Some early adopters of the Harris system. Notice there are only two Canadian stations and one Buffalo outlet on the list in 1983.
 

I should have known there would be an AM Stereo webpage on the Internet and sure enough there is. It doesn't list stations, per se, but it does have receivers, samples of the sound, explanations of how it worked and the kind of radios that were available. 

The Official AM Stereo Website

Update: On further exploration, there is a list of Canadian stations that had AM Stereo. It hasn't been updated since 2006, but here they are. 
  

I only heard AM stereo once. Back in the late 80s when I had a Chrysler vehicle rented for a day.

My father in law bought a new Chrysler car in the mid 80's. It had an AM stereo. I was pleasantly surprised how good CFPL, CJBK and CKSL (all London On stations) sounded. At first I though I was imagining things when I could hear distinct sounds from the left and right speakers. This was close the city so their signals would have been strong. The sound had good bass, reasonable mid-range and respectable treble. Not as 'crisp' as FM, but perfectly satisfactory. Never had the opportunity to experience how they sounded as we approached the fringe range of the signal. But north as far as Clinton (about 50 miles from London) reception was still satisfactory. 

With FM stereo I find the 'hiss' increases as the signal strength drops. Switching the radio to mono (if that option was avaialble) would reduce the hiss. I did not expeience this with AM stereo. As the signal strengh diminished you would hear more power line, ignition and other noise, but not the hiss.

Last edited by darcyh (March 26, 2023 9:46 pm)

Ironically, this aircheck was not preserved in stereo. But they talk a lot about the big change on this excerpt from 1984. Includes a special guest appearance from then P.D. (and former CHUM jock) John Spragge.

RadioActive wrote:

turkeytop wrote:

I only heard AM stereo once. Back in the late 80s when I had a Chrysler vehicle rented for a day.

What was your opinion of what you heard? Good, bad or really nothing worth noting?

I had regular narrow band AM Stereo tuners in both my 1989 Horizon and 1990 Sundance.  I'm betting it was a similar car audio system to what Turkeytop had.  Those tuners, being narrowband, just sounded like dull, regular AM with a sense of ambience.  CFTR was what I hear in 1992.  Stereo?  Sure, but it was obviously AM.

In my current Toyota Camry (an old 1999 XLE model), despite being a mono tuner, the AM section has a great deal better bandwidth.  Music has somewhat more detail, and consonant blends are more audible; just a better quality of speech all around.  Basically, for those who have worked at AM stations and listened through the "air feed", that's what you kinda hear.  Those mod monitors usually yield at least the full 10 KHz response, while my tuner gets to around 6 KHz.  Not hi-fi by any means, but, add stereo to that, and that's what I recall hearing on a couple Carver tuners and Sony AM Stereo radios in the mid-80s.
 

Fitz wrote:

However I felt that I may not have given it a chance and hence  acquired the AM stereo transmitter. Can sound decent but of course I don't have access to all the processing done by the radio stations back in the day.
 

If you're able to get your hands on dbAudioWare's multi-band DirectX processor, it can give you that processed audio you desire.  I still use it for making car CDs (don't laugh - I have a 1999 Camry remember?) :

RadioActive wrote:

I'm not laughing Jody - the car I just got rid of last month not only had a CD in it, but a cassette player, too! 

I officially hate you ....lol - nah I'm kidding.  I actually could have obtained a compatible cassette deck form the junkers at Bloomington Road, but then there would be the question of belts and damaged heads.  Tape decks especially older ones require maintenance here and there.

Too bad too.  I have plenty of good sounding mixed cassettes, and I find they are more sturdy than burned CD-Rs in the car.  Plus, since I process my music for the car (akin to FM radio), S/N issues are not an issue.
 

RadioActive wrote:

Have to say I didn't use the cassette very often - but it was kind of nice to know it was there. The new "screen-based" mode that comes in every new car is nice bells and whistle stuff, but I still find myself missing the simple tuning and volume knob with presets that made everything extremely simple. This new one is a bit too unnecessarily complicated and involves too many steps for my taste. 

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but sometimes, I think the next big thing isn't always the best big thing. 

Nope I'm with you.  I still like a sense of "specialty"  I like to use dedicated audio equipment.  I like when something is made with an express intent of reproducing audio the best way possible.  Open Reel for example is obsoleted by digital recorders in almost every way, but a Revox PR-99 or a B-77 is built to such a high degree of quality.

I like older cars because I HATE screens in my car.  I like that the frequency display on my tuner is the ONLY digitally displayed thing in my car.
 

Jody Thornton wrote:

Fitz wrote:

However I felt that I may not have given it a chance and hence  acquired the AM stereo transmitter. Can sound decent but of course I don't have access to all the processing done by the radio stations back in the day.
 

If you're able to get your hands on dbAudioWare's multi-band DirectX processor, it can give you that processed audio you desire.  I still use it for making car CDs (don't laugh - I have a 1999 Camry remember?) :

Sounds intriguing. Was it expensive and where did you get it ?

I believe there is some computer software for this as well.
 

RadioActive wrote:

I'm not laughing Jody - the car I just got rid of last month not only had a CD in it, but a cassette player, too! 

WHAT?  No 8 track?


 

RadioActive wrote:

I'm not laughing Jody - the car I just got rid of last month not only had a CD in it, but a cassette player, too! 

 
I would love a cassette player in my car as I have boxes of mix tapes from back in the day and they still playback great, glad I kept them!

RadioActive wrote:

I thought about wax cylinders, but they didn't have the in-car model!

RA gets "wound up" about this

 

RadioActive wrote:

I wasn't going to bring up my weekend tale of woe but on Sunday, I went out to my brand new car only to find out that the fob would not open the door. And because it's keyless entry, there seemed no way to get in to check what was going on. But for all intents and purposes, the vehicle was dead. 

I've only had it 25 bloody days!

The dealership was closed on Sunday so I checked the manual (which, thank God, I still had inside the house and not the car.) I figured out how to get in and managed to get the door open. But it wouldn't start. Turns out the battery was dead. Dead after what, three weeks! I called CAA and they came and recharged it. But WTF!

My point in telling this story is a) to vent slightly and b) to show all those fancy-shmancy computerized innovations that I don't really care about are obviously giant power hogs that are eating into the one power source in the car. Needless to say, I'll be on the phone to the dealer today demanding an explanation and an immediate fix!

But at least, for the moment, the car is back up and running. And so is my outrage! But hey, at least the thing still held all those radio presets I spent several days setting up, so I suppose that's something. 

Thanks for this RA! Just another reason not to purchase a new automobile. My late father's boring beige 2006 Toyota Camry runs beautifully. It only has 104,000 km on it AND it has the simple 6 AM and 12 FM preset radio you wish you still had.

Fitz wrote:

paterson1 wrote:

CHUM and CFTR both went am stereo in 1983 and used the Kahn stereo system.  In late 1987 CHUM changed to the Motorola C-Quam system.  I heard CFPL AM on a car AM stereo once, don't know what system they had.  The sound was definitely stereo but still had the pops and noise of AM so I wasn't overly impressed. At the time didn't seem logical that people would go out and buy a new radio just to receive local AM in stereo.  

Here is an aircheck of some am stereo on CHUM that sounds pretty good.  This fellow must have recorded himself winning contests over the months and years on CHUM or he was planning a career in broadcasting.  He used an am stereo receiver to record himself on the radio..clip from Let The Universe Answer..
https://lettheuniverseanswer.com/2020/06/12/1050-chum-1980s-and-90s-am-stereo/

I was that fellow. Was always a music trivia fanatic and was able to record those clips and it helped they they had a tape delay system that allowed me to time to get to a tape recorder after the contest. Some were recorded on reel to reel, some on cassette and some even on a VCR.

I had two Sony AM stereo receivers one was better than the other but that one I unfortunately and prematurely put out to pasture. I still have the other one and have a low power AM stereo transmitter as well and have posted some experiments with that to the site. Back in the 80's I mainly listened to FM and I was not overly impressed by AM stereo. However I felt that I may not have given it a chance and hence  acquired the AM stereo transmitter. Can sound decent but of course I don't have access to all the processing done by the radio stations back in the day.

Here's a sample I recorded of AM 540 The Goat's web stream two years ago fed through the AM stereo transmitter. This station actually broadcasts in AM stereo and is musically somewhat of a throw back to the kind of station I enjoyed back in the 70's and 80's:
AM 540 The Goat in Stereo
 
and here's one that I posted to the site to mark the 50th aneversary of the release the landmark Nuggets 60's garage rock comp that lets one imagiine what things may have sounded like had AM stereo existed in the 60's:

That's Cool, That's Trash



 

Just listened to some of the music on 540 The Goat, cool tunes!  You were a good contestant on CHUM Fitz.  The type of caller than every announcer likes, easy to talk to and with some personality.  The AM stereo on CHUM actually sounded pretty good, and as you posted, some may have been recorded from cable FM.  I was a bit harsh on what I heard on CFPL in the car when they had am stereo.  It wasn't too bad but still had some pops and rattle driving around town that you would get from an AM signal.

Anyway thanks for mentioning that it was you on the cuts, you were a pleasant and likeable sounding contestant!