FM Transmitter Radio Station. PART 2 How To Choose The Best Possible Transmitter For Radio Station
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- čas přidán 3. 04. 2023
- FM radio station transmitters for FM broadcast need to have high-level specifications for the transmitter to sound good, have a long-range and be reliable. In this video, we look at the more technical parts of the transmitter specs. THIS IS PART 2
TO SEE PART 1 GO TO: • FM TRANSMITTER Radio S...
#fmtransmitter #transmitter #fmbroadcast #fmantenna #radio #broadcast
Low-power to medium and even high-power FM transmitters need to have good specifications. These affect both the audio quality and the FM broadcast signal. Whether for professional FM broadcasts or pirate radio stations, the specifications need to be good. - Věda a technologie
Would you think that it is better to mount a transmitter closer to the antena (maybe an attic), run a bit of coax cable to the antenna on roof, and then run audio and power all the way from the studio to the attic or would you say that its better to mount a transmitter down inside a studio, and then run long peace of coax to the antenna on the roof?
Hey, great question. If your transmitter is not very strong then it makes sense to mount it closer to the antenna. The only problem is that if the audio cable is very long it can pick up noises from electrical cables etc. So you can end up with bad audio. If you run a long 12 Volt cable to the transmitter the voltage will drop as well. This will mean your transmitter will be putting out less power as well. So you won't have gained anything. If you run an electrical cable up to the transmitter and the power supply is inside the transmitter or at least close to it then it shouldn't be a problem. Of course, the best setup would be to simply run a coax cable from the transmitter in your studio up to the roof if you have good-quality cable and connectors. I am busy working on a new video about FM transmitter cables and connectors which should be available soon. That video will explain which cables and connectors are best to use. But the basics are that if the cable and connectors are high quality then rather run the coax to the roof. If the cable and connectors are not great then you are probably better off running a long audio cable as long as you can avoid audio interference from fluorescent light cables etc. If your transmitter takes balanced audio inputs with XLR connectors then this is easier to avoid because the balanced audio will cancel out most, if not all, the noise interference. So then a long audio cable would be best. Hope that helps :)
@@inspiresoundpro I want to thank you for your fast reply, and to say that I just recently found your yt channel and I think I've watched every video on it. Great source of information for someone who doesn't know anything!
Right now I'm using about 15m of RG58 cable, and antena is not tuned correctly, SWR is 1.9 which is terrible, so I think that about 1/3 of the power is lost.
I was thinking about tuning antenna for the exact frequency, and putting transmitter on attic. I already have an AC outlet on the attic, so I could put a PSU there to power a transmitter, but what I know nothing about is running audio for long distance. My guess is that interference and voltage drop would make audio usless at the end of the cable, and I don't want to go through an effort of doing everything just to find out that it only makes it worse. One of the ideas was to use existing coax cable to run audio through it in order to lower interferences, but I truly don't know if that would actually help, and there is still question of voltage drop for such a long distance. How would you solve this problem? Another idea I had was to put another computer to the attic, and to relay sound to it, but that seems like something that would cause more problems than it solves
@@mikachigi You are very welcome. I love talking to people about all these things. Hey very cool that you watched all my videos lol. I have so many more to make but it takes quite a long time to complete each video so I can only put them out slowly. For your problem, long audio cables, there is only one way to go and that is with balanced audio cables. If your transmitter has XLR connectors on it then it probably has balanced audio. The balanced audio setup cuts out loads of noise and can be used for quite long distances. Any other audio cable will pick up noises. Even a 10-meter cable with RCA connectors on it will end up with really bad noise interference. If your transmitter has a jack plug/mini jack or RCAs connectors on it then the audio is unbalanced and no matter what cables you use you will get noises. You might be better off spending a bit of money on RG213 cable. RG 58 is really only good for short cables like car CB antenna cables. I talk more about this in the video I am working on but just to say that the cost of the R213 might be worth it to get around all the effort of putting things in the roof. Also if you tune your antenna correctly you will benefit much more than putting the transmitter closer to the antenna. A tuned antenna can dramatically increase your output power. Also at SWR 1.9 you could damage your transmitter with all the power coming back into the transmitter output. If you are only going 15 meters or so the cost of the RG213 won't be that much compared to all the expense and effort of trying to put things in the roof and with an SWR of 1.9 it's just not worth the effort because your loss is so high from the antenna. If you were going 30 meters or more then it might be worth running the audio cables but for 15 meters you are better off with RG213
@@inspiresoundpro Last night friend and I tuned antenna, we did cut it too much and it ended up being resonant at bit higher frequency than we wanted, but still, at desired frequency we got swr down to 1.2 which is much better than 1.9
After a quick ride in car we realised that signal distance has improved significantly!
Unfortunately I used cheap chinese transmitter that does take balanced audio and after considering pros and cons, mounting it up near antenna is out of the question.
I realised that most of my mistakes could have been prevented just by watching your videos 😂
I will not be making any changes until your next video comes out 😁 don't rush it, we understand why it takes a while to make them. Keep the quality videos coming!
lol yeah exactly like I said in my one video...don't buy an antenna you need to cut lol. That is exactly what happens. But 1.2 is not bad considering you had to cut it. It is fun to see how much a signal improves when you tune an antenna. When you get it resonant at your desired frequency it is quite amazing how much better the signal is. I had a small local station a few years ago that broadcast with just 1 Watt of power and the signal was amazing because the antenna set up was good. People couldn't believe it was only 1 Watt. We had 12 000 listeners. It really shows how putting the effort in to get the antenna right can make a huge difference. I will keep working on the video lol. I hope it will be ready in the weekend.