• AM Radios To Become Compulsory In US Cars

    From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@21:1/5 to All on Wed May 1 23:53:58 2024
    Some US car makers are dropping the AM band from their radios, so
    lawmakers are going to make it compulsory to retain them, for
    emergency broadcast purposes <https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/am-radio-is-a-lifeline-lawmakers-say-tech-and-auto-industries-disagree/>.

    I think by “AM” (Amplitude Modulation) they actually mean the “MW” (Medium Wave) band, from about 535 to 1605 kHz. This band does have
    better signal propagation characteristics than the standard FM band,
    and this can be useful in an emergency.

    But that doesn’t mean it should be restricted to AM stations. DAB and
    DAB+ encoding can provide better-than-FM-quality audio in the same
    bandwidth as an AM station. I think that would be a much better use of
    the MW band, don’t you think?

    There is also something similar for short-wave, called “DRM” (“Digital Radio Mondiale”).

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