The WORST processing on a radio station

[Kelly A]

Stations that run over "100%" modulation don't have to sound bad. In one country, I established 125% as our limit as it fit within the bandwidth of home and car radio and allowed us to coompete with the stations doing 140% and more.

Again, 75 kHz as 100% is an arbitrary limit. The issue is not going to far over as you will exceed the bandwidth of the average consumer radio.

Exactly. Nobody will get dinged for running peaks over 75kHz, assuming it's peaks caused by dynamic range. A station sounding bad, and a station exceeding 75kHz, are not mutually exclusive. I think we've all heard perfectly legal FM stations that sound like crap, potentially because of AM noise, dried out caps in older gear, STL issues, just poorly set up audio processing, or any combination therein.

 

[Steve Green NEPA]

On another thread here I'd asked about the audio on ZNS 1540. It's as though the station wished to keep it a secret. They were a tough catch in mid-FL -- solid but weak sounding.

Same could be said in the late Sixties / early Seventies about ZBM1 Bermuda, on 1235. Ditto that VOA-ish Bahamas thing on 960. Radio Paradise* 1265 also sounded as though they were afraid of their own voices or were broadcasting the flat studio audio.

( * In a rented, furnished Springfield Mass. flat where was a terrific, old console radio, I heard R. Paradise very well. Across the Connecticut River from me were the two blinking towers of WSPR 1270. So I'm surmising that they might not have been on the air that night)

(Add CKLW's processing to that list of bullhorns)

 

[KB1RBI]

I worked for an adult leaning hot AC 5-6 years ago. My GM once complained that our competitors, 1 of them a rythmic CHR/Top 40 type station (we called them a thumpy thumpy thumpy top 40 station, around our offic e) and one a mainstream AC were way louder than us.

I spoke to our corporate engineer.. and last time modulation was measured on all of us, we were at 104-105 percent, the competitors were 130-140 percent.

Yuck!

Hi Paul!