Australia introduced AM Stereo in 1985, and some stations still transmit it today. Australia chose C-Quam as the single standard right from the start, although over in New Zealand there was at least one station which used the Harris system for a while.
Ironically Harris system used CQUAM decoder chips to receive theirs as well. Harris am stereo generators converted to 25Hz pilot still sounded better than the native CQUAM generator. There seemed to be problems keeping am stereo going for some reason. Perhaps lightning 🌩or something else.
"Is that bongo rock?" He asked aloud to himself. I grinned. It _did_ sound like rock with bongos. I clicked my music detector application which checked the audio for 8 seconds and then flashed on the screen above the name of the song: "Bongo Rock by Preston Epps" I frowned, disappointed. "Oh, he just knew the song. He wasn't making a whimsical suggestion at a new genre of music based upon an impression of an unknown song."
That thing is 50lbs. One of the guys in my army unit had one. 1017 am in Germany with their phase modulation rtty would pop the stereo in and out randomly. Good strong amplifier as well. Carver tx11 was another great tuner.
A buddy had that receiver had two tape decks turntable and vcr hooked into it so he could play the audio over his big speakers. And it goes to 11 he would say. It would shake the windows .
Had one of these handed down to me. Despite being a casual listener, my dad sure knew good quality equipment when he saw it. And let me tell ya, this thing is pure POWER.
Very nice receiver. I have a Sony STR-AV570 which has the AM Stereo/Mono, IF Wide/Narrow AND FM Stereo/Mono, IF Wide/Narrow, FM Antenna A/B Switch... The features they packed into these 1980s receivers were excellent. Top power consumption I have seen so far is Hitachi SR-2004 at 1130 W.
There is no one perfect tuner, but the S-X1130 is a pretty good compromise. The JC Penney MCS-3050 has the best sensitivity and selectivity (an excellent DXing tuner!), while the Denon TU-680NAB has the best audio quality. If you want both, the Sansui and the Carver TX-11a/b come the closest to covering all the bases -- although the Carver tunes the Expanded Band while the Sansui does not (it only goes up to 1600 kHz -- not even 1610!).
The Sony srf-a100 isn't an expanded tuning radio by default. WD 40 can help with this issue. Spray on your tuning capacitor box, give it a month or so, am now tuning 500Khz to 1790Khz or so. Fm from 86Mhz to 110Mhz. And you don't need a pilot to unlock stereo mode. Just tune center of channel. Also can be used as stereo decoder from a decent stable car radio. I did tons of am stereo experiments. Even transmission to myself at 1 watt in shortwave band.
The FCC initially was going to choose Magnavox as the single standard for AM Stereo, but they discovered a flaw in the scoring of the tests. They reportedly were going to then choose Harris as the standard instead, but after many complaints (mostly from Leonard Kahn) the FCC decided to go with the disastrous "let the marketplace decide" approach. As of June 1985 there were only five stations in the USA transmitting Magnavox AM Stereo (including 1190 WOWO).
I've actually heard WOWO in am stereo!!! From Houston Texas!! Here we had 2 Harris, 2Kahn, and 2 local CQUAM. KLVI 560 used to play country music so they got a CQUAM. It was really taking off for a bit. Then the dx. WLS, KFAB, KVOO, (also Harris). Once heard a classical channel from New York with Kahn. KSL, WHAS, if I keep going as I remember them, probably gonna stumble on your home town, by radio of course. Lol. 🤣🤣🤣🤣
WCTC has been a talk station since the early '90s. They tried Oldies music from July 2008 to February 2011 but the ratings were not as good as they had hoped, so they went back to the talk format.
The S-X1130 has better AM performance than my TU-S77AMX -- the sensitivity is good even with just the loop antenna, and only the very weakest of signals are muted. It should also do well on FM once I either fix the muting or disable it entirely.
WHOA! that is one high tech receiver! Very impressive. And even though it's got a TONNE of features, it looks like it would be very easy to figure out how to use without an owner's manual. It sounds incredible too, but I'm sure your camera doesn't do it justice...
One of my favorite reciever but I have its little brother same year 1984 sansui sxv1000 but I want this one also great sound powerful sansui beautiful engineering that era.
My 1987 Pioneer VSX-2000 still uses the VDP label despite CED being long dead and Pioneer backing Laserdisc. A shame that the video inputs require a separate switch, the VSX-2000 treats them as another audio input unless you turn on the video side of the receiver. Sansui tuners and VFDs don't seem to be aging well. I have my fair share of display and tuning issues on the TU-D99AMX, but percussive maintenance from time to time seems to fix the problems!
This is a very cool receiver. The malfunctioning segment of the display, that might really be a bad soldering joint. Sure looks that way. The "VDP" term was still used after the end of the CED - my 1987 Fisher amplifier still uses it, and so does my 1992 Onkyo receiver. I guess producers simply wouldn't be allowed to use the "Laserdisc" term.
That's an extremely impressive unit and worthy of the Sansui brand for sure. An Onkyo TX-85 also offers both FM bandwidth selection and phono MM/MC, but it's "only" 80 wpc! (And a featherweight at a mere 33 lbs / 15 kg.) The 100 wpc TX-108 had a more basic FM receiver section with a fixed bandwidth - definitely built to a price. I wonder what the Sansui cost back in the day, must have been an arm and a leg...
Wow, the complexity of 80s stuff, I've just picked up and restored an 80s video camera and it's no less complex lol (video coming up in the next week or so) :o)
I think AM Stereo was once available here in Australia, but I've certainly not used an AM Stereo receiver before, although I think a friend of mine had one of those 'music centres' with a dual tape deck and I think there was an AM Stereo light on the front panel. I don't know if AM Stereo still broadcasts here anymore, but I don't think so, and I don't know why.
@vwestlife this one does video cool and AM Stereo is like FM Stereo but AM is a low frequency and FM a high frequency Fm sounds better but AM sound a bit like an old TV. Theres HD Radio AM and FM but they run on a SAT just like Dish Network and DirectTV
+vwestlife I just got one of these myself. Mine has a couple issues that I am not sure if it is just the way these things were made, or if there is a problem in the circuit somewhere. So I wanted to ask you, does yours have an unbalance in the channels when the volume is below 1 and pretty much is gone by the time it gets up to 2 or 3? The left channel seems a bit stronger, and it is pre-amp, not the power amp or the jumper cables, I tested that before I did a tear down. I am thinking the volume pot is the source of the unbalance at low volume level, but even at 0 I can still hear a faint amount of audio coming through the left channel. Also when I first got this thing a couple days ago, I noticed all sources bled through to the VIDEO source. After tearing the receiver down and going through the really horrible service manual, the thought came to me the reason might be because of the video/audio fade, which turned out to be true, and also the mixer adjustment as well. With both in the middle as yours is show in the video, the most that would happen was the Tuner or other sources would not be completely muted, about half volume I would say, and there was mixing of the 2 audio sources. I am just wondering if you noticed these little things with yours or not. I also had to fiddle with the tuning coils and vr's to get the tuner on AM and FM working properly, and there is one vr in there that controls the muting sensitivity as well, if you haven't tried fixing that, it is pretty easy.
I have not investigated mine that deeply. You have to remember, these receivers are 30+ years old, and components like resistors and capacitors do drift off value over time.
vwestlife dried or aged caps and resistors, possibly a diode were my first thoughts as well. in my possibly futile attempt to track down the video source issue, as I think now there is no such problem, I checked all of the caps on the selector board inside of the receiver which all sources feed into, and they were all spot on to their rated uf. since it is all elna and nichicon caps in this receiver, I couldn't say I was completely surprised, but that of course doesn't mean that is the case with all of them. I feel like the audio mixer is working as it should be, but I would need a owners manual to be sure. You and one other person are the only 2 that did any kind of demo of this unit, so that is all I have to go on to compare with. I didn't notice these little things till I started testing everything and listening to the unit at very low volume. I know that volume pots are notorious for not being balanced very well, just the nature of the pot, and it shows up at low volume levels, but I did test the output side of the pot and both channels had equal resistance across the sweep. I am probably just nit picking right now about the volume imbalance. Anyway, thanks for your reply. I appreciate it!
Nicholas, HD is not on satellite. It rides outside the analog bandwidth on both sidebands on A.M. & F.M.. I don't understand what you mean that A.M. sounds like an old T.V.
Omar Crisante Aside from a handful of exceptions, in the USA, every radio and TV station East of the Mississippi River has call letters beginning with W, and stations West of the Mississippi have call letters beginning with K.
I wrote a comment to you last week about how you have mentioned the AM switch between 9 KHz and 10 KHz, You should have done a demostration on how the 9 KHz sounds on the AM tuner.
Omar Crisante It wouldn't sound any different. Since this is an American model, the adjacent channel carrier whistle filter is set to 10 kHz, regardless if you have the tuning step set to 10 or 9 kHz. (Likewise if you had a European or Australian model, its filter would be set to 9 kHz regardless of which tuning step you have selected.)
That was my most droolworthy want back then but I never had that kind of money Just bought an RZ-9500AV today though, that will be really nice once I get some midsize speakers rebuilt. Don't think you could get much better AM sound if you had a broadcast monitor, and the AMAX Walkman was a disappointment to me, made in Malaysia and the tuning knob was beyond flaky. Only time I took a Sony back for a full refund instead of a replacement. We only have ONE music AM around here now and it's a simulcast of their FM oldies signall.
I got your back on the 9Khz setting. Guy in my army unit in Germany had one. It did 9 or 10. Ironically, 1017 am had rtty phase modulated channel. His radio would always try to stereo decode this. My Sony SRF-A100 had no problem hearing them. They didn't have any wideband anything for am radio in Europe at the time. My question is this. With 1017 being at a whopping 600KW, (!!!), who were they transmitting rtty to?!??? Was also the last year of the cold war.
YEAH! JUST AWESOME!!! But you can get far more features for less price on newer AV receiver hardware that is 1/10 the height, of which is the newer standard of home theatre experiences.
I have this exact one I found at the dump 15 years ago and use it regularly, the display stopped working.. any suggestions where to start troubleshooting?
No, since 1994, only C-Quam AM Stereo is allowed. Even though it is based on Kahn AM Stereo technology, Kahn Power-Side is not considered to be a stereo broadcasting method, because it only transmits mono audio, therefore it is allowed.
Am is still best for oldies when it's done right. My pioneer AV receiver sounds like crap on AM. If I could, I would patch my old GE clock radio into it to get a better AM sound.
I have one. It sounds great but makes LOUD pops almost every day and it only gets worse. It definitely needs to be serviced. Is anyone else is experiencing this issue?
vwestlife Does that mean that if a radio station is broadcasting on a frequency that is not within the AM range, I won't be able to pick it up on that receiver. Because I recently bought a radio in which the frequency range on the AM band goes from AM 522 to 1710 kHz, so therefore I am also able to pick up the off-band stations. My car's AM radio goes from AM 522 to 1620 kHz. If I ever get a chance I will try to do a video of it.
Omar Crisante The AM/MW band was expanded in the 1990s to include extra channels up to 1710 kHz. Older radios made before then usually do not tune in those extra channels.
dammit, youtubes stupid new layout made me accidently unsubscribe, so I had to re-subscribe. they should make it so that the subscribed button doesn't turn into unsubscribe when you mouse over it.
