Anything We Can Do for Classical Music Radio in Boston?

[DanStrassberg]

The 99.5 signal in Boston is as good as it is going to get. If it was possible to get it any better, one of the many owners of 99.5, back to when it was a real Lowell station in the same studio complex as WLLH would have already done it.

Not so fast there, BoredOp! In fact, if the owners of WCRB (currently WGBH) wanted to do it, a downgrade from B to B1 would be possible. That, in turn, would allow 99.5 to move to the WRKO site. WRKO is just far enough from WPLM-FM for a B1 allocation to slip in at the Burlington site. By sacrificing most of 99.5's coverage of southern NH, a modest improvement in the signal in Boston proper (but not the southern suburbs) would be possible.

More than half a century ago, when 680 was WLAW, the center tower, which is shorter than either of the end towers, was topped by the antenna of WLAW-FM 93.7. (93.7 is allocated to Lawrence in the old table of allocations.) The combined height of the self-supporting AM tower plus the FM antenna brought the overall height of the center tower up to the height of the end towers. The FM antenna toppled in an ice storm and Hildreth & Rogers (owners of WLAW) surrendered the FM license. Years later, WCCM applied for and was granted the Lawrence channel, which today is WMKK.

If Entercom were in a stronger financial position, it would most likely have outbid WGBH for WCRB and we'd now have sports talk on 99.5. Entercom would likely have applied to do the downgrade and make the move to Burlington, or they might have gambled on the FCC agreeing to a move of the downgraded 99.5 to the old 100.7 stick on the Lexington-Belmont line. That site is short-spaced to WPLM but not by a whole lot and a waiver might have been granted.

Under current FCC rules, I don't think the FM antenna could be located on WRKO's center tower because that change would increase WRKO's antenna efficiency, thus invoking the ratchet rule. But several companies have petitioned the FCC to drop the ratchet rule, so it might not be a problem. Or an FM antenna might be side-mounted on one of the end towers.

 

[raccoonradio]

>>Northeastern has the use of the frequency

You must have mistyped and meant WVCA; when I saw "WCAV" I thought "you mean the 97.7 from
Brockton that used to be country?" But since you mentioned Northeastern I thought, ah, you
mean the 104.9 that's now WBOQ and WRBB has that freq in Boston

 

[Deleted User]

If it could be done, technically or financially, I think it would have been done already, most likely by Greater Media when the money situation was better. I have to assume whatever GM paid for the frequency swap was less than the cost of a modification to the current license.

 

[Deleted User]

>>Northeastern has the use of the frequency

You must have mistyped and meant WVCA; when I saw "WCAV" I thought "you mean the 97.7 from
Brockton that used to be country?" But since you mentioned Northeastern I thought, ah, you
mean the 104.9 that's now WBOQ and WRBB has that freq in Boston

Yes Bob it was a typo, but the RI software allows a very limited time to edit a post, and by the time I caught it, I couldn't edit it, much like the Kelly Underwood mistake back a few posts, I had started to type Kelly Clarkson, but realized I needed Carrie Underwood, I changed only half the name when I was typing the post, and when I re read it after I posted it, the edit time had expired.

It ain't easy getting old!

 

[bigtom101]

I’m very much not willing to convert his thread into a debate of the HD Radio subjects. This topic was bitten to death everywhere where people talk about off air sound and if you willing to educate your then feel free to do so. The point is that a desire to have a better 99.5 reception from Boston does not automatically imply raising a white flag and getting into HD Radio. A noise free reception is not the only criteria how people judge sound, but one does not get it them s/he does not get it….

To solve your reception issues, you need a better receiver and or a better antenna. The Sony HD Radios are terrific analog receivers given their DSP. From the Ham-Radio review site:

"Analog FM

The XDR-F1HD uses advanced digital signal processing algorithms to dramatically improve reception of FM signals corrupted by noise and interference.

Threshold extension suppresses the impulse noise ordinary detectors generate for weak FM signals. The special character of this noise can make reception unpleasant even when the nonimpulsive background noise is adequately low. The technique, which mitigates detection-vector phase reversal due to additive noise, has been used in high-performance satellite and point-to-point terrestrial FM systems. It is not normally found in consumer equipment.

Adaptive noise reduction forms a filter that tracks the stereo audio spectrum. The filter suppresses noise between and beyond spectral peaks without restricting audio bandwidth. It also suppresses co-channel interference and multipath distortion, factors that can limit reception quality for stronger stereo signals. Adaptive noise reduction has been used to eliminate tape hiss when remastering older analog recordings. This may be its first appearance in consumer audio equipment.

Adaptive digital IF filtering eliminates adjacent-channel interference in nearly all cases. The filter has extremely steep skirts and automatically adjusts its bandwidth for interference. It is much more effective than conventional ceramic filters and does not have their unit-to-unit variation that necessitates filter selection or tuned compensation for optimal performance. A symmetrical finite impulse response eliminates the group delay error that causes audio distortion in ceramic filters.

To fully benefit from the processing, the XDR-F1HD does not switch or abruptly blend to mono at low RF signal levels. The Sony can deliver a clean stereo signal with wide channel separation at far weaker signal levels than can any other tuner. Only a Carver tuner with Asymmetrical Charge Coupled Detector (and perhaps a Pioneer F-93) is remotely comparable.

Sound quality for slightly impaired to deeply compromised signals is strikingly better than that from conventional tuners. The performance of the Sony XDR-F1HD on stereo FM is spectacular and unprecedented."

The tuners analog FM abilities could help you get 99.5 with crystal clear reception. There are stations where I live that don't come in unless I am using a decent receiver and a 6 element yagi. Don't want to spend the money or still don't want to support anything related to HD Radio? Listen on your computer or get an iPhone or other portable device capable of streaming WCRB and solve your problem that way. Don't want to have your audio run thru any bit-reduced encoding? Then I guess you are screwed unless you want to move closer to WCRB's transmitter site.

I feel your pain - every day I wish that WBEB in Philadelphia would forfeit its license so that CBS-FM will finally come in decently in Central Jersey. But that ain't happening, so I just listen online and problem solved.

 

[Deleted User]

OK lets get back to Entercom/Nassau for a moment

When the morning drive guys at WEEI were locked out in a rather bitter contract negotiation, IIRC There was rumor that they might land on 99.5 with Nassau changing formats to try to get a piece of the Sports pie, and being first in the market to get sports talk full time on a FM signal in the market.

Entercom proving they had the balls to play the sports ballgame, especially after they had recently handed Howie Carr his, approached Nassau and proposed a LMA or some other partnership, effectively closing every door their Morning guys had to jump to a competitor, and giving Nassau much needed cash flow.

I don't recall why the deal fell apart. Maybe Entercom had no intention of going through with it once they had locked the talent into a contract and no longer needed Nassau. Someone could refresh memory, but as I remember it, Entercom could have had control of 99.5 without the worry of ownership caps, anti-trust issues, etc.

Granted they could have flipped 93.7 to Sports, and that is still not out of the question, but at the time 93.7 was doing well in the book, and billing equally well, so they could have gotten 99.5 for less money than the revenue loss from 93.7 and still made money hand over fist.

 

[fybush]

I was talking about a comparison between a 48 kbps stereo stream that uses iBiquity's lossy HD Radio codec and a 128 kbps stereo stream, such as that on WCRB-HD, which, AFAIK transmits no NDn subchannels, but obviously does use iBiquity's HD Radio codec on its main (and only) HD channel. AFAIK, WCRB does not broadcast even an HD2 subchannel, much less an HD3 subchannel. OTOH, WGBH has both a main HD channel (an HD simulcast of its analog channel), and an HD2 channel (a simulcast of WCRB, but at lower bit rate than WCRB HD) and, if I'm not mistaken, an HD3 channel (which carries a Celtic format). I think that WGBH-HD3 may be in mono for the time being, but if what I've read is true, improved technology will soon enable a somehat higher total bit rate (144 kbps instead of 128 kbps?) so that the HD main, HD2, and HD3 subchannels can each be in stereo at 48 kbps. I reiterate what I said before--because I believe it--and this time I hope I am making myself clear enough: I do not believe that the 48 kbps stereo stream can provide audio quality equivalent to that of the 128 kbps stereo stream using iBiquity's lossy codec in both cases. OTOH, I can believe that only the most discriminating users, using the best available audio equipment may be able to detect the difference.

If what I am saying is not true, the implication is that, using the iBiquity codec, when there is only one (stereo) HD channel (the main), all bit rate beyond 48 kbps goes unused. Prove to me that that is the case. Unless you can do that, I can't see how your argument can be correct or how my argument can be incorrect.

Ah. Now I understand. The comparison is not between 48 kbps and 128 kbps. It's just between 48 and 96, which is the maximum bandwidth you can allot to a single program stream with the FM HD system. You can increase the total amount of bandwidth available by using one of several "extended" modes which add additional digital carriers just above and below the analog spectrum, but that "extended" bandwidth can't be combined with the HD-1 channel; it can only be used for additional multicast services (like WGBH's 89.7-3, if I'm not mistaken.)

99.5-HD1 is presumably using all 96 kbps available to it, and one would indeed expect it to sound somewhat better than 89.7-HD2 under critical listening. More bandwidth is always better, of course. But I stand by my original point, which is that given the use of top-notch preconditioning and processing, even the 48 kbps presumably being allotted to 89.7-HD2 should be able to sound remarkably good.

 

[raccoonradio]

No prob MRBI; btw as of 12:15 pm WBOQ was off air for some reason...105.1 from RI and 104.7 from the Cape
more easily receivable here, for now

 

[fybush]

99.5-HD1 is presumably using all 96 kbps available to it, and one would indeed expect it to sound somewhat better than 89.7-HD2 under critical listening. More bandwidth is always better, of course.

I should amend that statement somewhat, on further review. One would indeed expect it to sound somewhat better than 89.7-HD2 under critical listening, all other factors being equal. But without knowing how WGBH has configured its airchain, it's hard to say whether all other factors are equal. It's entirely possible that the audio getting to Great Blue Hill for the 48 kbps 89.7-2 signal is getting there over a cleaner airchain than whatever's being used to get the audio to Andover for 99.5 analog and the 96 kbps 99.5-1 HD signal.

The point here is this: whether you're listening in "analog" or HD, that's only the last link in an increasingly complex digital airchain, and it's exceedingly likely that the audio you're hearing, even on that "analog" radio, has been digitally compressed somewhere on its way to you. Those other links can, and often do, have a greater impact on the quality of the audio you receive than the final leg (transmitter to home receiver) does.

 

[beantownradio25]

The 99.5 signal in Boston is as good as it is going to get. If it was possible to get it any better, one of the many owners of 99.5, back to when it was a real Lowell station in the same studio complex as WLLH would have already done it.

Not so fast there, BoredOp! In fact, if the owners of WCRB (currently WGBH) wanted to do it, a downgrade from B to B1 would be possible. That, in turn, would allow 99.5 to move to the WRKO site. WRKO is just far enough from WPLM-FM for a B1 allocation to slip in at the Burlington site. By sacrificing most of 99.5's coverage of southern NH, a modest improvement in the signal in Boston proper (but not the southern suburbs) would be possible.

More than half a century ago, when 680 was WLAW, the center tower, which is shorter than either of the end towers, was topped by the antenna of WLAW-FM 93.7. (93.7 is allocated to Lawrence in the old table of allocations.) The combined height of the self-supporting AM tower plus the FM antenna brought the overall height of the center tower up to the height of the end towers. The FM antenna toppled in an ice storm and Hildreth & Rogers (owners of WLAW) surrendered the FM license. Years later, WCCM applied for and was granted the Lawrence channel, which today is WMKK.

If Entercom were in a stronger financial position, it would most likely have outbid WGBH for WCRB and we'd now have sports talk on 99.5. Entercom would likely have applied to do the downgrade and make the move to Burlington, or they might have gambled on the FCC agreeing to a move of the downgraded 99.5 to the old 100.7 stick on the Lexington-Belmont line. That site is short-spaced to WPLM but not by a whole lot and a waiver might have been granted.

Under current FCC rules, I don't think the FM antenna could be located on WRKO's center tower because that change would increase WRKO's antenna efficiency, thus invoking the ratchet rule. But several companies have petitioned the FCC to drop the ratchet rule, so it might not be a problem. Or an FM antenna might be side-mounted on one of the end towers.

Yes, but is it really worth it? WCRB would sacrafice alot of coverage and their coverage south of Boston would still not improve by much. They have most likely considered it, especially when it was Greater Media's WKLB.

 

[raccoonradio]

Getting back to the panel discussion mentioned: I guess Billy Bulger also recently wrote a book about
Mayor Curley (whose mention reminds me of Steve Sweeney's impression of Mayor White: "And they
ask me whatever happened to Curley's desk. What about Moe's desk? Larry's desk? Are Laurel and
Hahhhhhhhhhhhdy missing some furniture that I should know about?") Anyway, I think the Boston
Phoenix interviewed the former Senate prez about the book. I'm guessing Bulger does not plan to
promote it on Howie Carr's show!

Howie of course has done impressions--kind of--of both Bulger and Christopher Lydon, who's mentioned.
Lydon did have a rather bitter departure from WBUR, etc. In both cases, Howie's impression of the two
sounds a bit more like Jonathan Harris--Dr Smith on "Lost in Space", complete with Smith's catch
phrase, "Oh, the pain. The pain!" Howie and Lydon may have been friends in the past--Howie was briefly
doing commentary, etc. on the Ten O'Clock News--perhaps still are.

 

[Deleted User]

And don't forget his attempt at a show at U Mass Lowell, where they were going to use him and the show as the basis for a new communications college..... they wasted a TON of money on salaries and production costs for that, plus some hack ex politician who was going to run the department.

 

[raccoonradio]

Ah, that's right, thank you! Someone had been suggesting WGBH hire Lydon for their new news-talk
operation...Just as well they did not!

 

[Romy The Cat]

To solve your reception issues, you need a better receiver and or a better antenna. The Sony HD Radios are terrific analog receivers given their DSP. From the Ham-Radio review site….
The tuners analog FM abilities could help you get 99.5 with crystal clear reception. There are stations where I live that don't come in unless I am using a decent receiver and a 6 element yagi. Don't want to spend the money or still don't want to support anything related to HD Radio? Listen on your computer or get an iPhone or other portable device capable of streaming WCRB and solve your problem that way. Don't want to have your audio run thru any bit-reduced encoding? Then I guess you are screwed unless you want to move closer to WCRB's transmitter site.

bigtom101,

What receiver in Sony HD Radios has is irrelevant as HD is compromised with digital compression to begin with. I have no idea where is your ridicules guesses about me come from as I do have better receiver and or a better antenna , and as far as I know all that need to be done on the reception side was done.

 

[DanStrassberg]

Ah, that's right, thank you! Someone had been suggesting WGBH hire Lydon for their new news-talk
operation...Just as well they did not!

Didn't he depart from WGBH-TV many, many years ago in an episode that kind of became the prototype for his painful and awkward departures from other public broadcasting stations in Boston end environs? I have no specifics on this--just a vague recollection that he somehow managed to shoot himself in the foot, an act he then, much later, repeated at WBUR and WUML. If somebody knows the real story, I think it would probably be worth reading.

 

[Romy The Cat]

99.5-HD1 is presumably using all 96 kbps available to it, and one would indeed expect it to sound somewhat better than 89.7-HD2 under critical listening. More bandwidth is always better, of course. But I stand by my original point, which is that given the use of top-notch preconditioning and processing, even the 48 kbps presumably being allotted to 89.7-HD2 should be able to sound remarkably good.

I did it when the GBH moved. The 99.5-HD1 is running at full 96 kbps now and I did try to get a sense if any improvement would be from 48 kbps of old GBH. Sound was not even remotely where it shall be, even comparing to my comparatively noisy 99.5 FM reception now.

 

[DanStrassberg]

Beantownradio25 wrote: Yes, but is it really worth it? WCRB would sacrafice alot of coverage and their coverage south of Boston would still not improve by much. They have most likely considered it, especially when it was Greater Media's WKLB.

I completely agree. I wasn't recommending such a move; I was simply pointing out that it wouldn't be impossible. After all, WCRB already has a reasonably listenable signal in most of Boston proper; I haven't checked to see whether all of Boston lies within the theoretical 60 dBu contour, but it might. However, even if if does, there are probably areas of shadowing within the city limits. Would shadowing be reduced if the transmitter were moved to Burlington? I wouldn't bet on it! A full B1 is 25 kW @100m AAT. That's a bit less than 1/4 of a full B (50 kW @150m). I don't have enough information to know whether the move from Andover to Burlington could more than overcome the reduction in height-adjusted ERP.

 

[carmen]

listening in mono is likely to clear up the static, unles youre on far fringe of 99.5's range

 

[carmen]

There are stations where I live that don't come in unless I am using a decent receiver and a 6 element yagi.

careful, might nudge your knob up slightly and bump into the best dancehall on the dial

if Classical is interfering with your reception, try http://208.64.160.43:8004/

 

[HHH]

I still think the answer for WCRB is to have a three way simulcast:

99.5 from Lowell (North Shore, Lowell-Lawrence, Southern NH)

99.1 (purchase WPLM-FM) from Plymouth. (South Shore, Cape, part of Rhode Island)

90.3 (purchase or lease from Boston College). Move antenna to One Financial Center (WHRB/WFNX/WERS site). 90.3 is short spaced to WGBH but I don't think that GBH would dispute their own service). This would cover the city. WCRB is now a non-comm so this could be done.