I travel frequently and visit the Chicago area several times per year. While listening to several of the FM stations in Chicago, I have noticed that they seem to lack bass and sound poorly or under modulated compared to stations in other urban areas. Typical reception problems associated with FM broadcasting such as spitting and picket-fencing seems more audible due to the weaker modulation of Chicago FM stations. I am curious as to why this seems to be the case.
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Chicago FM stations
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They sound fine to me. Our Clear Channel stations sometimes over-modulate a bit and have distortion that occurs during a bass note, but someone does eventually fix the problem (I actually write to the station to make them aware of it if it gets really bad).
As far as picket-fencing is concerned, our tall buildings bounce the signal around a lot and cause multipath problems and other anomolies, like the aforementioned picket-fencing.
As far as picket-fencing is concerned, our tall buildings bounce the signal around a lot and cause multipath problems and other anomolies, like the aforementioned picket-fencing.
scanman1 said:
I don't notice any real problems with the sound quality.
Chicago is a unusual animal, rf-wise by geography and the factor of antenna height for FMs.
In areas where antennas do not have the height advantage, coverage depends more on expended watts.
Less power expended but placed on a skyscraper gives a signal that is fairly easily "krinkled".
There is almost no real "terrain" anywhere for at least 50 miles, only flat land with a few even lower areas where
the swamps were filled in just enough to become real estate.
The huge open flat expanse of Lake Michigan invites tropo effects and reflections from the other side of the lake.
What mutlipathing does occur is mostly while driving and a result of a few large buildings in suburban areas
combined with MANY aiplanes' reflections of the signals.
I think the lower power, (relatively) used here, combined with so many aircraft reflections results in a lot of
short flutters and spits.
The addition of iboc sidebands on almost every signal on the FM dial insures that when the signal is
"instaneously" cancelled due to multipath, what does decode is not a soft white noise but the rather harsh data noise.
HD proponents have argued heavily that such noise doesn't occur, I maintain that conditions I experience while
driving in the range of 10-25 mile range from downtown are now as fluttery and multipathed as what I experienced
back in the 1970-1980s living 50 miles away in Indiana.
Spits and flutters may make it seem like the modulation is lower. It's not.
There's just ample opportunity here for the hd sidebands to become audible.
The range in audio balance and sound quality among FMs seems about the same as it always has for many years.
In areas where antennas do not have the height advantage, coverage depends more on expended watts.
Less power expended but placed on a skyscraper gives a signal that is fairly easily "krinkled".
There is almost no real "terrain" anywhere for at least 50 miles, only flat land with a few even lower areas where
the swamps were filled in just enough to become real estate.
The huge open flat expanse of Lake Michigan invites tropo effects and reflections from the other side of the lake.
What mutlipathing does occur is mostly while driving and a result of a few large buildings in suburban areas
combined with MANY aiplanes' reflections of the signals.
I think the lower power, (relatively) used here, combined with so many aircraft reflections results in a lot of
short flutters and spits.
The addition of iboc sidebands on almost every signal on the FM dial insures that when the signal is
"instaneously" cancelled due to multipath, what does decode is not a soft white noise but the rather harsh data noise.
HD proponents have argued heavily that such noise doesn't occur, I maintain that conditions I experience while
driving in the range of 10-25 mile range from downtown are now as fluttery and multipathed as what I experienced
back in the 1970-1980s living 50 miles away in Indiana.
Spits and flutters may make it seem like the modulation is lower. It's not.
There's just ample opportunity here for the hd sidebands to become audible.
The range in audio balance and sound quality among FMs seems about the same as it always has for many years.
C
clone
Guest
Tom Wells said:
So you can imagine what they sound like in Indiana now, right? It's really bad. Driving east on 30 from Joliet to Plymouth, in the middle of summer, with some tropo-esque coming in from Michigan, I had to switch to satellite. It was just terrible. The buzz-generators definitely do their job.
It is interesting, though, to hear (as I did just last week in the Portage, Indiana Wal-Mart parking lot) 97.9 WGRD Grand Rapids peaking the meter on the analog side, then hit the switch and hear the Loop coming through loud and clear on the digital buzzband.
This brings back memories of Chicago FM BH (Before Hancock).
As a kid I had a 63 Chevy with an under the dash FM converter. The target station was WSDM, at the time still transmitting from the tower on Kedzie @ I-55 with IIRC 75KW of power. I lived in Calumet City.
WXRT was on Western Avenue just west of the Loop (and south of the Allied Radio store).
WDHF was somewhere in Oak Lawn.
WEAW was in....where else, Evanston.
I'm guessing WGLD was on the same tower with the then WOPA in Oak Park.
And if you were transmitting from downtown, you certainly didn't have any real height advantage.
As far as FM technology goes, we've come a long way since 1968!
As a kid I had a 63 Chevy with an under the dash FM converter. The target station was WSDM, at the time still transmitting from the tower on Kedzie @ I-55 with IIRC 75KW of power. I lived in Calumet City.
WXRT was on Western Avenue just west of the Loop (and south of the Allied Radio store).
WDHF was somewhere in Oak Lawn.
WEAW was in....where else, Evanston.
I'm guessing WGLD was on the same tower with the then WOPA in Oak Park.
And if you were transmitting from downtown, you certainly didn't have any real height advantage.
As far as FM technology goes, we've come a long way since 1968!
317C50KW said:
In the 60s WKFM & a few other stations transmitted from the Randolph tower. The few "lucky" ones were on the Prudential building.
[/quote]
In the 60s WKFM & a few other stations transmitted from the Randolph tower. The few "lucky" ones were on the Prudential building.
[/quote]
Just curious as to what other stations were at 188 Randolph. I always thought WKFM was the only one. I remember when WKFM's antenna fell off of the roof. No other station (FM) went off of the air. Only WKFM. You have me curious now.
Old Chicago
In the 60s WKFM & a few other stations transmitted from the Randolph tower. The few "lucky" ones were on the Prudential building.
[/quote]
Just curious as to what other stations were at 188 Randolph. I always thought WKFM was the only one. I remember when WKFM's antenna fell off of the roof. No other station (FM) went off of the air. Only WKFM. You have me curious now.
Old Chicago
I thought there were other stations there originally. When WKFMs antenna fell they were the only one left.
Would love to hear any details related to the WKFM antenna falling off of the roof. I've never heard the story before. Googling doesn't bring up much info on it. Thanks.
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