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KNWN audio question

All of which was understood by Schulke, MANY years ago. One of the conditions they placed on their subscribers was that there would be no clipping and very little comp/limiting in the audio chain to the transmitter.

There was also a study that found women to be especially sensitive to clipping. Don't know how far back that goes or if Schulke was involved, but I think I read an Orban white paper that referenced it.
 
What we need is that classic 1980s KUBE manic compression (cart tape hiss never sounded so awesome...)
 
What we need is that classic 1980s KUBE manic compression (cart tape hiss never sounded so awesome...)
I remember that from 1981, when the station first launched as "The New 93" -- the loudness barely changed, but you could constantly hear the tape hiss pumping up and down. I much preferred a less compressed sound, but by then about the only place you heard that on a pop format in Western Washington was KNWR up in Bellingham (which carried the automated TM Stereo Rock format that generally seemed to encourage the stations that ran their programming to turn down the processing a bit).
 
I remember that from 1981, when the station first launched as "The New 93" -- the loudness barely changed, but you could constantly hear the tape hiss pumping up and down. I much preferred a less compressed sound, but by then about the only place you heard that on a pop format in Western Washington was KNWR up in Bellingham (which carried the automated TM Stereo Rock format that generally seemed to encourage the stations that ran their programming to turn down the processing a bit).
One of the selling points of taped formats was that the tapes were already mastered with the lows brought up slightly (during quiet passages to keep the silence sensors from tripping) and the peaks lowered in hotter passages to keep the music from distorting. Tape itself has a certain amount of headroom and wasn't as sensitive to hard clipping like the digital sound files that followed it. I remember seeing some tapes that would peg the meter periodically, yet I heard no distortion.
 
All of which was understood by Schulke, MANY years ago. One of the conditions they placed on their subscribers was that there would be no clipping and very little comp/limiting in the audio chain to the transmitter.

There was also a study that found women to be especially sensitive to clipping. Don't know how far back that goes or if Schulke was involved, but I think I read an Orban white paper that referenced it.
Bonneville had similar restrictions.
 
All of which was understood by Schulke, MANY years ago. One of the conditions they placed on their subscribers was that there would be no clipping and very little comp/limiting in the audio chain to the transmitter.

There was also a study that found women to be especially sensitive to clipping. Don't know how far back that goes or if Schulke was involved, but I think I read an Orban white paper that referenced it.
When the ratings were down, Schulke blamed everything on tape heads that hadn't been cleaned/changed/aligned often enough, when ratings were good, he credited his music programming skills.
 
Bonneville had similar restrictions.
All of which was understood by Schulke, MANY years ago. One of the conditions they placed on their subscribers was that there would be no clipping and very little comp/limiting in the audio chain to the transmitter.

There was also a study that found women to be especially sensitive to clipping. Don't know how far back that goes or if Schulke was involved, but I think I read an Orban white paper that referenced it.

When I worked in SE Wyoming, we had a competitor who had a particularly grungy warm (not in a good way) kinda clipped sound.. and ever single woman i spoke to in particular about that station said it got irritating to listen to after less then a half hour and theyd change the channel

Our station was female heavy on listeners so we made sure we sounded good
 
When I worked in SE Wyoming, we had a competitor who had a particularly grungy warm (not in a good way) kinda clipped sound.. and ever single woman i spoke to in particular about that station said it got irritating to listen to after less then a half hour and theyd change the channel

Our station was female heavy on listeners so we made sure we sounded good

Things were so cranked up across the board.. when id tune to the left or right, id HEAR the RDS data in the sidebands
 
I remember that from 1981, when the station first launched as "The New 93" -- the loudness barely changed, but you could constantly hear the tape hiss pumping up and down.
During those days, the only time the modulation monitor needle dropped below 95%, was during cold voice.
 
I have always wondered how much of Schulke was salesmanship/hype and how much was actual programming genius.
If you looked at the ratings, it was definitely a full dose of programming. When SRP and Bonneville competed head-on, the winner was usually due to the local manager and their promotion, control over commercials and even the live talent they hired.

I had my own Beautiful Music format go up against Bonneville, and years later saw a letter Bonneville sent to the manager of that competitor saying that my station was so well executed and positioned and promoted that it likely could never be beaten.

That confirmed to me that the major syndicators were good, but local management was just as critical.
 
BTW... whomever got to the problem at KNWN did a great job of getting the levels evened out. Sounds pretty much like it did before the switch.
As the guy who started this thread way back when, I have to agree. It's now very similar in sound levels to the other local AM stations.

I won't start a separate thread on this topic, but as 1090 settles into the Patriot format, I've noticed the few times I've listened that the handoff to ad breaks during the "Glenn Beck Show" has resulted in some dead air and, at least once, weird audio countdowns that obviously aren't meant for air.
 
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