WABC Saturday oldies 7-12-08 IBOC aircheck

[R.F. Burns]

Bob, seriously no insult was intended. The point behind my question was that iy you call 1 KW a thumping signal (and assuming that you said that with more than a bit of irony), then what would you call 500 watts. Of course having a directional pattern will effect coverage (WNYC is also directional) and even with the better 820 Khz frequency, considering the noise level here in NYC compared with what your 1040 in upstate is facing (forget IBOC on 1030, that isn't the point of this discussion), of course your 1040 signal will cover greater distances than NY's 820.

 

[LinoNYC]

"How about my 500 watts at night" isn't meant as an insult, RF? Really? Then what is it meant as? I made an observation about WNYC being a "digital daytimer" in response to a glowing post about the wonderfulness of this station, how it outpaces commercial facilities, from a poster who stubbornly - and generally with a large dollop of nastiness - promotes HD as the cure-all for AM's ills. This particular poster's response was a gratuituous insult aimed at my station, which has nothing to do with this thread. Looks like you're chosen to join his little put-down party.

Here we go again: Professional Victim who throws barbs but whines when he gets an equally barbed response.

Your cyber malfeasance stops neither with us, hd radio nor even our borders, you included Thailand in your tasteless meanderings. BTW; Interpol can't "arrest" anybody, they merely present their detective work to local police.

WNYC a&f are excellent facilities, they do have larger budgets than most other station's gross billings, they have something else too: a large and growing audience of young and affluent listeners. By contrast WABC and WOR both have ancient and dieing listener bases and are increasingly resorting to "alternate means" of income- selling their airtime in blocks.

You often come here and lecture others about programming and point to your glowing facility in posts such as this from 6-26-08:

Yeah - thanks, Steph. A small AM station with 20kw and a 4-tower array that puts the equivalent of a 53kw NDA lobe over Rochester which still can't overcome the hiss from WBZ.

Presumably you refer to you own station, so I ask: if you have such compelling offerings, and powerful signal, why do you allways turn up MIA or dead last in Arb's Rochester ratings?

Lino

 

[Savage]

No, RF, far from putting down WNYC's night signal, I was trying to point out the irony and the futility of digital being added to a signal like that. Guess I wasn't clear enough. The IBOC power would be ten watts at night, hardly adequate to reach a population base of 16 million.

The engineering issues that hobble AM these days are: noise immunity, audio quality, interference, massive discrepancies between night and day coverage, in many instances daytime-only operation, high maintenance requirements. HD-AM offers utterly NO realistic solutions for any of those shortcomings and in fact aggravates two of them. And whether or not HD offers a real (as opposed to novelty) audio improvement is very much a matter of subjective interpretation.

 

[Savage]

Mike Walker, I didn't mean to say "audio quality doesn't matter." I believe quite the opposite. That's why my station is heard in full NRSC 10 kHz mono. I had the Omnia set at 6 kHz for a couple of months until one Saturday I just couldn't stand it any more. I was tired of our programming sounding like every announcer had his sinuses stuffed with tissue and a bucket over his head. I longed to hear a good clear S or F or Th. When we opened the processing back up to the full allowable bandwidth the difference was amazing. Dont' believe all the hogwash the pro-IBOC people continually chant about receivers are so narrow you can't hear the difference. You can. Anyone can, even using newer radios.

My point about quality and spoken-word program material is that quality-processed analog AM - which is to be distinguished from IBOC-throttled analog of 6 kHz, 5 kHz or like the local Crawford station, a frankly incredible 4.5 kHz (the only AM in the market playing music) is perfectly suitable for most listeners.

It's just asinine to say that, in order to accomodate IBOC, we should be reducing analog bandwidth because of alleged complaints about sound quality. You made the very same objection about proper use of IBOC on FM on this very same board. We are actually in agreement about AM sound quality. The analog compromise is a major problem I have with the system, the other of course being unacceptable interference.

 

[KB1OKL]

I'm familiar with WNYC I can hear it whoosh all the way here in MA SOME NIGHTS FROM IT'S 1 kw TRANSMITTER. That's some jammer ibquity thought up. It and WGY blend rather nicely up here at night in MA, a harmony of buzz and whoosh.

Well beavis you have some imagination, WNYC -am does not run iboc at night.

Would it be asking too much that you do a little thinking before posting.

Lino

Yes, you're right Butthead it must be WGY, I apologize, I'm not perfect like you obviously. I have a local on 830 10KW about 10 miles from here at night so it is hard to tell. Hey at least they have enough sense not to run it at night.

 

[KB1OKL]

My only point Savage is that there is no "AM Codec" or "FM Codec". The codec is the same (although there are varying bitrates on AM, and a fallback to a lower-fidelity mono mode when signal conditions are poor on AM).

And frankly I'm tired of the "who cares about sound quality for talk, ballgames, weather reports, etc." I FREAKIN' DO! The human voice is the MOST IMPORTANT SOUND IN OUR LIVES! Our hearing apparatus is tuned to be super-sensitive at voice frequencies. This is why we hear coding problems from low bitrate streams far sooner with spoken word material than more complex music. We freakin' KNOW what the human voice should sound like.

No self-respecting BBC, or NPR listener would dare claim that fidelity doesn't matter when it comes to reproducing voice. In the UK (and often in Canada and other places), MOST talk (or as they call them "speech") shows are in stereo, and sound just stunning...like the people are in the room. Good audio is the difference between listening to an event, and (seemingly) BEING THERE.

Regardless of whether it's talk, music, sports, or whatever, radio is an AUDIO MEDIUM! Audio is the ONLY THING WE HAVE TO OFFER! Should we make our ONLY PRODUCT sound as good as possible, so that it's not the only noisy, low-fi choice available to listeners in ANY medium? I think the answer is obvious. And no, it doesn't necessarily have to be HD within the AM band. It could be that the bandwidth is just to narrow for good analog audio AND (marginal at best, come-on, admit it!) digital. Hey, it's not as if there aren't other ways for AM stations to distribute their audio digitally with higher fidelity (webcasting, leasing an HD2 or HD3 channel from an FM, etc.) Keep the analog audio clean, wideband, and hell...STEREO! Why the hell would we even debate whether our freakin' product should sound good????

I agree about voices sounding good on radio, nothing like a booming voice coming out of the speakers which sounds like they are are in your living room or car, but you don't need HD or even stereo to achieve this. A good wideband AM tuner can achieve this with a wideband AM mono station, same for analog FM. The stereo would be nice and add to the realism, but I propose that the main problem of AM's sound is not the lack of stereo it's the lack of fidelity.