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Awful audio quality on KKBQ
- Thread starter tb_
- Start date
A
AnyHuman
Guest
They should fix it, because many people have radios that don't allow the turning off of HD.
LOL, it sounds good for 5 seconds then bad.
LOL, it sounds good for 5 seconds then bad.
Analog sounds fine though?Tuned into KKBQ for a couple minutes on my drive home last night, and again this morning. The HD carrier sounds like it's being fed by a low quality cell phone call. Been this way for over 12 hours... is anyone at Cox actually paying attention to their air monitors?
Analog is fine, at least I think it is. Hard to tell from the 3-4 seconds of analog I pick up. Not going to go through the process of disabling HD, when I can just flip to a station that has better sound quality and has more compelling content… and I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels that way.
If you really want something done, rather than post about it here, what about sending them a respectful E-mail or phone call?Tuned into KKBQ for a couple minutes on my drive home last night, and again this morning. The HD carrier sounds like it's being fed by a low quality cell phone call. Been this way for over 12 hours... is anyone at Cox actually paying attention to their air monitors?
Or, maybe you'd rather just complain to a handful of radio nerds?
I'm not persuading the original poster not to do that, and personally I would much prefer a listener to reach out to us directly rather than post something negative on a forum, but this is a radio discussion site and audio quality is certainly "on topic".
Also, I just looked and the 93Q site doesn't even have an engineering contact listed. There is a VP/GM and an OM contact, but not a general address. Picking a specific person to write to who is not directly in that department seems harder than it should be.
I think Cox, errr CMG, does care about audio quality and good engineering practices, but it is surprising how many in radio do not.
I know of a four station cluster in Texas, where three of the stations sound absolutely horrible. Unlistenable to me. I have personally mentioned it to ownership more than once and in multiple years, it has never been corrected.
Many times, the 'sound' of a station as it involves audio, is subjectively in the ears of the listener, especially if they're a radio nerd. The station owner, programmer, or engineer, may think the audio is fine, or good enough.
Your perception of the audio quality is not directly tied to the success of the station. They could be successful from a business perspective, yet you don't like the way they sound. Yours is an opinion which, as I pointed out, you could politely call to their attention from a listener perspective, assuming you want to bring it to their attention in the hope they'll make changes.
Going to a discussion board of other radio nerds to complain, will have little to no benefit in solving a perceived problem.
From one radio nerd to another, "well said".
I agree with this, but it was quite a bit more than a perceived problem -- clearly a technical issue that they should've already been aware of, especially if anyone on staff over there listened to the HD feed for 10 seconds. I did call the 93Q studio line when I noticed this on Thursday, and was simply hung up on.
Nevertheless, I flipped through the CMG stations this morning on my way to work and the HD carrier sounded just as good as the analog carrier. Problem solved.
Glad it worked out, and this isn't the only instance where someone has gone into Radiodiscussions.com to complain about a technical issue, rather than just asking or bringing the matter to the attention of the station itself.
Back when I was chief of radio stations, I'd never hang up on a concerned listener, even if they were some ham calling to accuse the stations of intentional interference with ham bands. I'd understand they were well intention-ed, but ultimately not understanding the concept of receiver front end overload when near a broadcast transmission facility. Politeness and professionalism goes both ways.
That's a good point, Frank. But they probably should. My VW has a very convoluted way of allowing you to lock out HD- very difficult. Much easier just to change to another station. I would guess a listener in the general public will go "That sounds bad, hope they get it fixed" and move onto the competition. For people with HD in their car, your HD-1 IS the profit center signal if they have HD capability. That's what they are listening to, even if they don't know it. Seems like it would be in the station's best interest to at least check in on the HD1 if nothing else.
+1000. Is it too much for stations to actually pay attention to what they are transmitting?
I just checked KKBQ on the HD radio in our car and it does sound a bit harsh. The HD-2 (Texas Country?) audio is noticeably better.
The problem is that many car radios default to HD-1 when it is available, so station staff should be monitoring it if in-car is important to them...
You're generalizing something you know nothing about. Maybe they use a contract engineer from out of the area who isn't always listening to analog and HD? I did some work for a classical station that had HD-1-3. Several of the staff had no idea what HD radio was, and mainly listened to the analog side because their vehicles and home radios weren't HD capable. Because of the several second delay, you can't monitor an over the air even analog in the control room anymore, so it's not like someone is intently tuned in even while at work. To assume nobody cares is unfair.
I spent four decades in the broadcasting biz, so please don’t assume I don’t know anything.
Some sort of audio analyzer that automatically samples and compares studio output versus air output would be handy. If the air output falls outside a certain tolerance parameter it could flag a human operator.
A
AnyHuman
Guest
There is an LPFM in my area that broadcast without any audio under 250 hz or so before it went down earlier this year. That didn't work, because when they were on, I never heard any local underwriting or anything. I saw a post on their Facebook about bad audio quality, but a while later the post was deleted (probably by the station). I did point out the missing bass to them several times in private, but my messages were ignored.
Some stations just probably have big egos and don't care.
Some stations just probably have big egos and don't care.
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