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Comment by al_borland

7 months ago

For music I setup a micro pc at my place connected to a radio transmitter. I have a music library on it and set it to shuffle. I can have normal radios around my house, tune to my station, and it’s always something I like with no commercials. I don’t have multiple stations to flip to, but that’s ok. I like the simplify of turning on a radio without having to pick what’s playing. I can also turn on multiple radios and it works just like those fancy setups for multi room music streaming at a fraction of the cost/complexity. Something like Sonos or AirPlay requires a lot to do what a radio could do decades ago.

The transmitter seems pretty weak, to maintain a legal status with the FCC, so some days it works better than others. I probably need to experiment with placement or other frequencies. I’m in a pretty congested area from that perspective. I found a website that suggests the best one based on the city a user us in and just went with that.

I wish there were reserved frequencies for personal use that would make home transmitters better to use. I have 0 hope for that now, but during the era of FM transmitters being popular in cars, it would have been nice if it had gotten some attention.