MAGIC 106.7 OR MIX (104.1) ? wHICH DO YOU LIKE AND WHY?

[Retro]

Mix plays a generic mix of Pop these days while Magic has been evolving. While I prefer Mix to Magic, when it comes to long term work listening, I may opt for Magic instead.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

With WBCN gone, Boston still has 3 rock stations, WFNX, WBOS, and WAAF, plus the mostly rock stations, WXRV, WROR, but hopefully not the new Mix.

It's interesting that none of the stations you mention are licensed to Boston, but rather Lynn, Brookline and Westborough; Andover and Framingham.

Paul

The COL doesn't matter anymore in real life. They serve the Boston market. WBOS and WROR have full major-market Class B signals in Boston. WFNX and WKAF have Class A signals serving Boston. WXRV is a rimshot, but it still serves most of the market on any half-decent radio.

 

[Retro]

Now I kinda wish that The River had a better signal. They do not get into Winthrop too well nor Brookline either.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

Now I kinda wish that The River had a better signal. They do not get into Winthrop too well nor Brookline either.

I can get them OK around Somerville, Cambridge, Boston, etc... on my good home or car stereo receivers, but it's as if they don't exist here on lesser-quality receivers like my Walkman's and my clock radio.

Also, if they ever go HD, I can tell that the signal would not be strong enough to decode on my HD receiver (unless perhaps if I put up a roof antenna, but I can't do that at my apartment house).

 

[WBIMDJ]

Now I kinda wish that The River had a better signal. They do not get into Winthrop too well nor Brookline either.

I can get them OK around Somerville, Cambridge, Boston, etc... on my good home or car stereo receivers, but it's as if they don't exist here on lesser-quality receivers like my Walkman's and my clock radio.

Also, if they ever go HD, I can tell that the signal would not be strong enough to decode on my HD receiver (unless perhaps if I put up a roof antenna, but I can't do that at my apartment house).

I commute from my home in West Roxbury to Cambridge. I get them fine in both places as well as Brookline on the way. A little bit of static here and there, but good enough.

 

[Retro]

In my pocket of Brookline I wasn't able to get them on either a clock radio or a walkman.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I commute from my home in West Roxbury to Cambridge. I get them fine in both places as well as Brookline on the way. A little bit of static here and there, but good enough.

That's on a good car stereo, though. Try them on a Walkman, a boombox, or a clock radio on that route. You won't hear much if anything of them.

 

[Deleted User]

In my pocket of Brookline I wasn't able to get them on either a clock radio or a walkman.

You can't expect a 20 dollar receiver to have any sort of alternate channel rejection, selectivity, s/n ratio, etc.

It's bad enough car radio manufacturers have cheapened the AM side of the electronics to dime store quality, but 99.999% of the portable, disposable consumer electronics on the market are pure junk when it comes to design

 

[Eli Polonsky]

You can't expect a 20 dollar receiver to have any sort of alternate channel rejection, selectivity, s/n ratio, etc.

It's bad enough car radio manufacturers have cheapened the AM side of the electronics to dime store quality, but 99.999% of the portable, disposable consumer electronics on the market are pure junk when it comes to design

I recently bought a cheap Sony clock radio just to wake me up. I'm in Somerville, three miles from the Pru, but all it gets on FM are the stations transmitting from the Pru. I can't even get the full-power Class B stations on FM-128 eight miles away on it, because it gets a pig-pile of intermodulation of all the Pru stations superimposed on top of one another across the whole dial, and the only things that cut through it are the Pru stations themselves.

 

[mgpt6]

FM radios for the home have really gone downhill since the late 80s. the FM tuner sections in good otherwise home receivers are now really poor. For FM you would be better off getting a 1970s stereo receiver for FM on EBay. Car radios still have good FM tuners. I can get XRV clear on 24 South to Avon/Brockton line before WPRO 92.3 FM"s IBOC hash makes it unlistenable. One thing I have noticed in my car; if a FM's RDS siganl can still be decoded ,its stereo signal will still be reasonable.

 

[KarsonWithaK]

Not that we're off topic...

K~

 

[Yumyum]

"FM radios for the home have really gone downhill since the late 80s. the FM tuner sections in good otherwise home receivers are now really poor. For FM you would be better off getting a 1970s stereo receiver for FM on EBay."

Amen to that! We have an old tuner, maybe from the 70's in the kitchen, it's small but I can get everything I want on it and more. Sometimes we pick up stations from Hartford Conn, and very often NH without really trying. In the bedroom we have an old panasonic clock radio from the 60's or 70's and it works fine, we have no trouble tuning in anything. If I ever need to get a new radio I'm hitting the second hand stores.