jvok's Sleazy Listening stereo coder

Everything technical about radio can be discussed here, whether it's transmitting or receiving. Guides, charts, diagrams, etc. are all welcome.
jvok
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Re: jvok's Sleazy Listening stereo coder

Post by jvok » Mon Jul 28, 2025 11:58 pm

Think its been about 2 years since I promised the gerbers :whistle Been too busy with real work :smoke

PCBs are now on to Rev 3. I've made a few changes to cut down on switching noise getting through:

- Used lower value resistors in the MPX and pilot divider chains
- Added RC filters after the 4051s
- Pilot generator now works at full 5Vpp level then is attenuated afterwards - this attenuates the noise too

Also some other improvements:

- I found there was too much stereo crosstalk in the original design which is caused by the phase shifts in the output filter putting the MPX and pilot signals out of sync with eachother. So I added a pilot phase adjust control so you can dial it in until its just right. Best way to do this is play a tone on one channel (e.g. left) then set the balance on your receiver to the other (e.g. right) channel (or take the other earbud out). Then adjust the phase until the tone almost disappears. I found I could get >35dB stereo separation like this which is about as good as most tuners.
- Taking the 19kHz SYNC out from the same source as the pilot tone doesn't work, because the filter phase shift puts that out of sync too. So now I take the SYNC out from a dedicated pin on the MCU and have code to shift this in phase by (roughly) the opposite amount.
- Added clamp diodes to the inputs for ESD protection.
- Removed the diode/cap clamp on PIC reset signal - this stopped the PICKit from working.
mpx1.png
Data pack is attached with gerbers, hex file and Kicad/MPLAB projects for anyone who wants to build one, plus setup instructions in a PDF.

Also I'll be putting my last three of these (fully built) on ebay soon
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jvok
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Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 2:44 pm

Re: jvok's Sleazy Listening stereo coder

Post by jvok » Tue Jul 29, 2025 12:10 am

Here's what the PCB looks like now
trimmed.jpg
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reverend
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Re: jvok's Sleazy Listening stereo coder

Post by reverend » Wed Jul 30, 2025 10:55 pm

Really nice work Jvok, especially going to the effort of revising the board layout to minimise noise.

With regards to the 19 kHz carrier phase, I like to pass the generated signal through a high and low pass filter which I found helps reduce noise and shifts the phase up and back down again so that it is the same as the output of the generator - a tweak of a few degrees either side of this usually doesn't affect any downstream use of the 19 kHz signal such as RDS synchronisation.
if it ain't broke, keep tweaking

jvok
tower block dreamin
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Posts: 333
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2020 2:44 pm

Re: jvok's Sleazy Listening stereo coder

Post by jvok » Fri Aug 01, 2025 12:47 am


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