The River is the WORST sounding signal on ATL FM

[MRFLASHPORT]

Has Cox Engineering all walked off the job? I spent a good amount of time stuck in a work truck last few weeks, and of course, no access to XM/streaming. So I was stuck with the limited choices on our FM dial. Used to be Cox had a top sound not just on 98.5 but everything.

does anyone care that in RADIO one's product is SOUND, and if a signal sounds like mush and over driven clipping to the point of harmonic whines, it causes people (even non "radio" and "audio" types) to tune out, REGARDLESS of how appealing the programming content may be?

I just can't wrap my head how in a home market, Cox would let a big signal like this sound so horrible.

(and HD has been off on 98.5 for almost a month now)

Guess no one else really noticed.

 

[max100]

Has Cox Engineering all walked off the job? I spent a good amount of time stuck in a work truck last few weeks, and of course, no access to XM/streaming. So I was stuck with the limited choices on our FM dial. Used to be Cox had a top sound not just on 98.5 but everything.

does anyone care that in RADIO one's product is SOUND, and if a signal sounds like mush and over driven clipping to the point of harmonic whines, it causes people (even non "radio" and "audio" types) to tune out, REGARDLESS of how appealing the programming content may be?

I just can't wrap my head how in a home market, Cox would let a big signal like this sound so horrible.

(and HD has been off on 98.5 for almost a month now)

Guess no one else really noticed.

no i have too. i really miss the hd2 signal....

 

[littlejohn]

Mentioned this several weeks ago. It (unfortunately) picks.

 

[frankberry]

I've emailed this thread to one of the COX Engineering Directors and a great friend.
If anyone can find out what's happening, he can. The audio at his stations has always been top-notch.

Frank

 

[kf4rca]

For months WSB AM's carrier would experience intermittent dropouts. Don't think it was power company related but more like intermittent VSWR overloads. But it was finally fixed.
I think they're going thru churn. Broadcasters periodically run off older experienced (and high paid) people in favor of hiring cheaper in-experienced help. It will take them awhile to get up to speed on their equipment.

 

[frankberry]

This is the email response from my friend at Cox.
"I'll look into it. I'm at the CES right now and will be in Atlanta later this week." (I'm guessing that he meant NEXT week).

Frank

 

[RoddyFreeman]

For months WSB AM's carrier would experience intermittent dropouts. Don't think it was power company related but more like intermittent VSWR overloads. But it was finally fixed.
I think they're going thru churn. Broadcasters periodically run off older experienced (and high paid) people in favor of hiring cheaper in-experienced help. It will take them awhile to get up to speed on their equipment.

Cox Radio/Atlanta's chief engineer is Charles Kinney, and he's one of the best.

 

[kf4rca]

What A Major Market Chief Does

Answers telephone, cranks out emails, memoes.
Meets with contractors, salesmen.
Signs time sheets for his dept.
Creating purchase orders, budgets.
Organizes projects, workflow.
Keeps up with FCC logs, rules changes.
Goes to meetings all day. (And there are meetings about other meetings.)
Many chiefs are in charge of building maintenance now.
Taking building maintenance requests, changing light bulbs, toilet clogs, HVAC problems.
Deal with personnel problems, hiring, firing.
A chief hardly touches equipment. If he has to go downstairs or to a remote site, something is seriously wrong.

 

[frankberry]

You forgot two things.

Hires qualified people to keep the stations on the air and operating properly (and legally).
Assumes full responsibility for technical issues and failures.

 

[TheBigA]

A lot of IT generally falls under the CE as well.

 

[kf4rca]

And company vehicles.

Here's a funny story.
A news babe waltzes in and complains "the toilet seats were too cold in the ladies restroom." At first I thought of something that probably would get me fired. But I came up with something better. So I told her "we had electric toilet seats in there at one time, but one shorted out and electrocuted a secretary. So, we had to take them out."
She said, "oh dear" and walked out. Sometimes you have be creative.

 

[wavo]

Answers telephone, cranks out emails, memoes.
Meets with contractors, salesmen.
Signs time sheets for his dept.
Creating purchase orders, budgets.
Organizes projects, workflow.
Keeps up with FCC logs, rules changes.
Goes to meetings all day. (And there are meetings about other meetings.)
Many chiefs are in charge of building maintenance now.
Taking building maintenance requests, changing light bulbs, toilet clogs, HVAC problems.
Deal with personnel problems, hiring, firing.
A chief hardly touches equipment. If he has to go downstairs or to a remote site, something is seriously wrong.

Maybe 50 years ago there was such thing as a "chief engineer." There did used to be a management person like you describe heading engineering departments in radio.
Today....I don't know of a chief engineer, or Director of Engineering, that doesn't do heavy lifting. He/she is also usually the one getting the wakeup calls at 3AM. If he/she has staff then *maybe* he/she will call a subordinate to handle the problem. Maybe.
Kinney has 5 full power stations, a couple of translators, and gawd knows what else to look after. He also helps other Cox facilities around the country and is out of town a lot. David Jones keeps everything going when Kinney is out of town.
These guys do a great job protecting the Cox station's ratings and revenue. They have much bigger problems than a couple of board posters not happy with their audio processing.
My guess is that if the PD is happy with the audio then Charles is. Don't fix what ain't broke.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

Maybe 50 years ago there was such thing as a "chief engineer." There did used to be a management person like you describe heading engineering departments in radio.
Today....I don't know of a chief engineer, or Director of Engineering, that doesn't do heavy lifting. He/she is also usually the one getting the wakeup calls at 3AM. If he/she has staff then *maybe* he/she will call a subordinate to handle the problem. Maybe.
Kinney has 5 full power stations, a couple of translators, and gawd knows what else to look after. He also helps other Cox facilities around the country and is out of town a lot. David Jones keeps everything going when Kinney is out of town.
These guys do a great job protecting the Cox station's ratings and revenue. They have much bigger problems than a couple of board posters not happy with their audio processing.
My guess is that if the PD is happy with the audio then Charles is. Don't fix what ain't broke.

Excuses, excuses. Their product is SOUND.

I maintain a 15 site public safety radio network. If my system sounded that bad for that long, I'd be out of a job. Of course, if my users can't hear their radio, someone might get hurt or killed- so I guess the priorities are a bit different around here.

None the less, the HD is back on 98.5 and the River sounds better. So I guess these couple of board posters weren't the only ones complaining.

 

[wavo]

Excuses, excuses. Their product is SOUND.

I maintain a 15 site public safety radio network. If my system sounded that bad for that long, I'd be out of a job. Of course, if my users can't hear their radio, someone might get hurt or killed- so I guess the priorities are a bit different around here.

None the less, the HD is back on 98.5 and the River sounds better. So I guess these couple of board posters weren't the only ones complaining.

Yes. The product is sound but "sound quality" is subjective.
All you are required to accomplish in your mission is transmit intelligible audio. A radio engineer (or audio consultant) has to accomplish the impossible; the station audio has to be adjusted to sound wonderful in an infinite number of environments and on an almost infinite number of audio systems, adjusted in an infinite number of ways.
Then there's our old friend, subjectivity. It never ceases to amaze me when I read the engineering posts on audio processing. There are people who build multiple processor chains, all controlled by a "sucks" control. They go on and on about how great these systems sound. When I listen to an audio sample I think the "sucks" control is a little too high.
So it seems everyone has an opinion about how a station should sound. But if you're an employed engineer, the most important opinion is held by the one who strokes your check every month.

 

[littlejohn]

Well, there are a couple of rules for setting up processing. First, if you or the consultant flew in today, don't touch it. Tweak it tomorrow after your and their ears have recovered from the flight. Second, get it right where you want it and everybody's happy. Then, as soon as their backs are turned reduce the input 1 -3 dB. It will continue to sound good, even after a couple hours of listening.
For a quick n dirty test, get a pristine copy of Dolly and Kenny singing Islands In The Stream, and a pristine copy of the DGG recording of DeFalla's Three Cornered Hat, the fanfare into the second movement. Dolly and Kenny have a lot of energy and her breathy singing is right at the knee of the preemphasis curve. The fanfare is a combination of herald trumpets, tympani, and castanets. When you can get those to come out sounding like they went in, it's working.

 

[Rusty Bridges]

Half the problems are attributable to audio issues because in large measure, the audio that comes into every radio station is a bloody mess. MP3's are a big problem. Commercial MP3's are one part of that problem; with low bit rates, brick wall limiting and hyper processed.

The music situation isn't much better. Most posters here, I'm sure, have seen what the audio "looks like" when files are opened in ProTools, Adobe or any other audio app. Songs are often horribly compressed, "looking like bricks and sounding like sh1t," as one of my CE friends says. In some cases a PD or MD will put MP3 (rather than WAV file) on the air, which only compounds the problem. GIGO.

Adding to this stinking stew is the fiddling with the audio processing. "I want us hotter. I want us brighter." GIGO reaches even lower depths. Rare is it that a PD or consultant says, "I want us to sound clean and less processed than anything on the band." Chief Engineers these days work miracles, given that in most cases their hands are full. Understaffed and task saturated, they're frequently misunderstood by most of the GMs and some PDs (not all, mind you) who haven't a clue as to how the RF/audio process works; but that doesn't stop them from making more demands, "Hey, my wife's laptop is messed up. I brought it in so you can you take a look at it."

 

[frankberry]

The source material is often a big problem.
I have found that an MP3 which was recorded at 320kbps (using a good encoder such as the MP3 encoder in Adobe Audition) is acceptable for broadcast.

The bigger problem is the enormous amount of audio compression (Loud ... Make it LOUD!) is the real issue.

I once worked for a station which dubbed all music through a graphic EQ and looked at the average frequency response on an Audio Spectrum Analyzer.
They adjusted every song to a pre-determined frequency response curve.
Their on-air audio chain consisted of multiple compression boxes which produced a very loud ... and fatiguing ... audio signature.

After a few years, the station lost listeners and just faded away.

 

[wavo]

The source material is often a big problem.
I have found that an MP3 which was recorded at 320kbps (using a good encoder such as the MP3 encoder in Adobe Audition) is acceptable for broadcast.

The bigger problem is the enormous amount of audio compression (Loud ... Make it LOUD!) is the real issue.

I once worked for a station which dubbed all music through a graphic EQ and looked at the average frequency response on an Audio Spectrum Analyzer.
They adjusted every song to a pre-determined frequency response curve.
Their on-air audio chain consisted of multiple compression boxes which produced a very loud ... and fatiguing ... audio signature.

After a few years, the station lost listeners and just faded away.

There was a station in Atlanta that did the same thing. It was not a very good sounding station although it's ratings were fantastic.
The radio stations that really sound good are the ones with simple processing schemes set up by people with good ears. Bob Orban says as much in the Optimod manual(s.)
Most people don't care, or even notice, audio processing. But also remember that people, especially women, are sensitive to processing generated artifacts and that TSL will suffer if the processing is aggressive. The PD should make the call on processing tradeoffs.

 

[littlejohn]

I put a reply up, but it doesn't seem to of got here. Ah well...

 

[jabba17]

Both radio and CDs have succumbed to the Loudness Wars...compressing dynamic range and increasing dBs so the only sounds are loud and louder. CDs have, what, a 90dB dynamic range? Nowadays everything is pushed up to the upper half of that range.