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Audio Tweaking at JACK FM?

B

BigB68

These old ears are not what they used to be whatsoever, but it "seems" to me that JACK FM has tweaked their audio
chain within the last week or so. They have a much brighter fuller sound, and no longer sound muddy bassy, or that incredibly compressed crappy MP3 sound of audio off the hard drive. To me, it sounds equalized just right. Loudness is good without any distortion that I can discern, and dare I say it compares to playing a CD in the car as far as sonics. Anyone know the scoop from any CBS engineers?


Blaine Brooks
Certified & Trained Traffic Monkey
 
JACK SAYS THANKS FOR NOTICING MY AUDIO MAN.... AND WHILE YOU'RE AT IT, COULD YOU TWEAK MY OTHER PARTS?
 
I heard it last night while "pirate" hunting and I agree, it sounds great. The 250hz channel (or thereabouts) seems turned down low.
 
I will say that they are if not the best, one of the best sounding stations in the market... The "tweaks" sound great ;-)
They have one of the best engineers / processing gurus in house over there.. He posts on here sometimes. :p
 
I gotta admit: 100.3 sounds much better now. I know it sounded somewhat cruddy while they were running the "Adult Mix V100", "Hot 100" and "Wild 100" formats. Not that it bothered me any, though richer sound is nice to have. ;D

I loved the live response from the "Jack FM" voice!!
 
In case you're wondering why Jack had dead air this morning, it was because the tweaking got too close to sensitive areas. Make a note: BE MORE CAREFUL IN MORNING DRIVE... After all, I am driving you know!
 
Thank you, I always believe "less is more" is the key to processing.

Jay Walker
 
Jay:

Do you remember an Orban White Paper authored by Robert Deltoni entitled:

"AM Can Sound Just As Good As FM (Almost)" or something similar...?
It came packaged with the second generation Optimod-AM (the 9100 perhaps).

that was a major FAIL
 
When Bob authored that white paper IBOC bandwidth restrictions were not in the picture so in a lot of respects he got it right.

AM can sound remarkably good but not with the bandwidth restrictions required by IBOC. When bandwidths were allowed out to 10/12kHz and receiver bandwidths were the same AM sounded great with near FM quality. With IBOC, for AM stations to be able to remain in the "mask" the analog bandwidth is reduced to under 5khz. A telephone circuit is 3khz!

There are a few music AM stations in DFW who while working under the restrictions of the NRSC curve still have sufficient bandwidth that when listened to with a wideband AM receiver sound pretty good. Remember the WLW Crosley 50kw that was "Cathenode modulated" (DC coupled) was certified by MacIntosh as "High Fidelity" in the 1950's a certification not easily earned.

With the noise levels and bandwidth restrictions on today's AM band the quality is no where near where it was in the post war years. While processing wars in the 70's were not helpful, they did bring about innovations to the band such as PDM/PCM modulation and multi-band processors such as the DAP 210/310/610 and the infamous AM Optimod.

Here at my home, I'd stack my 1941 Western Electric 451 or my "Quincy Tin Can" 1959 Gates BC-1T up against any AM for quality of transmission. But I'm not limited to IBOC bandwidth restrictions as current Hybrid stations are working under.
 
When Bob authored that white paper IBOC bandwidth restrictions were not in the picture so in a lot of respects he got it right.

AM can sound remarkably good but not with the bandwidth restrictions required by IBOC. When bandwidths were allowed out to 10/12kHz and receiver bandwidths were the same AM sounded great with near FM quality. With IBOC, for AM stations to be able to remain in the "mask" the analog bandwidth is reduced to under 5khz. A telephone circuit is 3khz!

There are a few music AM stations in DFW who while working under the restrictions of the NRSC curve still have sufficient bandwidth that when listened to with a wideband AM receiver sound pretty good. Remember the WLW Crosley 50kw that was "Cathenode modulated" (DC coupled) was certified by MacIntosh as "High Fidelity" in the 1950's a certification not easily earned.

With the noise levels and bandwidth restrictions on today's AM band the quality is no where near where it was in the post war years. While processing wars in the 70's were not helpful, they did bring about innovations to the band such as PDM/PCM modulation and multi-band processors such as the DAP 210/310/610 and the infamous AM Optimod.

Here at my home, I'd stack my 1941 Western Electric 451 or my "Quincy Tin Can" 1959 Gates BC-1T up against any AM for quality of transmission. But I'm not limited to IBOC bandwidth restrictions as current Hybrid stations are working under.
Click to expand...

I agree, IBOC requirements and AM NRSC standards before IBOC did and do continue to degrade AM audio quality, no question about it.

And, under laboratory conditions, with custom made transmission and receiver components, and with supported by a complete vacuum of impulse noise (thus the controlled lab conditions), AM can get really good.

I recall, but can not find, an exact reference to a story about Bob Carver creating an FM quality AM transmitter - receiver pair that rivaled FM quality in laboratory comparison tests.

Now to the real world, circa 1988, 570 KLDD was in Motorola C-QUAM AM stereo under Hue Beavers. And Hue did it right. I believe this was prior to NRSC-1 perhaps. K-Oldie sounded very, very good on the little Radio Shack AM Stereo receiver we used as an off-air monitor source. Notice that K-Oldie resorted to using a Radio Shack AM Stereo receiver... the availability of such receivers was quite limited.

But as good as it sounded stationary, I could never find a AM Stereo car receiver that even approached sounding good, and I sampled the field of the available few. Even rented cars w/ AM Stereo to listen to KLDD.

Besides the constraints of NRSC and IBOC, constraints existed and still exist in AM receiver design, as well as AM tranmission antennae bandwidth before we consider superior AM modulation schemes that replace plate modulation.

It is unfortunately that AM became the unwanted bastard step child of broadcast radio due to technical challenges that faced both the broadcaster and the receiver manufacturer.

I have always been amazed by the disconnect between CEA and IRE (now IEEE).

Here's a quick example, my $50 mp3 player... creative labs... hardly can pick up FM in stereo. And I'm in a better than city grade locale. Perhaps I should move to Cedar Hill for better reception on that.

In other words, radio is an afterthought now in 2013. Why was AM an afterthought 25 years ago?
 
In other words, radio is an afterthought now in 2013. Why was AM an afterthought 25 years ago?
Click to expand...

"Success" was one of the reasons for the death of AM music radio.

The AM band was pretty well stacked up by the mid 60's and as a consequence the industry began the migration in earnest to FM. Once programmers such as Bill Tanner in Miami and others created huge successes with contemporary programming on the FM band, the flood gates opened. The first Top-40 FM I worked at on-air in 1973 was KBEQ "The Super Q" in Kansas City. When we launched we CRUSHED Storz WHB in one book. There were two major reasons this happened. (1) Good solid top-40 programming and (2) superior "Stereo" sound.

Once the mass population got a taste of Stereo, the emphasis from the receiver manufactures was FM. The quality of the AM side of the receiver suffered, and when the AM band was deregulated and more stations were shoehorned in the already crowded space manufacturers began to tighten up the bandwidth which caused the quality to further suffer.

To wander way off topic, something I'm known for...

I know for a fact how good AM can sound, I have heard myself through the old Koss Pro4s on the off-air monitor of a 50KW Class 1A top-40 station in stereo. Truth be told, I prefer the texture, and warmth of a tightly processed AM station. BUT you have to have a boat-load of RF to provide the quieting to the signal to appreciate that texture, unfortunately not everyone can have 50KW of quieting. The Achilles heel for FM still is the 75us pre-emphasis curve. No mater how good today's DSP processors are, you can still hear the brittle highs before the 15k roll-off on FM. AM minus NRSC can be flat to 15k and beyond if allowed...

You are right about Hue and KLDD/KRQX 570 was a great sounding AM Stereo station. Hue does a fine job with KGVL although in my humble opinion he could use a bit more processing depth. But "sound" is a very subjective thing. There are purists and there are "nail it to the wall" types. Over the years I've mellowed in my tastes as you can tell by the stations I work with. They are very competitive, but very friendly on the ears compared to my tastes as an on-air talent and engineer in the 70's.

Sorry for the mono (stereo?) log...
Jay Walker
 
Once the mass population got a taste of Stereo, the emphasis from the receiver manufactures was FM. The quality of the AM side of the receiver suffered
Click to expand...

The transition in user habits, preferring FM to AM, should provide broadcasters a historical model to examine for anticipating user behavior in transitioning listeners away from AM & FM to HD's-1,2,3.

However, the draw to FM was motivated the clear order of magnitude of improvement in fidelity that FM represented versus AM, in terms of stereo and frequency response and S/N. And everybody could hear it. The difference to the consumer was clear.

If consumers thought [because they could actually hear and make a distinction thru listening to HD] that HD Radio offered the same or a similar order of magnitude jump in improvement versus analog FM quality, there would be similar migration and mass exogenous from FM -to- HD-1.

Currently there is no appreciable improvement for HD-1 versus Analog FM. Most can't discern any difference.

So, now my suggestion:

All FM broadcasters should pull out their DSP based modern multiband processors and revert back to using only Optimod 8000 or earlier technology. UREI LA-4's are fine, Volumemax and Gates limiters from the early 1970's would be great too. (Was there something called a StayMax or is that a pill?)

By doing this, reverting all analog FM quality to 1976-77 standards, would make listeners RUN out to get an HD radio for HD-1. And consumer behaviors would improve, so HD-2 and 3 useage would benefit as well!

I'm not being funny. Broadcasters must sour the milk. It's the only way HD can be made viable!
 
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