[Big Bad Bob]

On 02/18/16 00:16, Patrick Turner so wittily quipped:

I have a few things to say about AM radio, and generation of AM waves etc.....

AM is still the best for voice, particularly SSB with no carrier, for
long distance communication in the long and medium wave bands. For
short wave it may or may not be depending on skip and whatnot.

I don't know if AU has a lot of news/talk broadcast AM stations but
news/talk format keeps AM stations viable. they aren't good for music,
even though there were some stereo experiments, but it's great for
news/talk and late-night stuff.

/me used to listen to Art Bell back in the day... and keep daylight
hours so I can hear the Limbaugh show, even if I don't hear a lot of
what's going on when I'm workin' [becomes background noise].

With good quality quadrature detectors, AM has pretty good noise
rejection, but of course FM will always be better.

Older AM receivers [when music broadcast was common] often had 10khz
'peakers' in the circuit to make them sound better for music, compensate
for typical LPF at 10khz on the broadcast equipment. It was 'almost hi
fi' that way, maybe just a peaker coil on the plate circuit of an
amplifier tube [I saw something that did that, a heathkit AM hi fi
receiver from the 50's - wish I still had it].

modern AM receivers tend to sound kinda 'muddy' because they don't
bother to do things like that any more.

I built several AM radios, simple ones, back in the day. it's a great
kid project when learning electronics. Simple diode detector, tuned
circuit, wound antenna coil, tube or transistor amplifier south of the
detector. careful biasing of the diode will make them pretty sensitive,
or maybe use an op amp with a peak detector as the LPF. whatever. lots
of possibilities.