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WABD vs Hit Music Now...on processing/sound quality

N

Nate Wesley

What's up with 104.1 WABD's sound? It seemed fine when it first launched, but now its processing has seemingly taken a real nosedive. Music and voice levels seem low, and when you turn it up--its very hashy, too. Meanwhile, WRGV's sound is almost too loud at the same volume level--but at least there's no hash. I would guess that Clear Channel has tweaked things to mask any deficiencies in signal strength, though they probably aren't any dramatic coverage 'holes'.

I'm listening mostly from car stereos in Monroeville, so neither station is a true local signal. But 104.1 never sounded this low and hashy when it was Jack-FM. And for a station only using 50kw instead of 100kw, 107.3 comes through just fine, albeit 'punchy' compared to when it was simply My 107.3 or even 'The Groove'. Anyone else have thoughts on sound quality?
 
I haven't really listened closely to either of them since it's not my kind of format, usually, so I flipped the radio on. Damn — you aren't kidding about WABD! It's duller than dishwater, although I don't hear anything I'd describe as hashy.

WABD's HD recently came back on, maybe that coincides with the change in sound quality? All the Cumulus HDs run no subchannels and normally sound really clean. For whatever reason, all the Clear Channel HDs main channels are in and out on one of my radios no matter how strong the signal - it has to be some kind of bug in the receiver, but they all sound noticeably worse, HMN included, so I tend to avoid them unless I'm shooting for the subchannels, which never drop out. But then I also think CC's analog audio is horrible. Like bad mp3s. HMN being the exception.

Right now WABD is playing Rhianna's We Found Love and it's skipped about 10 times. Ugh. Now it's Adele, and it's skipping, too. Maybe there's antivirus scanner running on the air PC? LOL. Geez, my PC is nearly 9 years old and my music doesn't even skip this bad. (It does on my "smart" phone, though.) In HD I'm hearing it too, now that I listen. It's a little dull and the compression sounds like it's a little too aggressive. Lots of pumping on this Black Eyed Peas "song". Ugh. I hate BEP like Jews hate Hitler.

HMN is loud and I actually hear some… I won't call it distortion, but it's muddy. After listening to FLAC and m4a files in my local collection for a few days, FM radio really sounds bad! Going back to HD and it's got that crispy bad digital artefacting but it's still brighter and cleaner, so I prefer it to analog.

None of them sound as good as BLX, but neither sounds as ungodly bad as Sunny 1057 in Orange Beach, either. At least there's that. ::)
 
Let me tell you how I really feel:

Piece of crap engineering from someone who doesn't know what they're doing!!!
 
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