I can't help but laugh at something that was apparently an auto-correct:
Did Edgar help you compose that, or was it Candice? Charlie or Mortimer maybe?
I think he was checking ground conductivity in Bergen County.
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KFI drops the buzz!
- Thread starter KB1OKL
- Start date
I think he was checking ground conductivity in Bergen County.
My guess the music you heard was either religious-based or non-English. Little old ladies don't care about frequency response.
If one is running voice-only programming, then yes, 3kHz would probably be adequate. But there is so much more than just high frequency response that's driven listeners to FM over the years, namely the lack of reliable coverage of AM stations and noise.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
That, sir, is probably an understatement.
Sibilant crispness which makes voice more intelligible does and it makes a huge difference even to and especially to little old ladies.
Sounds like you speak from experience.
Snark aside, I believe it's a well known phenomenon that females have better (or more sensitive) high frequency hearing than males, although whether that means they would prefer less robust audio for speech or more is not something that's probably ever been studied.
My own hearing is very much more sensitive than the average person's on the higher frequencies of human speech, and it gets more sensitive as you go up the scale (or at least it used to before working years in industrial settings) and I have always found that the full 10 kHz of a nice robust AM broadcast to be easier to understand than the equivalent speech on an FM broadcast, for whatever reason. But I've always chalked that up more to the tone of the audio that AM broadcasts produce than the harsh, gritty audio of FM.
Under this reasoning, it just occurred to me that women should adjust the processing at CHR and AC stations. I'll bet that isn't done very often. I wonder if it would help.
But it does happen. At an AC in market 15 some years ago, I had three women representing the upper and lower age target of the station and the middle plus two in-demo guys who listened to processing adjustments on a collection of car radios and table radios. The station was #1 in 18-49 women, too.
Did they have a preference for a less bright sound?
An engineer for a female targeted AC told me he turned cut the high end considerably based on that notion of women having better high frequency hearing.
Of course to me it still sounded "brighter" than the competition because they used a very low bitrate for the music so the high end was very watery. They never did beat the competition and eventually flipped to sports talk.
I do wonder if women are bothered more by the crispness of HD broadcasts since engineers seem hell bent on over emphasising the high end of the HD version, despite the fact it makes blending between digital and analog very annoying.
The leading country station here in Mobile is the worst of the bunch, switching between them and another station highlights how mishandled their HD processing is.
No, but my little group of three was sensitive to multiband processing that pushed the high end to where they found it "shrill". It was not the high end itself... it was making it disproportionately louder. They also could hear distortion on high end limiting or clipping that I would not notice.
That's wrong. It is not necessary to pull high end down, just to make it balanced with the total content.
That's true, anymore successful AC stations running less dense processing, as natural sounding as possible seem benefit from consistently better female TSL.
I've experimented with a couple AC stations processing and proved it on both occasions. The challenge sometimes is to convince the PD that loudness wars were over in the early 80's and that in a day and age where your station is competing with MP3 players and IPods. The last thing a station should be doing is aggressive processing if you're targeting 25-54F. You don't want to alter the music dynamics and EQ so drastically as compared to other sources of media.
I've experimented with a couple AC stations processing and proved it on both occasions. The challenge sometimes is to convince the PD that loudness wars were over in the early 80's and that in a day and age where your station is competing with MP3 players and IPods. The last thing a station should be doing is aggressive processing if you're targeting 25-54F. You don't want to alter the music dynamics and EQ so drastically as compared to other sources of media.
The only place I'd let processing work harder is with songs where the label release is a bit grating for the AC format in terms of the hotness of the mix. In the best of cases, some very tenderly applied EQ in production is the best route, but if I see the audio chain attacking vigorously this type of song I don't get too upset.
The days of Eric Small's composite clipper are, mostly, gone. Grrrrr.
(I'd give anything for a composite clipper manual, though!)
WLW's has been off for almost as long. Every other time they've turned it off, it's always come back on within a few days. Not this time.
WTVN in Columbus has been without IBOC for almost a year.
Both stations sound a heck of a lot better than they did with the crap.
The only time I know 100% if HD is off at KFI, See if they dismantle there HD & HD Transmitter
Then I know it's really off, Same with WLW
Then I know it's really off, Same with WLW
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
(I need an icon that shows someone shaking their head in disbelief.)
There is not a special "HD transmitter" to dismantle. HD is either an exciter replacement or an add-on to an existing analog transmitter.
Here, please read this page from Nautel's website. They are a well-known manufacturer of radio transmitters.
http://www.nautel.com/solutions/digital-radio/hd-radio/
Thanks for the info K.M..But
You don't have to get smart with me, with the head shaking thing..I didn't know...
You don't have to get smart with me, with the head shaking thing..I didn't know...
I don't think Mr. Richards would only be shaking his head about your lack of HD Radio knowledge, but also your spelling and sentence structure.
As I've mentioned before, the main reason AM HD stations are shutting down HD is because the original AM HD exciters are essentially PC's with spinning hard drives. Once the main and backup PC/Exciter's fail, stations aren't bothering to repair them because manufacturers aren't repairing them.
As I've mentioned before, the main reason AM HD stations are shutting down HD is because the original AM HD exciters are essentially PC's with spinning hard drives. Once the main and backup PC/Exciter's fail, stations aren't bothering to repair them because manufacturers aren't repairing them.
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That and it's hard to justify replacing something that isn't helping generate revenue. Assuming you haven't achieved your ROI off the initial investment.
Well Kelly and K.M
I have Learning Disable, Can form words that great or a sentence ..Ans I don't know the in's & out's of Radio, I'm a DXer & a Listener
I have Learning Disable, Can form words that great or a sentence ..Ans I don't know the in's & out's of Radio, I'm a DXer & a Listener
I've been posting and taking part in this forum for over 7 years and you are the rudest and most pompous person who has ever posted here, why don't you think before you post and offend people, obviously not everyone here has your towering intellect. You owe that man an apology.
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