ChrisCoaster wrote:
It's the same wherever I go. In the car, I switch from my mp3 jack or
CD to a FM station and instinctively I have to turn the volume down by
at least 1/3rd.
Not to worry, the FM stations will get new equipment real soon and address
that so that they can come closer to an aspect ratio of zero or less.
At home, switching from a record, CD or tape to the radio - gotta
crank that volume down! Ditto at the beach on my boombox.
At home perhaps you can try get away with installing an attenuator in the 4
to 6 dB range inside the contraption, but I wouldn't even consider trying
with a car radio, those likely have their innards compressed to a negative
aspect ratio and you will not bee able to make them fit the case if you open
it.
Because I really don't believe that radio stations' own processing is
solely to blame for my having to crank UP the volume when going from
AM/FM a CD or mp3 or cranking DOWN the volume after switchng from
CD/ mp3/phono AM/FM.
Very many years ago some design contained sensitivity trimmers to make the
phono input match FM, my Beomaster 3000 was like that, including
balance-matching via nulling of inversed channel
1. Does the tuner section on consumer stereo equipment/portables/auto
sound incorporate some compression/limiting circuitry?
If so it is called "night" or similar. We can not have the populace
understandin this, so we call it something else.
2. Is the
tuner input level set intentionally louder than the line inputs(CD,
aux/mp3, etc)? 3. Or, is it a combination of 1 and 2, on top of
compression/other processing employed by the radio stations?
FM statios are voiding the headroom asumption for clean transmission that
the tuner electronic designer made because it was in his textbook. He should
have desined for 5 dB transmission malpractice. Orban is not to blame, he
quite probably warn them in the manual. From the sound of some of the louder
FM's over here they first max the 5 band, then hit a multiband clipper and
then push it well into the tranmitters protection limiter. All have
hideously audbible compression artifacts that stand out obnoxiously on even
the poorest possible playback equipment but can become impressively loud on
a JCV loudenboomer hung on a warehouse wall with volume set to 11 and
beyond. And thus the FM stations aim is well and truly met, because THAT is
what they aim for.
much appreeesh,
I must have some kind of mind damage from working with printing machines for
so many years, I tend to solve the problem by turning the car radio off and
just listening to the car. Perhaps I should resume my venture into
avant-garde techno ... a computer harddrive died during a file-shuffle with
all my music on it back in 1997, and I just haven't bothered to retrace ...
was in a large rythmical structure being built to support ephemerial synths
when it happened. I made a "In C" rendition in DeLuxe music on my Amiga, I
had it as midi dump, but now only the DAT tape of the Amiga sound systems
performance of it remains ....
-ChrisCoaster 
Kind regards
Peter Larsen