself, have grown to love the familiar pops and crackles of vinyl. It's the imperfections of recordings that bring them to life. It's nostalgia. If you go back and listen to the original recordings, you will hear those same hissy (and in the case of mono, tinny) imperfections. It is what it is. The music was far superior back then, despite the technological recording limitations. We had creativity on our side. I will take the 80s any day.

yeah... well... who in the 80 and 90's recorded from AM, regardless?

@@gorak9000 Beat Frequency Oscillator. But you were close. LOL

High pitched squeals that change with the engine speed are almost always due to alternator noise. Either the radio or the alternator had a problem.

I'm also from The Netherlands, the last high power AM transmitter here was switched off in 2019: 1008 kHz from the Flevoland transmitter. Originally 400 kW daytime power, only 100 kW or so in the later years. Shortly after the final closedown, the transmitter was demolished. It was a nice piece of engineering, an anti fading antenna transmitting on both 747 and 1008 kHz, 400 kW each. 747 went off air in 2015. Nowadays, several low power AM stations are legally on air all over the country on numerous frequencies, power levels between 1 W and 100 W. Maybe one of them is nearby, maybe you're able to receive several after dark. I like that :) Apart from that, I tune in to Radio Caroline on 648 kHz broadcasting from Orfordness, UK from time to time. One of the few music stations transmitting on AM/medium wave.

@@JesperD87 Yes, it was a year in the two thousand range, the programmes were aimed at elderly women ("de Muzikale Fruitmand" and that programme with Willy Walden and Ase Rasmussen, "Raad een Lied of Niet").

I'm from Bosnia. I sometimes catch a Romanian AM station but they seem to be exclusively a talk show station. Other times, when I'm out in the field, I catch a (I think) military station all the way from Russia at night.

The tapes *are* my archive. They've lasted longer than any computer or CD-R I could've transferred them onto.

@Vaquero357 But that is superheterodyne beating caused by two stations in close proximity, rather than that caused by the tape bias oscillator. I think the marketing departments of these products wouldn't want to claim they are solving that problem which is actually most of the whistling sounds on AM.

The English technical term is “heterodyne”. Also used as the basis for higher-frequency radio receivers (e.g. FM).

Getting that frequency wrong produces some entertaining effects ...

We use those in ADF

Consider that DAB can offer FM-or-better quality within the same bandwidth as an AM signal. The MW band offers better range than FM/VHF/UHF ones; wouldn’t it be handy to be able to put some DAB stations on the MW band?