• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Compressed Audio From ABC Music Formats

T

TVJunkie12

Anyone else notice nasty sounding compression on ABC music formats? One of my clients runs the Timeless format and the music sounds like bad mp3's over the course of the last few months. It's very noticeable on songs with tape hiss. I was giving them some time as they transitioned to the XDS receivers and hoping they would fix it but the music still sounds like garbage-almost like it's going through too many A to D conversions.

Any suggestions on how to get ABC to fix their problem? We sound great when we play songs locally. The owner of this station has spent the money to sound good-we bought an Omnia 6 and the Nautel M50 exciter to go with the V5 transmitter and we're rather disappointed with ABC dropping the ball when it comes to audio quality.
 
If he really wanted to sound good he would invest money and keep it local. Doesn't matter what proc you buy, garbage in does not get improved.

I doubt ABC would do much unless you get more than just a handful of affiliates to complain.
 
Have them call their ABC account rep. and follow up with a letter. Some of the music format PD's are very responsive (like Peter Stewart for the AC format), some aren't. Main reason why we switched from their classic rock to Dial Global. (Our big issue was format execution, but also had problems with their audio.)

ABC/Citadel has a nice building on the north side of Dallas--even has a little stream running through the lobby, but when I saw it three years ago the equipment was old. Pacific Recorder consoles, Denon CD players for the live formats, and a flotilla of Audio Vaults of varying vintage. Believe Citadel made some improvements, but not sure how much has been updated. They use T-1 lines to NY, where the satellite master control is, then send the feeds from NYC to the Vernon Valley, NJ satellite up-link.

Some early Audio Vault systems used proprietary 32 khz audio cards, which maybe explains the audio I was hearing on the classic rock format. They were using TM gold discs for most of the formats, but the Timeless format may have run into problems finding some of their material. Hence the tape hiss on some cuts--some of the gold discs have this problem as well. Three years ago ABC didn't use much processing in studio--just Air Corps mike procs. and very gentle agc/compression, (obvious on the AC format as some of the guys don't watch levels all that well--that's fine, I handle that on my end).
 
Thanks TomT for your advice and insight into their facilities. The previous PD of the format was a stickler for quality but unfortunately he was forced to retire when they began skewing the format a little younger. I don't know how this PD will be. In the past ABC has been receptive to us on other issues as we are one of their larger Timeless affiliates with a signal that covers a good chunk of Arkansas. I'm not overly optimistic but hopefully they'll do something to improve their product.

And wgli, I agree that live and local is unquestionably better, however sometime economics get in the way. But this particular owner is actually one of the really good guys who does everything he can with limited resources. He understand the vital role local radio can play. He'll get up at 3am and go on the air when the weather warning sounds and he also spent the money for adequate backup power to stay on the air as much as possible. Last winter we had a massive ice storm and he spent 5 hours on the air just taking phone calls to pass along whatever information he could without even taking a break to get some water since we were the only station in that part of the state still on the air. I know that many operators with satellite programmed stations just let it run on autopilot but not this one. I just want to try to help him improve his product if possible.
 
I have to agree that their audio quality is pretty digitally compressed and lacking. My question is, in the year 2009, why bother with sat. programming in the first place? A decent automation system and a few jocks VT'ing from somewhere else would be a better option if things had to be done on the cheap. Speaking of VT'ing stuff... It sounds like, to my ears, they are doing a fair amount of VT'ing on many of their formats at times these days. I'm not impressed.
 
I'm pretty sure there has been a significant uptick in VT at Citadel Media. Noticed it on R&B & Old School, Today's Best Country, and Real Country

Not that Dial-Global is all that appealing these days.
 
As long as the networks are live during primary day parts, I'll use them. Once they start tracking during critical periods, they've lost me. We run live/local morning shows on all four of our rural radio stations. We use Dial-Global and Citadel other periods. I'm not thrilled about the concept of a network voice-tracking, since we of course can do that ourselves.
 
As I was starting to say before my laptop committed an unnatural act, one reason I use network instead of voice-tracking is that major news stories are aired live during the show. Major sporting events, plane crashes, etc. are aired. Especially on the weekend, we are more current, unless, of course, they slip in a tracked show.

Several years ago we carried ABC Stardust and it was live. The old farts kept us up on things happening at the moment. Suddenly some new voices started appearing, and the chatter was generic instead of time specific, and by golly, once I pinned them down they admitted that Stardust had gone to voice-tracking. That was the end of us carrying that format. Music of Your Life has been tracked for years.

We also take over with weather and other events. Most of our staff is within 5 minutes of the studios, and we do that a lot. If it's major, we do wall-to-wall coverage.
 
The ABC 24/7 formats are still on starguide too. You may want to listen to that feed and see if it's any better. If so, then they are crunching it as it enters the XDS system. If the starguide feed sounds the same, then it may likely be the audio cards in their audiovault. Those older 32k cards do sound like crap. You may want to call the director of engineering in Dallas. I forget her name, but I'm sure they will give it to you. I hope you get em to fix it. So much of this digital compression has made our stations sound like crap. We need to start complaining. If they can't get everything up to sattellite at a broadcast quality bitrate, then they need to spend a few bucks and expand the bandwidth of their datastream on the satellite.

Agree completely that reason for using satellite is so that there is a live body there that can relate with time specific info. If it's all tracked, might as well use local voices.

The Dial Global formats from Valencia were all live 24/7 until they bought Jones and promoted the Jones programming folks. Obviously the "Jones" way of doing things won out, and most of their formats are voice tracked at least some. I called into Denver engineering one night to authorize a receiver (don't get me started there) and got the guy to admit that there was only himself, and the Jock on Kool Gold still there. Apparently, Kool Gold is the only format that remains live most of the time. Some of the bigger formats like AC and Rock Classics are live in key dayparts, but nights and weekends are voice track city. I think True Country is tracked all the time. They never give out a phone number. Adult Standards, which is still from Valencia is now run by 4 full time jocks and two part timers. Obviously, some tracking going on there now. What a shame. They used to do NFL scores, talk about award shows, ect. No more.

I haven't had alot of experience lately with the ABC/Citidel 24/7 formats, but we do run Timeless, and that one is tracked 24/7. It's on an AM so I can't say I've noticed any quality issues, but I wouldn't on AM.
 
Thanks listener1 for the info. I didn't know everything was still up on Starguide. I'll have to check it out as soon as I can. If you listen to a program feed of Timeless the artifact-ing is very noticeable. The first thing will be to get them to admit there's a problem. I'm afraid that part will be an uphill battle because it'll probably cost them money to fix it and everyone knows the shape Citadel is in.
 
Don't know if this is the case, but when you apply certain types of heavy noise reduction you get artifacts similar to low bitrate mp3 files.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom