SA Cox stations

[Anonymouse]

They're all messing up tonight. Some are just broadcasting silence, some are on but staticy or distorted, and still some are just broadcasting static! The transmitters are all on, but...

The whole situation might have been different if you've tuned in earlier tonight, seems they're working on it because the particular situations from station to station keep changing but nothing's fixed yet. All or most of their stations to break like this in one night? Weird.

And why are many of their stations broadcasting static? They're probably using STL links and their system broke?
If I were Cox I'd feed my stations via Internet and forget the STLs, much better sound if they use a high bitrate like 256 or 320 and no static broadcast over the signal to worry about.

 

[Anonymouse]

Well it looks like they're all fixed except KONO, which is staticy.

 

[bturner]

Most of the clusters are at the same place. If there is a catastrophic failure at the main facility, it might take some time to get the redundant options up and running. The truth is nothing is 100%. At our station we used dedicated lines and internet as a back up. There were times both were down and they don't prioritize you. You get this 'all our customers are important, just as important as your radio station'. It happens in the big city and the small town. Even when you have a plan B and plan C, sometimes they don't work. That generator you tested yesterday and it worked just fine might not turn over today. Meanwhile you stress over the money you're losing and the audience that went away. Certainly not fun times and the engineer is stressing to find the source of the problem and a doable work around.

 

[daypart]

And why are many of their stations broadcasting static? They're probably using STL links and their system broke?
If I were Cox I'd feed my stations via Internet and forget the STLs, much better sound if they use a high bitrate like 256 or 320 and no static broadcast over the signal to worry about.

Maybe Internet is the primary feed, which failed, and the STLs are the fallback?

You do realize that there are DDOS attacks happening on the Internet these days? They're originating from Syria. Maybe Cox was affected by the Saturday attack on Akamai that also broke TWC's connection to Netflix.

 

[Ihavenoidea]

What likely happen is the Cox Media studio facility in San Antonio on Datapoint Dr suffered a CPS power event and their emergency backup power failed to kick in. Such events are rare, but they do happen.

If all their STL microwave transmitters are without power, there is no way to get program audio out to the remotely located transmitter sites. The transmitters would just keep rocking along with no audio in the case of digital STLs. In the case of older analog composite STLs you could be hearing the unsquelched STL receiver on the air.

An Internet stream is really a poor choice for a primary STL for the big broadcasters due to unreliability. Usually, licensed point-to-point microwave links are a station's primary and switched or leased line Telco links are the second option followed by an Internet link. Now, IP audio streaming over a point-to-point microwave or Telco link can be a strong backup option for stations if implemented properly. Some broadcasters use a point-to-multipoint audio over IP satellite backup solution.