Pensacola/Fort Walton HD Radio for P’cola and surrounding areas

[Radio_Alex_1990]

Just noticed that WXBM is now HD with HD2 subchannel. I am thinking WMEZ and the other Cumulus channels will follow suit. They have RDS as their call letters and usually HD radio displays the station’s respected call letters. In Mobile, the audio quality on WABD sounds very high or is just me?

 

[Poledo]

Yeah, Cumulus has added WCOA to WXBM HD2.

It’s about time.

 

[semoochie]

It's a good thing I clicked on this. I thought it was about Pepsi!

 

[tomservo]

I don't foresee them adding any more HD broadcasts in our area, because there's nothing left for them to simulcast off their AM properties.

As I remember it, at one time Cumulus had HD on WBLX, WYOK and WJLQ. My guess is those three encoders are what we're hearing now. The one on WYOK was turned back on for WDLT, and is simulcasting the Mobile AMs WXQW and WGOK. One was moved to WXBM for the WCOA simulcast, and one was sent to Fort Walton for WZNS to simulcast WFTW.

Unless there's something I'm missing somewhere, I don't think it'd be worth the expense of setting up HD on another station at this point. Without translators they really have no reason to run secondary channels, too.

 

[Radio_Alex_1990]

I don't foresee them adding any more HD broadcasts in our area, because there's nothing left for them to simulcast off their AM properties.

As I remember it, at one time Cumulus had HD on WBLX, WYOK and WJLQ. My guess is those three encoders are what we're hearing now. The one on WYOK was turned back on for WDLT, and is simulcasting the Mobile AMs WXQW and WGOK. One was moved to WXBM for the WCOA simulcast, and one was sent to Fort Walton for WZNS to simulcast WFTW.

Unless there's something I'm missing somewhere, I don't think it'd be worth the expense of setting up HD on another station at this point. Without translators they really have no reason to run secondary channels, too.

Or they can just run one HD (HD1) feed. Audio quality can go a long way and right now I find their audio quality to be loud and somewhat distorted.

 

[tomservo]

Or they can just run one HD (HD1) feed. Audio quality can go a long way and right now I find their audio quality to be loud and somewhat distorted.

Eh, I still rank them as better sounding than the iHeart stations, but yeah, they could do that, and have before. When 100.7 went back to music after the failed talk experiment, they ran it for a while and it sounded fantastic. It's just a lot of extra power consumption for little benefit to most listeners.

 

[Radio_Alex_1990]

Eh, I still rank them as better sounding than the iHeart stations, but yeah, they could do that, and have before. When 100.7 went back to music after the failed talk experiment, they ran it for a while and it sounded fantastic. It's just a lot of extra power consumption for little benefit to most listeners.

Yeah out of all the Cumulus stations I think The Jet sounds the best. They should go more Classic Hits (Oldies) than Classic Rock. I think it crosses into 96.1 a wee too much but that is just me.

 

[Radio_Alex_1990]

Is it just me or is Hot 94.1 and WABD audio quality sound high compared to Jet 100.7? Sounds like more amp to their music or volume seems higher. I don’t know if my terminology is correct or my point is being made lol.

 

[tomservo]

I haven't listened to 94.1 much since it flipped formats but it would make sense for more aggressive processing to be in place for urban and CHR versus classic hits. 100.7's had softer processing going back to the ARRO days from what I can remember.

97.5 has always been loud in my opinion but that seems typical of the format.

94.1's processing in ye olden days as a beautiful music type station was about the least aggressive you could get. If someone told me there was no actual processing at all beyond the bare minimum for clipping, I'd have believed it. It was quiet. I'm sure that changed under Cumulus when they brought it into the 20th century.