Around the time of the ownership change, I noticed that 1310/KTCK's modulation is not what it was. Also the audio processing is less aggressive than before and not as ``punchy''. Any ideas?
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Ticket - audio chain and modulation
- Thread starter Bob E. Nelson
- Start date
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bluescreen
Guest
Fire half the engineering staff and voila, you get what you pay for.
I doubt they fired Hugh Beaver. I think he set's the processing. Interersting, i noticed about a week ago KLIF's audio processing was backed off. Sounded flat. Levels all over the place. EQ still sounded good but the compression was turned down. They must have put it back because today they sound better.
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DoogieDown1
Guest
Re: Ticket - HD is on...
The Ticket just turned on their IBOC/HD today, so maybe they've been adjusting their analog audio to better co-exist with the stream of digital information.
The Ticket just turned on their IBOC/HD today, so maybe they've been adjusting their analog audio to better co-exist with the stream of digital information.
Re: Ticket - HD is on...
Or...if I may take some editorial license and paraphrase your post:"The Ticket just turned on their white-noise interference generator today, so maybe they've been adjusting the analog audio in order to bring its quality down to the same level of their stream of digital harrassment!"
Or...if I may take some editorial license and paraphrase your post:"The Ticket just turned on their white-noise interference generator today, so maybe they've been adjusting the analog audio in order to bring its quality down to the same level of their stream of digital harrassment!"
DoogieDown1 said:
Re: Ticket - HD is on...
So far, I'm quite enjoying the "digital harrassment" known as OTA HDTV. It looks very nice on my plasma TV when compared to the ghosting, snow, etc that I came to expect from analog TV. The Dolby digital audio is nice too! Not to mention, I've been able to take down my eyesore external antennas and go back to rabbit ears. Yup, digital really stinks...If IBOC can do the same for AM/FM radio, bring it on, and the sooner the better. As I recall, the proponents of slide rules and logarithm tables, LPs, and VCRs all predicted disaster at the advent of calculators, CDs, and DVDs, but the world has yet to come to an end...FlyOnWall said:
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DoogieDown1
Guest
JBH...I think HDTV is pretty incredible, too. But if you compare the differences between HDTV and rabbit ears... and then listen to "HD Radio" vs analog, I think that you'll come to the conclusion that the radio industry is pretty much slandering the term "HD" by applying it to the IBOC technology. The upgrade from analog to HD Radio just isn't that great. What IS cool is the HD2 channels on FM. That's a legitimate selling point, and, frankly, I'm personally pretty excited about HD2.But, when it comes to HD on the AM dial, the radio industry has probably made a mistake. Their problem is that the HD signal considerably lowers the quality of the analog signal. Meanwhile, I'm reading reports that "affordable" HD Radios won't be on the market for another year-and-a-half (and I'm guessing that's an optimistic prediction). So most everyone is stuck on old radios listening to bad AM audio. Ironically, if you own a radio with a narrow bandwidth AM side, then you won't hear much of the noise created by the HD signal. If you own a radio with a wider bandwidth AM side (translation: a GOOD AM radio), then you're going to hear a lot of nasty hiss and vibrating electronic noise. Isn't it fitting that the radio industry would adopt a new technology that makes yesterday's BEST radio equipment sound horrible?
DITTOS!
Are these problems soley due to the technology itself, or are they due to lack of engineering expertise at the station level? In the long run, will the conversion to AM digital result in better sounding audio on the AM band, and allow more "listener-usable" information to be transmitted in relatively the same amount of bandwidth? If so, it seems to me that converting to AM digital is a good thing to do. HDTV didn't work flawlessly right out of the box, and you will still see numerous technical glitches and slip-ups today. For example, here in DFW, UPN-21's audio stream is routinely fouled up. My plasma TV rudely pixilates some shadowy scenes. Somebody at some point has to put up with the technology while the bugs are getting worked out and the appliance prices drop to levels where all can afford them. For most things, the technology does seem to improve with time. Bad is somewhat of a relative term...For me anyway, after listening to the Brian Setzer Orchestra rock in DTS, all AM radio sounds rather "bad" (IBOC or not), at least for a little while...DoogieDown1 said:
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DoogieDown1
Guest
Waaaaay down the road, I think the plan is to turn the analog off entirely and allow the HD signal to consume an AM station's entire bandwidth. I'm guessing that would be 10 to 15 kHz of space on the dial, and I'm also guessing you'd get a pretty nice sounding digital signal that way.The question is whether we'll ever see that day. Maybe we will... maybe we won't. I think it's an open question at this point. But, for now, it's hard to imagine a worse way to bridge the gap between two technologies. The new one hammers the old one. And the old one is all that most people have access to.
So ... if I understand this correctly...AM audio sucks if you are analog on an IBOC Digital station. Digital receivers will be phased in (pun intended) over the coming years so that eventually everyone will have digital reception of IBOC signals with excellent audio. ...and the problem with this is???I personally like a good clean punchy old AM audio sound, but a nice crystal clear digital perfect signal is pretty awesome as well.
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DoogieDown1
Guest
[size=10pt]Step back and take a look at your post and the problem becomes self-evident, doesn't it? Analog audio on AM IBOC stations will "suck" over the coming years. Not a few weeks or months... but years! And, in the radio biz, if your audio sucks, what do you really have going for you? Kind of a big problem, don't you think?I'll concede this: It could be that people are SO used to problems with audio on the AM dial that they won't pay much attention to this new source of noise. Or there may not be nearly as many wide band radios out there as I suspect there are.[/size]
There's a myth going around you can't aggressively process digital audio. Not True. Go to any LA/NY film studio /sound stage where they make motion pictures, they're compressed/Eq'd/Limited to the MAX. NO FATIGUE.Same with PROPERLY tweeked audio at Digital Radio.How in hell are you supposed to make things like SFX, Music. Speech stand out if you're FLAT?? It just sounds BLAND when mixing it without or little compresssion. BASICS!!Back in the 60's/70's why did market's like NYC, Chicago, LA, Etc sound "MAJOR MARKET". COMPESSION/EQ/LIMITING! Not until CLIPPING/Composire clippers were introduced did we start seeing Dull/Flat/Distorted audio.I can take Major market talent and put them on Flat/Dull/Un-processed audio or Badly clipped/compressed audio and they will sound DULL.I also can take a average talent and make him sound like a million bucks with correct EQ (no booming bass-or muddy mid-range) and Miniumum compression settings and fairly aggressive limiting.It's all in the Tweeking and as i have said here many times...Hue Beaver at Wolf/Ticket/KLIF is one of the best. A lot could learn from him!
To that point, a well-informed colleague of mine told me that the mighty 93/KHJ's audio chain (during the glory days) consisted of nothing more than a plain vanilla AudiMax/VoluMax duo. No tweaking was done to the attack setting or anything else. Is that correct or did KHJ attempt to downplay the ``secret in the sauce''?CatfishJimPrewitt said:
The Volumax/Audimax combination was used by most AM stations. The Voulumax/Audimax did have great level control. Faster AGC if you will. Something the digital boxes of today fail to do. But they ARE getting better, much better. The problem with digital boxes you can really grunge them out much more than an analog box because there is so much more processing power that frankly i think isn't needed. But that's another story for another time. Many am stations also used the la2a, la3a urei boxes in the 60's and 70's. Then later the 1176/1178 peak limiters. Everybody had one in line, even when FM came on the scene. They were also very popular in production. Very smooth sounding compression. They cost thousands today which is saying something about vintage analog stuff. Some of the best sounding 70's/80's AM/FM audio was using...(out of board)..some sort of Compressor/limiter for level control (Compeller-DBX-Aphex Dominator-multi-maxx) into Texars/ Optiomod or CRL, sometimes a urei graphic EQ.WABC used sped up Volumax's in the 60's. WLS used Optimods with many black boxes throughout the 70's. Aphex Dominator, Mult-Maxx, Urei la3a-4a's, 1176/1178's. The volumaxx/Audimax used at KHJ in the 60's/70's were much better at holding levels than most digital boxes, but they could get noisy. A company has brough back the Audimax/Volumax comb in one box. Same great level control without the noise. I would would put one of those puppies in front of a Digital box. Wooo Weee it would SMOKE!!!!
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CW
Guest
In the 70s, one AM I worked at as a jock and engineer had a Urei LA4 feeding a 5 band graphic EQ and then a BL40 modulimiter....DAMN it sounded good (better than most stations nowadays!)..problem was we had a CCA xmtr that did NOT like the high end and everytime Minnie Ripperton's "Loving You" got played, the high end yoddles she would do would trip the CCA....I remember getting called one Sunday while in the shower...the girl who was jocking was telling me we were off the air and she could not command the xmtr back on...sure enough, I drove out to the site and found the breaker tripped...as SOON as I reset it and put it back on she HAMMERED the audio...and the BL40 screamed into the xmtr...causing it to trip off again! I turn the mod down from the BL40 to about 80% and headed home, finished showering, went to breakfast with some friends and then on the way back, stopped at the site and cranked the audio back up carefully 
As for HD vs IBOC, remember, HD TV is totally 100% digital on another channel....IBOC is NOT and is in hybrid mode....thus screwing up the analog side...IF they had gone with a digital signal on another channel, we would not be seeing the issue we do with IBOC....it is a BAD idea for radio..There has GOT to be better ways than Ibiquity.....like maybe DRM?
As for HD vs IBOC, remember, HD TV is totally 100% digital on another channel....IBOC is NOT and is in hybrid mode....thus screwing up the analog side...IF they had gone with a digital signal on another channel, we would not be seeing the issue we do with IBOC....it is a BAD idea for radio..There has GOT to be better ways than Ibiquity.....like maybe DRM?YES! The BL40 was the one i was trying to think of. KHJ and KCBQ and a bunch others used that little puppy. Basically one of the FIRST muti band processors. It sCREAMED!!!!
I will add, the bl40 was a cross between the la2a tube compressor and 1176
The BL40 was broadband not multi-band processing. It was excellent however!I know of a lot of stations that ran a tri-band processor like the Dorrough DAP310 into a BL40 which made quite a dynamic duo. That combo sounded AWESOME on AM.KHJ had an engineer whose name escapes me, who did one of the first tri-band processing setups. As I understand it, he ran the audio into one Gates Solidstatesman limiter, then through a crossover network which sent high, mid, and low bands of audio into seperate Gates limiters, then combined them into one more final limiter...this brought the dynamic range of all three bands of audio to maximum levels resulting in an overall LOUD and dynamic sound. They used 5 Gates Solidstatesman limiters in this setup!The Dorrough was the first tri-band processor developed in the early 70's. They sounded great except for the fact that they weren't very aggresive in compression. Stations sounded much cleaner and brighter, but jocks and programmers often hated them because they didn't have the punch of something like a Volumax. Eventually everyone realized if you put a broadband compressor/limter before or after it, it made a real difference.KLIF had the Volumax at the studio and transmitter sites until 1973 when they put the Dorrough in. The difference in the audio was undeniable. It was very compressed before and after putting the Dorrough on, although clean and bright, very flat after. The punch was gone. Of course with 50,000 watts they could afford some expansion. That, plus if the jocks ran the board hot, it distorted like crazy. I have one aircheck in particular from late 73 where it's obvious the jock hits a spot turned up too loud and it just distorts like crazy then levels off as he turns it down...and then a few minutes later he plays "The Way We Were" by Barbra Streisand. (remember the almost inaudible low level intro?)...you can barely hear it. They got it together later but when they first put it on, there was a big difference.These days a good Optimod on AM or FM will make you sound like a million bucks.A lot of people overthink the processing now. Even the factory settings will make most stations sound excellent.
You are correct sir. It was a broadband. Always nice being corrected by the MASTER ;D
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