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NOAA weather stations available online

This NOAA stream sounds like a phone line's running the audio to the transmitter. It keeps popping. https://wxradio.org/OK-Stillwater-WNG654

And this one is skipping and garbled, anyone know what it uses? Sounds like internet. https://wxradio.org/MI-Hesperia-WWF36

This one keeps losing connection and the humming gets louder/softer. https://wxradio.org/MO-StLouis-KDO89

This one is someone's live mic. Sounds like their settings should be checked, I feel sorry for them. https://radio.weatherusa.net/NWR/WXJ96_2.mp3
 
SnottyNose799 said:
This NOAA stream sounds like a phone line's running the audio to the transmitter. It keeps popping. https://wxradio.org/OK-Stillwater-WNG654

And this one is skipping and garbled, anyone know what it uses? Sounds like internet. https://wxradio.org/MI-Hesperia-WWF36

This one keeps losing connection and the humming gets louder/softer. https://wxradio.org/MO-StLouis-KDO89

This one is someone's live mic. Sounds like their settings should be checked, I feel sorry for them. https://radio.weatherusa.net/NWR/WXJ96_2.mp3
Click to expand...
Contact the NOAA or the National Weather Service offices in the cities the stations serve about these stations.
 
I saw a post on Reddit from someone using one of the weather radio streaming websites and broadcasting from their city.
They turned up the audio processor on their stream to boost the humming because they don't like the government right now. Crazy how people are getting even with the current administration.
 
SnottyNose799 said:
I saw a post on Reddit from someone using one of the weather radio streaming websites and broadcasting from their city.
They turned up the audio processor on their stream to boost the humming because they don't like the government right now. Crazy how people are getting even with the current administration.
Click to expand...
Have a link to the post, Reddit is a big place. If it’s the users stream I guess they can do what they want.
 
SnottyNose799 said:
Opposite that, the one in Austin sounds great, and they actually have a humming remover
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What is a "humming remover"? It's been my experience that in an analog circuit the only way to get rid of an hum is to properly ground or buy or rig up a transformer "kit / box / amplifier" to get the impedance matched. A economically priced box that would automatically get rid of ground hum on analog circuits would have been a best seller for rock and country bands touring, radio remotes etc. back in the day.
 
Here is an iOS app that has weather streams.
apps.apple.com

‎NOAA Weather Radio

‎Exclusive Feature: Rewind and Replay Live NOAA broadcasts so you never miss a life saving alert! NOAA Weather Radio is a PREMIUM NOAA WEATHER application to listen to over 200+ NOAA Weather Radio All Hazards Broadcasts. Get the latest Warnings, Watches, Advisories and Forecasts and other...
apps.apple.com apps.apple.com

The app also has a way for users to stream stations volluntarily, server info in the app. Unfortunately, many of the stations no longer work, users gave up/moved.
 
secondchoice said:
What is a "humming remover"? It's been my experience that in an analog circuit the only way to get rid of an hum is to properly ground or buy or rig up a transformer "kit / box / amplifier" to get the impedance matched. A economically priced box that would automatically get rid of ground hum on analog circuits would have been a best seller for rock and country bands touring, radio remotes etc. back in the day.
Click to expand...

Some processor apps do it nowadays.
 
Sorry for so many posts, but evidently the user in Kansas City is reading these forums. I noticed the processing is different, almost no humming and noise-removal.
 
I still don't understand why NOAA alerts are so low fidelity and scratchy. It isn't that .mp3 files can't be made high fidelity with the minimum codec adjustment.
 
sdwulfdawg said:
I still don't understand why NOAA alerts are so low fidelity and scratchy. It isn't that .mp3 files can't be made high fidelity with the minimum codec adjustment.
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As long as it came be understood the "crappy" sound does get you attention. Some people's brain unknowingly will concentrate to "understand" the message. Kinda like a whisper in a crowded room. If you can "hear" it usually your brain will "listen".
 
secondchoice said:
As long as it came be understood the "crappy" sound does get you attention. Some people's brain unknowingly will concentrate to "understand" the message. Kinda like a whisper in a crowded room. If you can "hear" it usually your brain will "listen".
Click to expand...
For every additional person that psychological effect increases mental concentration in (as opposed to allowing them to mentally tune out and miss the message?), someone else with sensorineural hearing difficulties will get excluded from merely being able to understand it, no matter how hard they try.

Speech intelligibility depends on the ability to detect a sufficient number of harmonics, on those harmonics being properly time-aligned and adequate in their amplitude, and on there being a lack of masking components. A lot of NWS transmitters still receive their audio through links like loading coil-extended rural analog telephone loops, yielding low fidelity 3.5 kHz audio with audible phase smear. Because voice is a complex rather than simple waveform, nonlinearities (such as clipping that's induced by technicians who think the bright-sounding harmonics created by overdriving that telephone-delivered audio into their transmitters makes it sound "clearer") also create inharmonics (sum and difference intermodulation components), flooding the speech spectrum with masking products. All this gets done to NWS robovoices that aren't always perfectly intelligible to begin with, and you start seeing people with substandard hearing actually having trouble understanding NWS broadcasts. (Don't forget: they have to listen through even more masking noises in their listening environments -- noises they might not be able to control, such as loud rain and wind.)

There really is no excuse for anything other than clean and undistorted audio. Pre-emphasizing digitally delivered audio into a non-distorting brick wall limiter, to compensate for receiver roll-off, is the most any technician operating these transmitters should ever do to the audio.
 
That's interesting. These two humming signals sound different, so maybe their connection problems are in different places in their boards.

Other problems can happen, too.
This one sounds like squeaking interference, hard to tell if it's from the transmitter. https://wxradio.org/MD-Hagerstown-WXM42

This one sounds weird... Like something is causing interference and the processing they use makes it sound sort of from outer space. https://wxr.gwes-cdn.net/KXI87
 
SnottyNose799 said:
That's interesting. These two humming signals sound different, so maybe their connection problems are in different places in their boards.

Other problems can happen, too.
This one sounds like squeaking interference, hard to tell if it's from the transmitter. https://wxradio.org/MD-Hagerstown-WXM42

This one sounds weird... Like something is causing interference and the processing they use makes it sound sort of from outer space. https://wxr.gwes-cdn.net/KXI87
Click to expand...
Before answering, note that I saved samples of the audio I heard at each URL while listening to them, in case the sounds they were exhibiting were different from when you were listening. Anyway:

The first URL (sample of what I heard) is traditionally called a ground loop hum. It has one odd-order and three even-order harmonics for some reason, so it doesn't sound strictly like a pure 60 Hz sinewave. But if you look carefully beneath the first strong harmonic at 120 Hz, the 60 Hz fundamental is faintly visible.

The second URL (sample) sounds like the problem I described in my previous post -- (presumably low voltage) AC going places it shouldn't on a circuit board due to a broken ground connection, and consequently encountering some variety of non-linear components, creating an infinite series of odd-order harmonics. People typically call this sound an AC buzz or an AC hum.

The third URL (sample) is simply weak FM reception. When FM audio carriers are weak, they crackle. It's the aural equivalent of "sparklies" in weak analog C-band satellite video reception (analog C-band used FM for both its audio and video).


The fourth URL (sample) also sounds like weak FM reception, but someone is doing a heavy amount of noise reduction on it. It sounds like that ambience-gutting, watery, ringy, spectrally-swishy noise reduction algorithm iPhones and other modern consumer devices apply to mic inputs, sometimes in varying degrees depending on how much background noise is detected.
 
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