92.5 the Breeze

[Paul]

I didn't mean cheat in that they were breaking a rule or law. I meant that it cheats the PPM encoding from a burst every now and then to all the time.

 

[Paul]

And, I agree that KFBK's audio is nearly unlistenable.

 

[Mark Roberts]

That said, yeah, it's awful. On pretty much all the iHeart stations. I can't listen to KFBK on AM because of what Voltair does.

But then, that's the tradeoff they're choosing to make. Unless I'm alone, they're driving away listeners in an attempt to maximize what maybe a few dozen devices in the market at any given time can detect.

I hear it in Denver on *all* the iHeart stations…and there are a lot of them up and down the Front Range…and it indeed renders them hard to listen to…leaving aside the actual *content* on some of those stations. Even where there’s content that I want, such as on KBCO, it just ruins the listening experience. So it’s been good-bye KBCO and hello KVOQ and KJAC, which aren’t playing those games.

Possibly iHeart figures that many listeners have been desensitized to those artifacts because they’ve also been listening to streaming that’s often at relatively low bit rates. I don’t think anyone has lost money underestimating American broadcasters’ tendency to trash their audio for the sake of some objectives or another.

Listening to FM in the Netherlands has been mostly a refreshing experience, though a few stations are a bit hyped up. The worst offenders for audio quality are the public broadcaster’s commercial channels (NPO2 and NPO3). But there’s none of that encoding crap.

 

[Camron Fry]

Not that I have any reason to jump to iHeart's defense...

It's not fair to call it a "cheat". It doesn't make PPM devices register a radio station the wearer isn't listening to. It just maximizes the readability of the encoding.

That said, yeah, it's awful. On pretty much all the iHeart stations. I can't listen to KFBK on AM because of what Voltair does.

But then, that's the tradeoff they're choosing to make. Unless I'm alone, they're driving away listeners in an attempt to maximize what maybe a few dozen devices in the market at any given time can detect.

oh, and it's hilarious to listen to AM DX stations at night that have that damn thing cracked up. It's just a garbled mess. Completely unlistenable.

 

[jhimbo]

A few years ago, when 1530 was running their HD, it was like nails scratching on a chalkboard.

 

[finallyescaped]

Sadly, it might still be Mix

People are so used to switch to 96.1 for the holidays

I hope I'm wrong & iHeart promote 92.5 The Brezze as a Christmas Station

It'd be surprising if The Breeze was around after Christmas. They will probably use Christmas cume to change format. They have never really gotten a consistent stronghold. Maybe @lanceventa can look into domains that might be an indication.

 

[Michael Rivers Kramer]

It'd be surprising if The Breeze was around after Christmas. They will probably use Christmas cume to change format. They have never really gotten a consistent stronghold. Maybe @lanceventa can look into domains that might be an indication.

I think the Breeze has been doing fairly well. If not, would Classic hits be in their future. Personally I think the River is one rock station too many. But then again, I don’t have any revenue numbers.

Anyway, I think that the Christmas move was short sighted as the Mix own the brand now.