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259 points zdw | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.202s | source
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davekeck ◴[] No.41832998[source]
I always assumed it was because FM station bandwidths (200kHz) are much wider than AM (10kHz). AM's 10 kHz chops off a lot of human-hearable frequencies.
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ndndjdjdn ◴[] No.41833153[source]
AM doesn't use the frequency for modulation though so it shouldn't matter.
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1. kragen ◴[] No.41833354[source]
When you amplitude-modulate a carrier wave with an audio signal, you spread it out into a bunch of sum and difference frequencies, as you can see if you use the trigonometric angle-sum formula to factor cos(85000·2πt) · (2 + cos(440·2πt)), a 440-hertz flute being transmitted on 85-kilohertz AM. These so-called "sidebands" mean that the bandwidth of AM does matter, and consequently, using a too-narrow bandpass filter on your AM radio station will result in low-pass filtering your demodulated audio signal.