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Oakland A's Radio

T

the_paul

I was listening to the A's game on the radio a few days ago and it was horrible. It sounds like someone in a studio miles away is announcing it. You don't hear any of the game sounds crowds, bats and the like. Has anyone else experinced this, and does anyone know if they even announce the game from the ball park? Thanks.
 
Night game or day game? What day of the week? I know who to ask if given enough information.
Some of the broadcast booths at the older stadiums make it difficult, tho not impossible to include ambience.
 
I'm pretty sure it was a weekday afternoon game, but I was talking with my dad and he noted that it always appears to sound that way.
 
Not knowing where you live specifically, did you listen on KYCY 1550 KC or KFRC 106.9 MC?

As mentioned on the board some time ago, I believe by Carter B, the A's games sound
better (and louder) on KYCY...the amplitude-modulated quality brings out the crowd noise
infinitely better than on the FM counterpart...

Then again, I'm used to hearing ballgames on AM...
--jay
 
I realized the same thing when listening to A's games...they don't mic their games well at all. Crowd, crack of bats, hitting mits...etc...It's a complete 180 from listening to the Giants on KNBR.

I guess that's the entire problem with the A's...always switching stations and never being able to establish themselves. So many people don't even know where the A's are...Even Ralph Barbieri said that he had no clue...Then a caller called in and told him KYCY 1550, when the stronger signal is KFRC 106.9...

It was probably at the Coliseum, since they were at home this week playing the Royals...
 
My first thought upon reading the_paul's post was that he was listening on KSTN/1420 in Stockton, which appears to add reverb to the A's broadcasts, giving it a very hollow, echoey sound.

That sound might work if you're trying to imitate a retro '60s Top 40 radio station, but it doesn't work for sports.

I have listened to the A's on KYCY/1550 and KFRC/106.9, and neither of them have that KSTN reverb.

Of course, KSTN isn't a retro '60s Top 40 station. I have no idea who picks the music ... or why he/she picks the music they play. Simply awful programming.
 
Appears the conflict is in accommodating an FM station and an AM station with one broadcast. The AM sucks up the ambience and the FM flattens it out. KNBR would have the same problem with Giants if they tried to please an AM and an FM as flagships. Everyone if the A's loop understands the conflict and the shortcomings. It's a balancing act that doesn't work as well as we would want as listeners. To some degree it is also effected by home vs. away feeds, dome stadiums vs open-air, large crowd vs small crowd etc. A lotta variables at play each day.
 
I listen to A's games regularly on 1550 and they always seem fine. I do recall recently, however, that one game in particular (don't remember which one) I was listening to sounded like it was being broadcast over a telephone. I'm sure you've heard that before- for example, when watching a game on TV and they lose connection to the game, they show a still image on screen saying 'we are experiencing technical difficulties' and you hear the 'telephone' sounding audio behind it. Maybe it was a day in which they lost their normal feed.
 
the_paul said:
I was listening to the A's game on the radio a few days ago and it was horrible. It sounds like someone in a studio miles away is announcing it. You don't hear any of the game sounds crowds, bats and the like. Has anyone else experinced this, and does anyone know if they even announce the game from the ball park? Thanks.
Click to expand...

I'm a big A's fan and I've probably heard most of the northern CA stations. My guess is that you were listening to KFRC, 106.9 FM. Their processing is set very light - almost no compression from what I can tell - or a very slow recovery time. This is great for music, really bad for live sports. Most of the people I know prefer 1550 AM when they can get it because of this. Why KFRC doesn't do something about this - or why the people at the ballpark don't fix it before it goes out - I'll never know. It also affects their commercials. Many times the audio level during a break has been way down compared to the game as well.

In contrast, KKCY probably has at least 15 db - maybe more - of active, fast-time-constant compression going on all the time. The crowd noise, the crack of the bat, etc. are there. KAHI in Auburn also has great audio. KESP, the 970 in Modesto has what sounds like very bassy, low-bit-rate audio. It's probably the worst of the bunch. I didn't even know 1420 carried the A's, but I'll have to check it out next time I'm driving through there during a game.

Dave B.
 
DaveBayArea said:
My guess is that you were listening to KFRC, 106.9 FM. Their processing is set very light - almost no compression from what I can tell - or a very slow recovery time. This is great for music, really bad for live sports.
Dave B.
Click to expand...
I think Dave is on the right track. A good CE running an AM transmitter is going to have a number of signal processing devices to really punch up the AM sound...compressors, limiters, expanders, low pass filters...some of which are located at the transmitter and some are located in master control in the studio. The effect is that all the ambiance sources available at the ball park, even if weak, will be magnified by the signal processing devices to make the sound we come to expect. Ideally, there should be a fair amount of processing at the ballpark before it reaches the studio so that the vocal/SFX mix starts off as a quality source.

FM signal processing has its own set of complexities, but it is truly unlikely to have radical compansion settings. My suggestion is for the KFRC CE to purchase and install a signal processing chain which can be switched in so that anytime the ball park source is taken, a dedicated "sports" processing chain is selected instead of the typical music processing.
 
Mike Woods said:
I do recall recently, however, that one game in particular (don't remember which one) I was listening to sounded like it was being broadcast over a telephone. I'm sure you've heard that before- for example...Maybe it was a day in which they lost their normal feed.
Click to expand...
When I worked in bush Alaska we would get many of our regional sports feeds from a dedicated broadcast circuit set up by Alascom (the Ma Bell of Alaska) rather than from our SEDAT receiver. I always marveled at this circuit, which appeared in the patch bay at many facilities around this enormous state. It was set up so that anyone could originate the programming (and sometimes we did). It would then be patched by Alascom at one of their major switching facilities and made available to any other station patched to it. These lines use very little in the way of fiber optic transmission in such a rural area, but rather make heavy use of satellite technology to transmit from village to village. As you can imagine, with most of the telephone traffic of the bush also on satellite, there is limited spectrum to jam all the communication onto the bird.

After a major technological upgrade by the phone company we noticed that all of our feeds from this circuit were really clean, but really awful at the same time. It turns out someone at Alascom realized it could save major data bits across its telephony system by installing an audio "gate." Whenever the gate opened it would sound great, and when sound fell below a certain threshold the gate would close, saving data bits needlessly wasted on what was probably interpreted as background noise on a telephone conversation. The downside for our broadcast line was whenever the announcer paused, the gate closed and it sounded as if the entire basketball game had gone warp speed right into a black hole: no crowds, no referee whistles, no squeak of converse on the polished gym floor; nothing. All it took was a couple of telephone calls to Alascom and they had it fixed within a week, but it sure sounded poor in the meantime.
 
Oakland A's Radio Affiliates

When I was in Monterey yesterday afternoon/evening, and since I did not bring my A's pocket
schedule that shows all the radio affiliates carrying the A's, I attempted to tune in the SFO
flagship stations for a listen to the Athletics/Tigers game...couldn't hear either station...
Couldn't even hear the other 1550 in Fresno...

I hit the 'scan' button on both AM and FM...nothin'...

Then, I noticed this link today:
http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/oak/schedule/affiliates.jsp

Gawd, what a mishmosh of low-impact signals - and NO decent Sacratormento signal! :mad:

Even in Santa Cruz, 42 miles north of Monterey, it was difficult getting a listenable signal for
KFRC/KYCY in the car...
--jay
 
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