CONSUMER OPINES ON ROCHESTER FM AUDIO QUALITY

[JohnW]

With a lot of stations hyping HD, here's a few thoughts on the analog audio quality of some FM stations here in Rochester. I'm only mentioning those on which I receive a stong enough signal for quiet stereo. My tuner indicates multipath distortion and I've eliminated those with any level of multipath. I live in tha Park Avenue area, and use a simple wire dipole antenna. Speaker and amp tone controls set to flat.

WRUR - deep, tight bottom, transparent midrange and crisp highs. Great channel separation, sounds more like a CD or LP than FM.
WXXI - extremely clean and balanced. Good everything.
WBEE - way too fat on the bottom, muddy mids and no high end at all.
WFKL - bland, no highs, not much stero separation.
WZNE - nondescript. Music to commit violent crime by. I don't think that a Zone listener notices what it sounds like.
WFXF - finally, someone brought AM sound quality to FM.
WCMF - CMF sounds to me like most FM classic rockers sound like - prominent mids, decent stereo separation, but harsh highs and weak in the bass.
WPXY - in a word, awful. Is it even stereo?
WBZA - nice bass, mids and highs. Good separation. Good sounding.
WDVI - something is really wrong here, out of phase perhaps? Sounds as if nobody there cares. Actually hurts to listen to.
WRMM - glorified mono. Appears to be designed to sound good on the table radio in the office.
WDKX - good, clean sound. However, I am not familiar with the music and don't know what it should sound like, so I can't say anything.
WJZR - clean and decent stereo separation. No bottom or top ends, all midrange,
WKGS - too much in the bass, mids and highs. Like an equalizer with the slides set to look like the letter W.
WLKK - one of the best sounding stations on the dial. Balanced, sweet sound, Deep, natural bass, transparent mids, nice high end. True stereo channel separation. Like WRUR, sounds more like a CD or LP than FM.

It seems that some stations are interested in audio quality and some aren't. Any thoughts from those of you in the business?

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Nice summary of Rochester FM.

We've come a long way sing the days of stereo Sta-Levels, Level-Devils, Audimax and Volumax combos and even Durrough multi-band processors, which were quite ahead of their time, come to think of it.

I'd appreciate what listeners think about FM quality in Buffalo. I have my opinion, but because I'm an insider, I'll refrain and let the board community express their opinions.

 

[ThePickleReport]

Hi Jim,

I'll bite. I used to think that JACK sounded absolutely horrible, especially when they switched from talk until very recently. Is it my imagination or did they change something VERY recently?? They sound much better and cleaner.

I think 97 Rock sounds great. WJYE has a very warm sound. WHTT is fine--punchy in the midrange.
I don't care for Star 102.5---they sound okay I guess, but not as focused as some of the others.

 

[jim8230]

I have to chime in with

WLKK, WNED-FM and WBFO.(On their main transmitter.) Overall fidelity is great and very little processing.

 

[Mark_Giardina]

With a lot of stations hyping HD, here's a few thoughts on the analog audio quality of some FM stations here in Rochester. I'm only mentioning those on which I receive a stong enough signal for quiet stereo. My tuner indicates multipath distortion and I've eliminated those with any level of multipath. I live in tha Park Avenue area, and use a simple wire dipole antenna. Speaker and amp tone controls set to flat.

WRUR - deep, tight bottom, transparent midrange and crisp highs. Great channel separation, sounds more like a CD or LP than FM.
WXXI - extremely clean and balanced. Good everything.
WBEE - way too fat on the bottom, muddy mids and no high end at all.
WFKL - bland, no highs, not much stero separation.
WZNE - nondescript. Music to commit violent crime by. I don't think that a Zone listener notices what it sounds like.
WFXF - finally, someone brought AM sound quality to FM.
WCMF - CMF sounds to me like most FM classic rockers sound like - prominent mids, decent stereo separation, but harsh highs and weak in the bass.
WPXY - in a word, awful. Is it even stereo?
WBZA - nice bass, mids and highs. Good separation. Good sounding.
WDVI - something is really wrong here, out of phase perhaps? Sounds as if nobody there cares. Actually hurts to listen to.
WRMM - glorified mono. Appears to be designed to sound good on the table radio in the office.
WDKX - good, clean sound. However, I am not familiar with the music and don't know what it should sound like, so I can't say anything.
WJZR - clean and decent stereo separation. No bottom or top ends, all midrange,
WKGS - too much in the bass, mids and highs. Like an equalizer with the slides set to look like the letter W.
WLKK - one of the best sounding stations on the dial. Balanced, sweet sound, Deep, natural bass, transparent mids, nice high end. True stereo channel separation. Like WRUR, sounds more like a CD or LP than FM.

It seems that some stations are interested in audio quality and some aren't. Any thoughts from those of you in the business?

Regarding the sound quality on WXXI-FM you can thank Senior Audio Engineer David Sluberski for that. Dave knows audio that is why the FM sounds that good.

 

[SpareChange]

I have to chime in with

WLKK, WNED-FM and WBFO.(On their main transmitter.) Overall fidelity is great and very little processing.

Yes, the Lake has a clean, transparent sound with very little punch and processing. The best "FM sound" in the market is most likely WNED-FM, due to its format and the dynamics of the music played.

WBFO sounds remarkably good, considering the station's processing has to be set up to accomodate Blues, Jazz and News-Talk.

Jack sounds better than it did two months ago, but it still has low end crunch that's hard to take in a tight environment, like in-car listening.

Star has a very bright and over-processed sound, yet its microphones sound fairly clean.

Kiss, largely due to the product that it plays, sounds highly processed and fatiguiging.

WYRK is highly processed, again, due to the music it plays, but its microphone processing sounds clean and bright. You can always hear the jocks, even when they talk over the highly processed music.

WEDG is unlistenable. Too much crunch.

97 Rock has a lot of punch and sounds clean across the board.

WHTT, of all the stations that play "AC," has the least processed sound. Perhaps because the station still plays music from the 60s and 70s when the state of the art for music production and recording isn't what it is today.

WJYE is hitting the mid and highs a bit too hard.

WBLK has low end punch but sounds reasonably clean.

What must be considered is the type of music that's being played and the source of that music. Lots of processing goes into the recording and production of the music these days in CHR and Country formats, to the extent that when it hits the air, it sounds over processed and sometimes square-waved.

Commercials are another matter. We're hearing mp3's, mp2's that are recorded and various bit rates (some as low as 96k-bites, which sounds deplorable when it's converted to the stations' parameters.) In this respect, the age-old adage is true: Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[average_listener]

Hi Jim,

I'll bite. I used to think that JACK sounded absolutely horrible, especially when they switched from talk until very recently. Is it my imagination or did they change something VERY recently?? They sound much better and cleaner.

WBUF is up with their new transmitter (and I assume new STL path, processor, etc) at the same Elmwood Ave site as 97 Rock. Been there for a month or so, I'm guessing...