For decades, driving has been synonymous with listening to the radio in our cars. From the early days of AM radio, through advances in FM technology to the latest satellite and streaming services, we’ve been able to enjoy someone else’s music collection for about 100 years. Each advance in technology has improved sound quality and noise reduction to make our music sound more accurate and realistic.

AM Radio

One of the simplest means of transmitting audio information over the air is known as amplitude modulation, or AM, as it’s known globally. From a technical standpoint, AM radio modulates the amplitude (level or strength) of a carrier radio frequency (the station you tune to) to transmit the audio signal. In essence, an analog copy of the sound is sent on top of the radio station frequency. In North America, AM radio stations broadcast on carrier frequencies between 540 and 1700 kHz.

One of the biggest problems with AM radio is its sensitivity to noise. If additional information, say from a lightning strike or a noisy piece of electrical equipment, adds noise at the same frequency as the carrier signal, you will hear it on top of your broadcast.

The second issue is bandwidth. AM stations are limited in their ability to transmit high-frequency information. Audio up to 10 kHz is the limit in North America.

FM Radio

FM radio got its start in the 1930s but didn’t begin to make headway into broadcasting popularity until the 1960s. In contrast to AM, frequency modulation (FM) is much more impervious to noise. To transmit audio over the air, the frequency of the carrier signal (the station you tune to) is modulated by the audio waveform. FM radio offers dramatically improved audio bandwidth (up to 15 kHz) and an easy way to transmit stereo signals.

As digital transmission technology became more popular, broadcasters found ways to include additional information in the 200 kHz band allocated to each FM station. Features such as the Radio Data System (RDS) allowed small amounts of digital information to be embedded with the analog audio transmission, including station call signs, song titles and artist information.

Several radio and portable GPS navigation device manufacturers use the RDS Traffic Message Channel (TMC) to display real-time traffic information within their navigation systems. At the time of this writing, 77 stations are broadcasting this information in major cities in the US and Canada.

Digital Audio Broadcasting

Digital audio broadcasting (DAB, for short) operates at much higher frequencies than traditional terrestrial radio and is similar to the signals from satellite radio broadcasts. While it never took off in North America, DAB remains the standard in Europe and is replacing standard FM transmission there. Many aftermarket radio manufacturers such as Kenwood and Pioneer had add-on tuner modules that would work with these satellite frequency signals.

HD Radio

Using technology identical to FM radio in terms of broadcasting frequencies, HD Radio extends the data transmission concept to include a high-resolution digital copy of the FM station and up to three additional audio streams. Broadcasters can choose how they want to use the available bandwidth and balance fidelity and content. Significant amounts of information, including song title, artist name and even album art, can be displayed on the radio screen of a multimedia receiver.

HD Radio is a free service but requires a tuner that is capable of decoding the data stream embedded within the FM broadcast.

Satellite Radio

Though the basis for satellite radio was first conceived in the early 1990s, the first satellites weren’t launched until 2000, with Sirius launching three satellites that year. XM launched its first two satellites on March 18 and May 8, 2001, then began broadcasting Sept. 25 that year. Full coverage of the US was achieved by mid-2002. Sirius and XM Satellite Radio merged into Sirius XM in 2008 to deliver a single solution for North America.

Unlike terrestrial radio, Sirius XM is a pay-for-use service. You’ll need a specific antenna and tuner module to receive the signals.

Being able to drive across the US and almost all of Canada while listening to the genres of music you enjoy is a fantastic feature. If you drive long distances or live in a rural area with few radio stations, then Sirius XM is an excellent option.

Streaming Music Services

Pandora, Spotify, Apple Music, iHeartRadio and Amazon Music are the top music streaming services in North America. Unlike the other systems we’ve discussed, these entertainment solutions rely on the digital data connection of your smartphone to bring music into your vehicle. In most cases, users will launch an associated app on the phone, then use a Bluetooth or wired data connection to feed audio from the stream to their stereo.

Specific apps exist for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for the services we’ve mentioned above, along with Tidal, Radio Disney and Sirius XM. Using dedicated voice-controlled apps makes enjoying these services easier and safer while driving.

Modern Technology Provides Non-stop Entertainment

Whether you wanted to check the score from the game last night, listen to the news or enjoy your favorite music, dozens of options will let you stay informed and entertained as you drive. If your car or truck doesn’t have the ability to play HD Radio, Sirius XM or accept audio from a streaming service over Bluetooth, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer today to find out about the upgrades that are available.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

HD Radio is a broadcast technology that adds digitally encoded information to an analog AM or FM station. Where once you were limited to listening to, say, 101.1 in New York City, the broadcaster has added a news and talk channel as well as a sports channel to the same 101.1 MHz frequency. The best part is that HD Radio is completely free. If the tuner in your vehicle has this feature, you can make use of it without any activation or subscription costs.

How Does FM Radio Work?

Without getting too technical, each FM radio station in North America is assigned a specific range of frequencies it can use to broadcast its content. The limits for analog FM radio station frequencies are 88.1 to 107.9 MHz, and each station has 200 kHz of bandwidth to transmit both a mono and a stereo signal. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US and Industry Canada (IC) control the standards and handle licensing in their respective countries. As such, you can’t just build a radio transmitter and start broadcasting a station from your basement.

Technically, with 20 MHz of bandwidth, there is room for 100 stations within 88 and 108 MHz to simultaneously broadcast within the same area. In reality, few cities have that many radio stations. The FCC and IC see to it that radio station broadcast frequencies are spaced far enough apart so they don’t overlap. Likewise, stations that broadcast on the same carrier frequency need a transmitter that is far enough away from a similar station so that the signals won’t overlap within the target market.

Adding HD Radio Digital Information

When a broadcaster decides that it wants to transmit additional information using HD Radio, it is permitted to increase the bandwidth of its transmitted signal and send digital information. This technology is called an in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio.

Because this signal is digital, it’s much more resistant to noise. As such, stations rebroadcast their analog signal on HD1 – the first of the four available HD Radio stations available on a single carrier frequency. While the system does use a lossy compression algorithm to reduce bandwidth, most users report that the HD1 channel sounds better than the analog signal.

Broadcasters can divide their available digital bandwidth however they choose. If they want the clearest, most detailed digital option for their main station, they may not broadcast anything other than HD1. In one example, HD1 is the main FM radio station and HD2 is a feed from an AM station owned by the same broadcaster. Talk radio and news-only broadcasts that require less overall bandwidth are also common uses for HD2 and HD3.

Compatible tuners are designed in a way that a failure to decode any of the digital radio stations results in the tuner dropping back to playing the analog audio signal. The technology also allows broadcasters to transmit station information, album and artist details and, in some instances, album or radio station artwork for display on a compatible receiving radio.

Currently, HD Radio signals are broadcast in the US, Canada and Mexico. XPERI Corp., the company that owns HD Radio, reports that India will be the next market to add HD Radio broadcasts.

Upgrade Your Vehicle with an HD Radio-Equipped Receiver

If your car or truck didn’t come with an HD Radio-equipped receiver, drop by your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer to find out how you can upgrade your radio. Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer and Alpine offer solutions to provide a whole new world of entertainment to make your commute more enjoyable.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

Though it seems contrary to what I’ve preached, sometimes it’s better to avoid purchasing car audio speaker upgrades based on specifications alone. The information most manufacturers provide does very little to describe the actual quality of the product. A prime example of this are speaker Xmax specification numbers. Does this linear measurement tell us how loudly a speaker plays? Does it describe linearity? Does it inform us about distortion?

Don’t Get Hung Up on the Wrong Numbers

The Xmax specification is a tricky number that gets thrown around a lot when we’re talking about subwoofers and midbass drivers. Historically, this specification has described how far the cone of a speaker can move in one direction without having the voice coil move outside of the top plate. When the coil moves too far, the magnetic field strength is reduced dramatically and distortion will occur.

Many enthusiasts attribute more Xmax to an ability for the speaker to play more loudly. While this seems reasonable in theory, cone excursion is determined by the compliance of suspension components and the strength of the motor assembly.

What if components such as the spider or surround don’t provide the same compliance in both directions? What if the woofer cone might be able to move rearward more easily than it can move forward? Given a specific input signal, this characteristic would deliver what could be described as unbalanced performance. In reality, it results in the addition of distortion to the output of the speaker.

Looking at the graph above, we can see that the suspension offers a resistance of 1.6 Newtons per mm in the forward direction and 2.1 Newtons per mm in the rearward direction.

Another characteristic that might affect speaker performance and our usable Xmax specification is the effectiveness of the motor (voice coil and magnet structure) in delivering linear force in both directions. If the motor is more efficient in one direction, the speaker could potentially move farther (or not far enough) based on a given input signal.

In the graph above, we can see that the motor assembly in this speaker produces a magnetic flux of 4.1 N/A in the forward direction at an excursion of 4 mm, and 4.9 N/A in the rearward direction at the same excursion level.

What Does Distortion Look Like?

In order to explain how nonlinearities in speaker operation affect what we hear, we created a 20 Hz sine wave in Adobe Audition. We manually manipulated the three positive cycles of the waveform on the left channel and boosted their amplitude by 6 dB.

The frequency response plot below shows that the 20 Hz signal has been increased in amplitude by 1.1 dB. Harmonics have been added at 40, 80, 100, 120, 140, 180, 200, 220, 240, 280 and 300 Hz. All of this unwanted information is directly due to the nonlinear behavior of the waveform.

This addition of undesirable harmonic content is called harmonic distortion. Looked at another way, it’s the addition of sounds to the output of a speaker (or any other audio device) that weren’t in the original recording.

Can You Measure Speaker Sound Quality?

There are no characteristics of a speaker’s performance that can’t be measured. We can quantify the frequency response. We can test power handling. We can measure compression. There are tests for inductance versus position and resonant frequency versus excursion. The list goes on and on. What’s difficult is determining when a design has a measurement that is a glaring issue, or just a characteristic. Is some amount of nonlinearity allowable? If so, how much? Does the answer depend on how the speaker is going to be used?

Different measurements have relevance in different applications. If you are looking at detailed specifications of an 8-inch subwoofer, the information you need will be very different than if you were looking at an 8-inch midrange intended for use in a public address speaker in a theatre or concert venue. If you are going to be playing the driver from 300 Hz up, the excursion isn’t much of an issue.

Knowledgeable speaker engineers understand the application of the speakers they are designing and manipulate the component (cone, spider, surround and motor) design to optimize the entire system for specific performance characteristics.

Sadly, for those of us who want the best speakers possible for our car audio systems, manufacturers rarely share this information with consumers. Worse, some don’t have the equipment to make these measurements and optimize their drivers. Nevertheless, your best bet is to visit your local specialty mobile enhancement retailer and audition as many speakers as you can. Quickly you’ll learn to pick out the solutions that are the clearest and most detailed. These are typically the speakers that add the least distortion to their output. Those are the ones you want to use to upgrade the mobile audio system in your vehicle.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.