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HD Radio Audio Quality in DFW

  • Thread starter Deleted member 76036
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Deleted member 76036

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I’ve been meaning to post this for quite a while. For any of you who have HD Radios, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the difference in audio quality of HD1’s can vary greatly from station-to-station.

I just have to say that Univision is knocking it out of the park with both 94.1 and 107.9! And although I don’t speak Spanish, I’ll sometimes listen to the club mixes on the weekend—and that’s partly because of the excellent audio quality.

I also think 88.1 has great HD Radio audio quality, as well. I’d probably follow that up with 91.7 and 101.1. Audacy, Radio One and Cumulus are all decent. However, iHeart can go from sounding decent to sounding horrible. Sometimes the audio on both HD and analog sounds like they are airing a 32 Kbps (or less) bitrate MP3. This happens on all iHeart stations in DFW. I believe I read somewhere that their automation is now in the cloud, so I’m wondering if that could negatively affect the audio quality if the internet connection is slow and/or if something isn’t configured quite right.
 
chriscervantez said:
I’ve been meaning to post this for quite a while. For any of you who have HD Radios, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the difference in audio quality of HD1’s can vary greatly from station-to-station.

I just have to say that Univision is knocking it out of the park with both 94.1 and 107.9! And although I don’t speak Spanish, I’ll sometimes listen to the club mixes on the weekend—and that’s partly because of the excellent audio quality.

I also think 88.1 has great HD Radio audio quality, as well. I’d probably follow that up with 91.7 and 101.1. Audacy, Radio One and Cumulus are all decent. However, iHeart can go from sounding decent to sounding horrible. Sometimes the audio on both HD and analog sounds like they are airing a 32 Kbps (or less) bitrate MP3. This happens on all iHeart stations in DFW. I believe I read somewhere that their automation is now in the cloud, so I’m wondering if that could negatively affect the audio quality if the internet connection is slow and/or if something isn’t configured quite right.
Click to expand...
Club mixes? When and where? I would like to check that out.
 
chriscervantez said:
This happens on all iHeart stations in DFW. I believe I read somewhere that their automation is now in the cloud, so I’m wondering if that could negatively affect the audio quality if the internet connection is slow and/or if something isn’t configured quite right.
Click to expand...
There are several reasons for poor HD performance. The simplest "check" is do: does the Digital sound as good as the analog? If not then there is an issue somewhere in the HD path. *

Personally I am not a fan of cloud servers. It's my control freak issues which my therapist says this will get better with time, but modern remote based servers (what the cloud really is) are supposed to work as well as an onsite server. The song should sound the same from the cloud or from an onsite server assuming the same type of file. (Wav MP3 etc)

*. If the HD does should worst that the analog text, email, or go old fashion call them and let them know. Most likely nobody "local" at the station is listening the station.
 
neosolbrudda said:
Club mixes? When and where? I would like to check that out.
Click to expand...
I usually check out the Uforia Club Mix which is from 7 to 1 a.m. on Friday and Saturday. I especially like DJ Fuzion’s mixes. This is on 107.1 and 107.9 in DFW and I know the stations are streamed, as well.

secondchoice said:
*. If the HD does should worst that the analog text, email, or go old fashion call them and let them know. Most likely nobody "local" at the station is listening the station.
Click to expand...
I feel that iHeart saw my post on here. I was hearing the issues I described almost daily, but I haven’t heard the issues on any iHeart station in DFW since I posted about it. The audio quality now sounds pretty good and I’m hoping it’ll stay that way.
 
iHeart has a really good set of engineers. There has been several folks questioning the number of engineers they have. They do manage to recover from disasters in a timely manner . Back in the Clear Channel days they had a lot of folks on San Antonio. Not sure now.
 
So, I noticed yesterday that the iHeart issues are still happening. It’s like one song is crystal clear and the next song sounds like it’s under water and a 32 Kbps MP3. KISS played Chappell Roan at around 3:30 p.m. and it sounded like trash. The Weekend played right after and it sounded great! So, I’m not sure what could be happening. I don’t know enough about what was mentioned above to figure out if that’s what’s causing the bad audio quality.
 
chriscervantez said:
So, I noticed yesterday that the iHeart issues are still happening. It’s like one song is crystal clear and the next song sounds like it’s under water and a 32 Kbps MP3. KISS played Chappell Roan at around 3:30 p.m. and it sounded like trash. The Weekend played right after and it sounded great! So, I’m not sure what could be happening. I don’t know enough about what was mentioned above to figure out if that’s what’s causing the bad audio quality.
Click to expand...
I hear this on the iHeart stations here in Madison, Wisconsin, too (Rewind 92.1 especially, but also on Z104). Like you've experienced, it's intermittent, but sounds really bad when it happens, especially if listening in HD.
 
Does that happen with certain songs or switches to bad sound in the middle of a song? I'm guessing but it could have something to do with their new cloud based Sound+ automation servers they were going to be installing at transmitter sites.
 
Anton P said:
Does that happen with certain songs or switches to bad sound in the middle of a song? I'm guessing but it could have something to do with their new cloud based Sound+ automation servers they were going to be installing at transmitter sites.
Click to expand...
It happens with entire songs. However, not all instances of the song sound terrible. It almost seems like iHeart has very slow internet at the studios and the automation goes to pull a certain file from the cloud every time it plays and it’s not set to force high quality downloads, so it just grabs the file in whatever quality it can. On KISS when this happens, it’s both noticeable on analog and HD. This isn’t a problem with 106.1 HD2, 97.1 HD2 or 102.1 HD2 at all and sometimes the audio quality of the HD2’s sounds 100 times better!

I’m trying to describe this the best way I can, but I honestly don’t know how any of the iHeart equipment is set up or operates.
 
What is it with the sound quality on 98.7 The Spot in Dallas? Ever since they moved from KLUV the sound has lost great sound quality. Now it sounds like a tin can. They only have the HD1, so that might be the culprit. I usually don’t stay very long on that station as it it’s the same songs all the time from the same three artists Eagles, Journey or Elton John.
 
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