The Playmaster Series 200 amplifier has RIAA equalisation but for magnetic cartridges only. They failed to develop a preamp for ceramic cartridges - too much hum pick-up, and hum elimination was given as a major problem in development. So they left it out at the last minute, though it is included in the first of the series of articles for the amp.

Correction: the phono cartridge options were moving magnet (retained) and moving coil (omitted).

Correct Equalisation of the phono output is absolutely essential.

When I started as a volunteer techy at our local Community FM station a few of the presenters were using vinyl and the sound to air was horrible with hardly any highs at all. Had a look at the turntable preamp only to discover it was a home made kit type of preamp and looked like a very early EA design but poorly put together and no circuit available.
One could really tell when Vinyl was being played and it annoyed me big time as my home setup reproduces vinyl quite well and what the station put out was second rate.

We had to vacate our storage shed which was full to the rafters with old stuff and donated stuff from the past years the station had been going and discovered stashed away a couple of professionally built phono preamps doing nothing. Checked both out and no problems with either.
So when the station was running on pre-recorded content I swapped over the existing preamp for one of the ones found in the shed.

Instant change with nice bright sound and good bass.

When next the vinyl guys were playing their stuff (which they intersperse with CD music as only room for ONE TT in our cramped studios) I could not readily discern if they were playing a CD or a vinyl record as the sound from either source now is the same.

Bear in mind that the upper limit of broadcast audio is 15 kHz but as my ears now only get to just 8 kHz it all sounded good to me...others might be able to hear some differences but was a dramatic improvement.

Some of the vinyl presenters have been purchasing NEW vinyl pressings from overseas sources and they sound VG and instead of being BLACK vinyl quite a few are transparent.

Lindsay

I have a file somewhere with all of the articles errata and relevant letters to the magazine about various problems, for both the EA Series 200 amp and the stereo AM/stereo FM tuner that they offered after the amp. It has been mislaid for a year or two but will make another effort to track it down. I remember that there was discussion of the equalisation by the designers so I am sure it got the right attention. I certainly never noticed anything untoward about my vinyl sound.

Sorry Brad, I seem to have diverted this thread off the original topic. I feel that the future interest in our old AM radios will depend in a large part on continuation of the existing AM medium wave radio stations, and to some extent shortwave. An article I saw recently somewhere mentioned that there were only two new DAB+ stations starting up in 2019, one in Darwin, the other I forget. I suppose that is encouraging as the great majority of these are in the capital cities. Which means to me that AM, because it has greater range than both DAB+ and FM will continue to be useful especially in country areas, and especially in times of disaster response like the current Queensland flooding and bush fires in Tasmania.

For people maintaining a radio for disaster response use, AM draws less current than FM and much less than DAB+. So batteries last longer.

In fifty years we can hope that there won't be discussion about the lack of AM broadcasters. But I suppose that over that period of time present and new technologies will gnaw away at these broadcasters.

Just on batteries: I am in a rural area; power cannot be depended on in a crisis, some storms, & crispy critters. Most of the transistor / solid state radios are battery / mains and one comms one that has only batteries for the clock, has a no break with a lead acid battery. So one can run the radios months really, just on batteries by controlled use.

One thing often over looked, is the mobile phone. There should be in every vehicle a means of charging it. A car / truck battery is going to run a mobile for a very long time without charge. Noting that if you have the earphone cable on some phones you just might get radio.

I have to disagree about Vinyl giving better bass than a CD. Very low Bass is quite difficult on Vinyl purely due to the physical constraints of the format.

A CD is far more likely to faithfully reproduce bass notes without the need to artificially boost the midbass to mask the lack of lower bass notes.

I have had Vinyl, CD and now FLAC streamed formats and would never go back. My speakers reproduce frequencies down to 32HZ and I still have the ability to play Vinyl and CD's.

I have a high quality Garrott Bros P77 cartridge on a Dual 1229 Turntable and still have a full vinyl collection (mostly from the 70's and eighties) which I have duplicated on CD and now FLAC so I can compare directly and quite frankly there is no comparison.

I use a Cambridge audio music streamer for the FLAC files which are stored on a NAS drive. It has a quite respectable dual Wolfson D to A converter feeding two 70W class A monoblock amps.

The shear impact and dynamics of the FLAC sourced audio just simply cannot be matched by Vinyl.

I still however break out the vinyl for a nostalgia trip but for serious listening I know which one I prefer.

I have to disagree about Vinyl giving better bass than a CD

I have the evidence right here. In my case it's the CD version of an original vinyl pressing. Not all CD's are recorded well.

That is true. When CD's first came out there were many inferior and rushed to market CD's of existing titles. Later "Remastered" versions were much better.

50 years from now?
50 years back, that was 1970 and radios and TVs were large bits of hardware and music was stored on discs with scratches on them.
50 years from now we will be fitted from birth with a pea sized all format "thing" from the "trust us we are there for you" government that will be patched into your neural system and powered by your body. That way you can be updated in an instant and told what to do and they can track your every move. Oh and you can net in with anybody in the world if they let you.
There will be a few hold outs like me that are still living, with artificial grown organs taking the place of the originals, and refuse to have a neural link fitted. We will still be listening to our valve radios and contacting each other by AM radio links on the disused bands.


Bleak? Unlikely?


Fred.

"Bleak? Unlikely?"

There is an article in today's ABC on-line news about China's endeavours to become the world leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030 and applying it to the control of their population, and presumably ours too.

A correction to my post 16 - the phono cartridge options were moving magnet (retained) and moving coil (omitted).

When they make digital microphones and digital speakers and can make our ears digital and have digital musical instruments; only then will digital media possibly surpass analogue. I still have my record collection and still buy my favourite music on vinyl from the US and Europe and keep my new records as free of dust as possible, only handling them from the edges and they sure sound better than any mp3 or cd could possibly. The only time I play anything digital is when footy steals the airwaves, so I plug my laptop into my transmitter!

Tallar Carl's post in General Discussion about the Eumig German Radio Pre WW2 shows what could happen here if AM went off the air. Vendors could assume that there is no market here for valve radios and ship them off overseas.

I don't think we have much to worry about. After all these years with digital television and digital radio in the capital cities, AM (and FM) are still soldiering on and the Commonwealth Government has given no indication of when AM and FM will shut down, if ever. It stands to reason that one day it'll happen but it doesn't seem to be a burning priority.

Some of the spectrum from analogue television has been handed over to the mobile phone networks. Such usage of the AM radio band is unlikely. AM radio still also ranks highly in the commercial ratings. 2GB and its affiliates seem untouchable.

AM radio still also ranks highly in the commercial ratings. 2GB and its affiliates seem untouchable.

I'd like to see the demographic of AM's audience, especially for talk back stations. My guess is that it doesn't include many outside Boomers.

It's the talkback stations that lead the way, more so on weekday mornings than at other times. A hospital I once worked at was a classic example of your suggestion though. It had an orthopaedic rehabilitation wing with gyms, hydrotherapy pool, etc and the patients (typically knee and hip replacement patients) demanded that 2BL and 2GB always be available, which they were through the televisions. The radio station sound would come out the pillow speakers and a character generator in a jiffy box would show the station call sign on the screen. The other two available stations were 2UE and 2DAY.