Unforgettable

[vchimpanzee]

I've noticed this in the past several months, but not before that. When America's Best Music plays the duet between Nat King Cole and his daughter there is some kind of glitch when Nat sings for the first time after Natalie has started singing. It reminds me of what used to happen when one of the satellite formats was used by a station that had equipment problems. The sound is sort of like a burp or maybe a frog.

Although this is nothing. There was a low-power station at a church in a town I went through on the way to the beach whose formats included easy listening. For several years I passed through that town on a Monday morning at the same time on my beach trip and the same group of easy listening songs was played every time. And on one of them, someone sneezed.

 

[oldradiotapes]

Westwood Two are probably running MP2 files and that one must be corrupted at that point in the file. It happens sometimes. MP3 files have the same issue, since MP3 is basically an over-complicated reimplementation of MP2.

Your church LP probably has one master EZL playlist that nobody could be bothered to resequence or update from time to time, so they just loaded it up and played it from its start, at the appointed time. That would explain why you heard the same cuts and sneezes at the same time every time.

"It's just filler. Who actually listens?"

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Westwood Two are probably running MP2 files and that one must be corrupted at that point in the file. It happens sometimes. MP3 files have the same issue, since MP3 is basically an over-complicated reimplementation of MP2.

Your church LP probably has one master EZL playlist that nobody could be bothered to resequence or update from time to time, so they just loaded it up and played it from its start, at the appointed time. That would explain why you heard the same cuts and sneezes at the same time every time.

"It's just filler. Who actually listens?"

Westwood one does use compressed mp2's

 

[bringbackthe80s]

Westwood one does use compressed mp2's

That's interesting. I would have thought being a "big time satellite network" they would use uncompressed wave. That being said, I listened to "America's Best Music" on an FM station for years, and they sounded pretty good. Does the network use any audio processing, or do they just run it raw out of the board? Also, do you know where they got the music for the "America's Best Music" format? I'm assuming they got most of it from the TM Goldisc library. I know they were still playing some of it from carts untill 2002. Thanks.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

If I remember right, the old StarGuide III satellite system used MP2 as the codec for the uplink/downlink. They probably were using uncompressed sources in the studio. I know the ABC Radio Networks facility in Dallas was mostly using CDs, back when they had live DJs around the clock. But obviously that's not been the case in many years.

 

[oldradiotapes]

If the feed is in DVB format then it's probably either MP2 or AC3 audio, the former being the most likely. I think you can even use other codecs but IIRC those are the only two actually specified and recomended in the DVB-S standards. On the other hand, if they're unfortunate enough to still be using Digicipher II then they're stuck with AC3 no matter what.

 

[kevtronics]

Many stations still have a lot of their older music in MP2 format because that was the standard when they were first putting their music on computers in the 1990s, and the quality is "good enough" so they never bothered to redo it in a lossless format.

Unfortunately that means any CD ripping or encoding errors that happened 20+ years ago are still baked into their music library unless someone cares to redo the problematic tracks.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

That's interesting. I would have thought being a "big time satellite network" they would use uncompressed wave. That being said, I listened to "America's Best Music" on an FM station for years, and they sounded pretty good. Does the network use any audio processing, or do they just run it raw out of the board? Also, do you know where they got the music for the "America's Best Music" format? I'm assuming they got most of it from the TM Goldisc library. I know they were still playing some of it from carts untill 2002. Thanks.

Not all of WW1 is satelitte. Many stations use Storq... a computer that sits at the station where music resides along with the imaging and the jock vT's from the network studios and the VT gets dumped right into the PC. no more mistimed breaks or missing liners.

WW1's competitor, Local Radio Networks uses uncompressed wav files for music, imaging and jock VT's

 

[vchimpanzee]

Westwood Two are probably running MP2 files and that one must be corrupted at that point in the file. It happens sometimes. MP3 files have the same issue, since MP3 is basically an over-complicated reimplementation of MP2.

The same glitch is on a local station which has only used Jones standards in its history, although Westwood One took them over. Westwood One probably already had their recording of the song, though.

Someone on this site speculated the local station copied the Jones playlist when Westwood One took over because they didn't want to do America's Best Music.

Also, someone who worked at the local station claimed it was the same collection they had used for years on another station which was Timeless Classics except in the morning.