This is starting to feel like a tag-team thread.
ANYWAYS....moving right along..
"AM may never sound as good as FM, but with proper audio conditioning it can give FM a run for it's money."
Especially in C-QUAM. Tag team might want to sample that sometime considering its a 30 yr old technology that blows IBOC (IBLAH) away anyday.
Throw in AMAX and AM audio can convince die-hard audio buff's they are listening to an FM stereo transmission.
But who needs C-QUAM. Just tune to ANY AM station with a receiver capable of wide IF bandwidth and hear for yourselves.
RFB
When I first heard FM it sounded intimate to me, like the announcers and musicians were right there.
By contrast, and with the typical table radio sound, AM has a far away signal sound that gives the impression the announcer and music are some distance away.
I think the distant quality of AM is very appealing, and speaks of radio power! An NBC newscast from New York sounds like it's actually way off in New York.
An NBC newscast on FM sounds like the listener is in New York. There's no distance.
This discussion has led me to reconsider my use of AM. You get more range, but definitely more noise, and broadcasting after dark is effectively useless (my range shrinks down to 1 to 2 subdivision blocks).
FM isn't nearly as variable, and with daylight here north of the 49th parallel shrinking to 8 hours or less, FM performs much better 67% of the time (admittedly, we do have an advantage here in Canada with, as I've stated previously, allowable field strength being 4 times greater than in the U.S.).
So maybe I'll drag out the old Decade, and try to put it up as high as possible and see what happens.
[Another possible advantage of FM over AM not discussed here - a 100mw AM signal close to your house will likely overload the front ends of most receivers that you have - I even have a highly regarded Panasonic shortwave receiver that is greatly affected. A puny FM signal doesn't affect anything at all - the reason you get the range that you do is the far greater sensitivity of FM receivers in general.]