why did FM become the most popular radio frequency and what difference did it have over AM?
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Basically fm took over because it sounds way better
Switch to an am station next time in your car.
Am has longer range though. So the early days an stations made more sense. A few stations could service most of the country
But when you listen to music you want it to be higher quality. So fm became popular for radio as we know it as we moved from talk shows and news and sports casts to mainly music on the radio.
Am is still generally where you get talks shows still though.
Basically fm took over because it sounds way better
Switch to an am station next time in your car.
Am has longer range though. So the early days an stations made more sense. A few stations could service most of the country
But when you listen to music you want it to be higher quality. So fm became popular for radio as we know it as we moved from talk shows and news and sports casts to mainly music on the radio.
Am is still generally where you get talks shows still though.
Imagine radio as a giant lighthouse, which is actually a fair comparison because light and radio waves are both EM waves.
In AM radio, you shine a red light and dim and brighten it. The dimming and brightening corresponds to stronger or weaker air pressure in a sound wave.
In FM radio, you shine a blue light, but it shifts a little bit green or a little bit purple. You don’t care how bright the light is, just the color.
Most noise sources, like clouds, mountains, smoke, etc will change the brightness, impacting AM, but NOT the color. So FM is more noise resistant.
When you change the radio station, you’re putting on colors glasses. In the USA, the FCC defines radio bands. So FM 101.5 is like a specific color of blue, but there’s a little bit of wiggle room in the color spectrum. Your 101.7 channel would be a slightly more purple color of blue, and the glasses are designed to block out the colors near 101.5
Imagine radio as a giant lighthouse, which is actually a fair comparison because light and radio waves are both EM waves.
In AM radio, you shine a red light and dim and brighten it. The dimming and brightening corresponds to stronger or weaker air pressure in a sound wave.
In FM radio, you shine a blue light, but it shifts a little bit green or a little bit purple. You don’t care how bright the light is, just the color.
Most noise sources, like clouds, mountains, smoke, etc will change the brightness, impacting AM, but NOT the color. So FM is more noise resistant.
When you change the radio station, you’re putting on colors glasses. In the USA, the FCC defines radio bands. So FM 101.5 is like a specific color of blue, but there’s a little bit of wiggle room in the color spectrum. Your 101.7 channel would be a slightly more purple color of blue, and the glasses are designed to block out the colors near 101.5
Imagine radio as a giant lighthouse, which is actually a fair comparison because light and radio waves are both EM waves.
In AM radio, you shine a red light and dim and brighten it. The dimming and brightening corresponds to stronger or weaker air pressure in a sound wave.
In FM radio, you shine a blue light, but it shifts a little bit green or a little bit purple. You don’t care how bright the light is, just the color.
Most noise sources, like clouds, mountains, smoke, etc will change the brightness, impacting AM, but NOT the color. So FM is more noise resistant.
When you change the radio station, you’re putting on colors glasses. In the USA, the FCC defines radio bands. So FM 101.5 is like a specific color of blue, but there’s a little bit of wiggle room in the color spectrum. Your 101.7 channel would be a slightly more purple color of blue, and the glasses are designed to block out the colors near 101.5
What about AM Stereo? I remember my mom having a car when I was young in the 80s with a AM Stereo button. What was that?
What about AM Stereo? I remember my mom having a car when I was young in the 80s with a AM Stereo button. What was that?
What about AM Stereo? I remember my mom having a car when I was young in the 80s with a AM Stereo button. What was that?
AM (or amplitude modulation) radio is the simpler technology, and was created first. This means that for a long time the only option was AM radio – at a time.before TV when the radio was a big external source of entertainment and news for people.
Later on the FM (frequency modulation) system was developed, which encodes the sound into the radio transmission differently in a way that provides much better quality and less interference.
A lot of commercial stations started to transition over to FM transmission, but this took a lot of time as the availability of FM radios grew, with some stations sticking to AM for cost or practicality reasons.
Now we are seeing stations starting to move from radio transmission to online transmission instead, just as we moved from AM to FM.
What many of the comments is missing is that AM is mono only, FM is stereo. This in addition to the things already mentioned is why FM is more popular today.
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