Was listening on my friends SDR the other day and noticed WWPW sounded very different. Not only is it not as loud and punchy, it also sounds like maybe the AGC settings are set incorrectly as I can hear it going up and down in level very audibly. What’s up? Are they on a backup site? Did the main processor fail? They used to sound so good prior to whatever happened happened.
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Power Processing: What happened?
- Thread starter fmradioguy
- Start date
Hopefully someone woke up and realized that excessive audio processing harms TSL.
I’ve noticed their HD signal has been going up and down a lot lately. Not sure if it has anything to do with this. Usually when I see the HD go off on a station (like it did with WNNX a year ago) it indicates to me they most likely are on aux. I cannot foresee a radio company spending extra money on HD for an aux antenna.
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The processing wasn't grungy or anything before. It was super clean and crisp sounding—just another superb-sounding Atlanta FM station. The processing settings (?) now are very obviously pumping, going up and down in level pretty fast and it isn't very pleasant sounding. My guess is the AGC is the problem, as that's what adjusts the level to be more consistent going into the multibands. But that's just my best guess, I can't really think of anything else that would create the effect I'm hearing.
RadioDoggie might be onto something. Most backup sites don't use the same processing or are equipped to broadcast in HD.
They could be on a backup site. However, HD is still on, (sidebands are present) and the signal strength appears to be the same as before these changes. Another theory I have (if they aren't on an Aux site) is they could have another processor hooked up in the rack and plugged into the secondary composite input and set in the transmitter as a failover if no audio was coming in from the main composite input.
The use of HD is at the transmitter level, not the antenna. An aux transmitter likely would not have HD and even less likely for an aux sit, intended only for emergency use.
Only a station withe a well-paid leased HD channel would find the cost of putting HD on auxiliary facilities worthwhile.
Of course, a few early HD adopters might have an older HD equipped transmitter around as backup, but the HD would only be kept as long as the old unit operated with no upkeep costs. Early HD gear was sort of primitive.
You walk in to a lot of crazy technical mess on Monday mornings
About auxiliary sites having HD transmitters, I believe there are a few here in Dallas-Fort Worth that do. I think 97.9 KBFB is one of them. Most of the auxiliary transmitters here are pretty much full power and for the regular listener, they probably won’t notice if they’re operating from the aux transmitter. I know which stations are on which towers and they’ll often switch all stations on a particular tower to aux at the same time.
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EDIT: As of this morning, WWPW appears to be back to normal.
Here in Atlanta, not all of the majors have HD on the aux transmitters. Also, the aux antenna is usually lower on the same tower or a lower spot on another tower. The higher spots are taken for mains and are more expensive. Generally, it is noticeable in the Atlanta burbs when they are on the aux transmitter in this market.
So, I’m not sure if iHeart is messing around with processing or what across the country. I noticed the other night that the processing on 106.1 Kiss FM (KHKS) here in DFW sounds like crap. I didn’t notice it much, because when my radio blended to HD, it sounded better. Anyways, I thought about that today, so I turned HD off and listened for a bit on my way to an appointment. The audio quality is poor and has a lot of digital artifacts. It sounds like maybe a 64 Mbps MP3. I know some stations will have poor quality audio files in their automation system, but the poor quality is consistent. Lone Star 92.5 (KZPS), another iHeart station, also seems to have the same issue…
I want to say iHeart did and maybe still does use lossy MP2 files, so the poor quality would make sense.
I believe the HD and the regular analog start out as the same signal. If the music sounds OK on one but not the other it is not "bad" audio files. Each system should have different processing chains. In fact an operator in Tennessee (call letters with held to protect the guilty) was too cheap to rig up a time delay to sync the analog to the his HD, so I got an HD radio to feed the analog FM signal. There is a switch to "un sync" for live local sports events and when the HD is not working. His HD 2 is feeds a FM translator that is wired direct to the analog translator transmitter and the HD with no time delay for the translator.
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