Smaller markets still tend to use the older techniques. Zoe Communications in Rice Lake, WI is a good example. While the stations sound good, they are so loud that I can only go to 16/17 volume on my walkman that goes to 25 in volume. They sound like they went as far as they could go before distortion was apparent. Not to mention they are pitched up at like 3%.
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The Best and Worst sounding FM stations in your area
- Thread starter 24pulsar
- Start date
I think that there may be a horrible Soft AC/AC standard preset from one of the processing companies. WZEZ in Rice Lake, WI sounds identical to WWWM here in Minneapolis. They were once playing the same song and tropo was up so I could hear WZEZ clear. Same exact sound, I'm not kidding either, it sounds identical. They are both overdriven sounding and crush the crap out of the music and anything playing on air.
That aircheck sounds like something from 1984-85 instead of 2021.
Worst by far in East Tennessee is WSEV(AM) with translator on 104.1 in Sevierville TN. It's apparently being fed from Newport TN studios by some low bit rate internet feed (think AOL in the 90s). Or think chewed up cassette that has been sitting on the seat of a hot car all summer.
Best: Probably classical and NPR WUOT.
Best: Probably classical and NPR WUOT.
HA! You're kidding, right?
This has me curious. The worst sounding station in my market just so happens to be an AC station as well. And it sounds exactly as you are describing, it is overdriven, crushed and sounds like it is distorting. Normally I can put up with a little bit of bad audio - but that station is just immediate fatigue. You might be onto something there...
I know I may very well just be preaching to the choir here, but so many GMs need to understand that trying to be "loud" is such an outdated and antiquated practice. Unfortunately, it seems many GMs do not understand this, resulting in declining TSL and even more over-processed fatiguing garbage on the dial. They never do suspect their air chain, because "oh, we're loud, we must be good". I'd say 99% of the stations on the dial here try, but fail miserably, to be loud. The worst stations are the ones using older digital Optimods. I've mentioned before that I don't like the Orban sound to start with, but these stations just make it intolerable. It is very rare that I hear a station with decent audio processing that doesn't just absolutely ruin the experience. One of my local market stations has a very relaxed air chain, and it sounds great (when their exciter isn't throwing an audible fit like it is now). They consistently reach near the top of our local ratings. Many of the stations trying to be loud, do not. The irony!
Wow that sounds like 106.5 WBMW in Connecticut! Gross...! Who would listen to that all day?!
I notice (as a few people have pointed out) that the EMF Christian formats seem to have this certain loudish, processed sound in most of their markets. In 1995 I left a station due to it switching to K-Love. In the early days of that format they still were using our mostly unprocessed sound (we were an AC station with little processing) but several months later they were noticeably stronger sounding. It has a very crisp, generic sound that I usually refer to as "audio plastic." It's good, but too uniform.
One thing I have noticed here in San Diego is major inconsistencies in the sound quality of HD subchannels. Here we have the two major players, Audacy and iHeartRadio, utilizing most of the HD stations. KPBS, owned by San Diego State University, has a 3-station HD setup. EMF has one Air1 station that carries three HD stations, but K-Love doesn't use HD. The other major player in town, Local Media San Diego, doesn't run HD on any of their stations.
On the HD stations, all of the KPBS stations sound pretty good. The Air1 station also sounds fine on their 3 stations. It's the big players that are inconsistent and disappointing in sound quality. I know that usually the more subchannels the worse the sound, but this isn't always the case. iHeart has one station with 3 subchannels. All three sound okay, with the HD3 sounding a little less in quality but not unlistenable. They have three stations with two subchannels each, which sound fine, but one station has two subchannels and the second channel sounds thin and underwhelming, with an Alt-rock radio format served up from iHeart's national format. Audacy has four stations. Two have three subchannels, and two have two subchannels each. Of those, KyXy has a very good sounding HD2 that plays Classic Alternative rock. KSON has Country Classics on their HD2, which sounds a little quieter but listenable. KBZT has three subchannels, and the third, currently comedy, has a bit of a tinny sound, but it's not music, so maybe that's par for the course. KXSN has three subchannels. The second one, Smooth Jazz, sounds a little clippy and not great, while the HD3, which carries the Channel Q format is nearly unlistenable, thin and digital sounding, even worse than iHeart's Alt Rock. Usually the main analog signals of stations that are owned by large companies all sound consistent and equally well, but the HDs are all over the place. Why?!
One thing I have noticed here in San Diego is major inconsistencies in the sound quality of HD subchannels. Here we have the two major players, Audacy and iHeartRadio, utilizing most of the HD stations. KPBS, owned by San Diego State University, has a 3-station HD setup. EMF has one Air1 station that carries three HD stations, but K-Love doesn't use HD. The other major player in town, Local Media San Diego, doesn't run HD on any of their stations.
On the HD stations, all of the KPBS stations sound pretty good. The Air1 station also sounds fine on their 3 stations. It's the big players that are inconsistent and disappointing in sound quality. I know that usually the more subchannels the worse the sound, but this isn't always the case. iHeart has one station with 3 subchannels. All three sound okay, with the HD3 sounding a little less in quality but not unlistenable. They have three stations with two subchannels each, which sound fine, but one station has two subchannels and the second channel sounds thin and underwhelming, with an Alt-rock radio format served up from iHeart's national format. Audacy has four stations. Two have three subchannels, and two have two subchannels each. Of those, KyXy has a very good sounding HD2 that plays Classic Alternative rock. KSON has Country Classics on their HD2, which sounds a little quieter but listenable. KBZT has three subchannels, and the third, currently comedy, has a bit of a tinny sound, but it's not music, so maybe that's par for the course. KXSN has three subchannels. The second one, Smooth Jazz, sounds a little clippy and not great, while the HD3, which carries the Channel Q format is nearly unlistenable, thin and digital sounding, even worse than iHeart's Alt Rock. Usually the main analog signals of stations that are owned by large companies all sound consistent and equally well, but the HDs are all over the place. Why?!
K-Love does indeed use a moderately processed sound, and you're right, it isn't too bad - just a little squashed. "Audio plastic" is a good way of putting it! Sadly, though, our local K-Love affiliate KVLX is probably one of the better sounding stations in this market.
All the HD subchannels in my market sound terrible. The bitrate is so low that any discernible processing advantage is simply destroyed by the 32 to 50 Kbps (!!!) bitrate employed by the station's HD encoder. I was in the NYC area lately and heard WNEW's Jazz format on their HD2 subchannel. It sounded really good. Still had a bit of that low bitrate tinge going on, but it was definitely good enough to listen to.
I don't know if it costs more to run HD subchannels at higher bitrate, or if it introduces some kind of engineering difficulty, but it definitely seems to be a problem here. I also noticed that of the 4 stations here that have HD, 2 of them are supposed to have subchannels and do not.
It's funny you mention the big media companies, and their usually uniform sound. You're totally right, as I've found that Audacy stations tend to sound better than ones owned by the other "big players" and the fidelity is generally consistent. However, my local market's iHeart division is the exception to the rule, it seems. They operate 99.5 KNFX, which has a very relaxed airchain and (generally -- they're having some problems as of this post) sounds great. But hilariously, iHeart also owns 104.7 KKYS, which is easily the worst FM station I have ever heard. I guess they just don't pay as much attention to smaller markets, such as mine.
All the HD subchannels in my market sound terrible. The bitrate is so low that any discernible processing advantage is simply destroyed by the 32 to 50 Kbps (!!!) bitrate employed by the station's HD encoder. I was in the NYC area lately and heard WNEW's Jazz format on their HD2 subchannel. It sounded really good. Still had a bit of that low bitrate tinge going on, but it was definitely good enough to listen to.
I don't know if it costs more to run HD subchannels at higher bitrate, or if it introduces some kind of engineering difficulty, but it definitely seems to be a problem here. I also noticed that of the 4 stations here that have HD, 2 of them are supposed to have subchannels and do not.
It's funny you mention the big media companies, and their usually uniform sound. You're totally right, as I've found that Audacy stations tend to sound better than ones owned by the other "big players" and the fidelity is generally consistent. However, my local market's iHeart division is the exception to the rule, it seems. They operate 99.5 KNFX, which has a very relaxed airchain and (generally -- they're having some problems as of this post) sounds great. But hilariously, iHeart also owns 104.7 KKYS, which is easily the worst FM station I have ever heard. I guess they just don't pay as much attention to smaller markets, such as mine.
No. I'm serious. I can go to about 21 to 22 in volume on it on most stations and that's usually when it gets to be too loud for me. I hit 18 on 94.7 in Rice Lake and had to turn it down because it was too loud. I wouldn't have any hearing left if I cranked 94.7 to 25 lol.
I thought you were joking about the Walkman. That would be a museum piece.
It's a Sangean DT-800. Nice radio. Good for DX and headphone audio quality is superb on stations that sound good
I found their Icecast streaming panel online one day for all of their stations. I think they are all air feeds as they sound identical to the FM side, except at the low bitrate of 64k AAC. IIRC the link to it is something like rylee.dyndns.org:8282 and WZEZ's mount point is /ez. If you can get it to work, tell me if it sounds similar to your local.
It does sound similar, but lacks bass (mine goes overboard with the bass) and is amazingly clean in comparison. I'm not totally sure if it's an off-air feed, since the highs seem to go over 15 KHz, but if it sounds identical on-air then it's actually worlds better than my terrible local AC.
Despite WZEZ sounding far more shrill, it definitely sounds like the same, or very similar, processor. Likely an old Omnia or something being driven to its limit, just going by how it's squashing the sound.
Yeah. It probably is. I'm pretty sure Zoe uses Omnia for all of their stations. They just have that signature Omnia sound.It does sound similar, but lacks bass (mine goes overboard with the bass) and is amazingly clean in comparison. I'm not totally sure if it's an off-air feed, since the highs seem to go over 15 KHz, but if it sounds identical on-air then it's actually worlds better than my terrible local AC.
Despite WZEZ sounding far more shrill, it definitely sounds like the same, or very similar, processor. Likely an old Omnia or something being driven to its limit, just going by how it's squashing the sound.
Some of that shrill sound could be the bitrate too. it sounds slightly more full on the air.
KS95 in Minneapolis sounds like this.
Hmmm. I'd have to say the Audacy stations here in South-Central Kansas would sound the best, with the exception of KNSS-FM. iHeart's analog sound ok, but when locked onto their HD signals, the volume is SO much lower. You have to crank it up quite a bit for it to sound normal. KVWF is also translating a station closer to the western part of the state and it is probably the worst thing I've ever heard on the FM side of things. Robotic, distorted, all around just terrible.
Caleb,
They are simulcasting 96.7 KSOB/1290 KMMM...which I've DX'ed the FM before from here (on sporadic-E skip). The station sounds so bad. Songs skipped while I was listening. Dead air like crazy. Knock knock, anybody home? Are they using beat-up CDs for gosh sakes...or running songs off Windows XP?
KZZW 104.5 in Mooreland/Woodward, OK is just as bad. Lots and lots of dead air. 60,000 watts worth of dead air. It's ridiculous.
They are simulcasting 96.7 KSOB/1290 KMMM...which I've DX'ed the FM before from here (on sporadic-E skip). The station sounds so bad. Songs skipped while I was listening. Dead air like crazy. Knock knock, anybody home? Are they using beat-up CDs for gosh sakes...or running songs off Windows XP?
KZZW 104.5 in Mooreland/Woodward, OK is just as bad. Lots and lots of dead air. 60,000 watts worth of dead air. It's ridiculous.
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