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WCBS FM Audio

B

BobOnTheJob

Had the pleasure of being within earshot of WCBS FM the other day and what a pleasure it was. Aside from the superbly entertaining programming, the audio was pure delight. Sounded just as good as my Breakaway Broadcast Processor that I play with in-house at home. Kudos to whoever crafted that audio signature...as we say in rural southern Indiana, Ya Done Good...
 
Thank you. Alot of credit goes to the production and programming departments for upgrading the song files. In the haste to get the station back on in 2007, alot of songs were pulled from wherever they could find.. resulting in not the best quality at times.

The airchain is straight-forward with the exception of one special box between the Ariane (of course) and the 8500. It's a long discontinued 2 band compressor and, if you were to find one, you need to modify it! I have never seen another and the one in the chain was found in a demo rack at a Sam Ash for $79 in 1999. It lived on an AM and two different FM's before I pulled it from my home rack for just this purpose when I was promoted to CBS FM in July 2008.

CBS FM was always a holy grail for me and I wanted to make the audio something very special.
 
Mike has created a sound that is three dimensional. Makes you look at the radio it's that good. The. Best. Audio. EVER. in NYC!!
 
"It's a long discontinued 2 band compressor"

Any hints as to what it is?

Jay Walker
 
I've beeen hearing (web streaming) WCBS 101.1 here at work (Genelec monitors) for the last hour... recorded it from time to time. Presuming that the stream comes from a tuner... I notice some dynamic on the music without compromising loudness, sometimes I notice grunge on some records (something like too fast attack and release), on the commercial breaks besides the load of 1 minute spots I noticed that the commercials with phoneline fx are always lower than the rest. Overall nice non fatigating sound.

PS: Are 1' spots quite common on american radio? Such lenght spots are an invitation to turn the dial. European radio doesn't go for them... Are PDs so confident that the programation is so good that the listener won't switch station?
 
The stream is a Compellor before the PPM encoder and an 1100PC Orban soundcard processor. The 1100 has the AGC defeated.
 
No, PD's in america are just so confident in the sound of the on-air commercials...that's why they're longer. :D
 
I didn't think anyone ran :60s anymore. Out here on the Left Coast it's all :30s and :15s..

-- Doc
 
Sgeirk said:
No, PD's in america are just so confident in the sound of the on-air commercials...that's why they're longer. :D
Click to expand...

And what about the almost 1 second on blank audio at the end of each spot ? :-S I've been listening cbs stations and all have that "feature"... I'm disapointed :p
 
Re: 1 second blank audio

With the automation system we bought it seems to be an "undocumented feature".
 
If you're listening via streaming, chances are the 1 second of dead air has to do with the ad insertion process, nothing relating to the actual on-air product.

Ad insertion entails playback of separate events...one after the other...overlap is not supported.
 
SFM-Ptgal said:
Can someone point me to a stream with the same full content as the airwaves?...
Click to expand...

http://www.ksopcountry.com

This is a Salt Lake City, UT Country FM station. Their stream is directly from their console ads and all, through Breakaway Live to their crappy 32kbps WMA provider.
 
Can someone explain why streams in the US are so bitrate reduced? I can understand that the broadband penetration isn't at the same level as we have in the Netherlands but still. A 128 kbit/s stream shouldn't be a problem to most I guess. At least have the option between low and hi bitrates. Or has it all to do with the streaming provider costs?
 
There's just not as much demand for 128kbps as you might think. If there was a demand, there would be more terrestrial stations streaming at that bitrate.

Frankly, 32kbps aacplus sounds nearly as good as a 128kbps mp3 stream, anyway. Most listeners don't really notice.

And, yeah, cost, too.
 
Keep making CBS-FM sound great, wgliradio! Even Joe McCoy would be impressed, except he'd say it needs more echo.

And don't even THINK about resigning again. There is still too much to do at Hudson street, wouldn't you agree?
 
Sgeirk said:
There's just not as much demand for 128kbps as you might think. If there was a demand, there would be more terrestrial stations streaming at that bitrate.
Click to expand...

I think that's a flawed logic... In this day and age, who is going to bother telling you they would like a higher bitrate stream? First of all they would need to realize consciously they want better audio quality, then they would need to feel confident there's something bad and know that it could be better to come to the point there they need to find a contact and then sit down and go through the trouble of writing you an e-mail. Naahh, people today don't bother... They just go elsewhere, where sound is better. All the while you have your head buried in the sand thinking all is good.

Frankly, 32kbps aacplus sounds nearly as good as a 128kbps mp3 stream, anyway. Most listeners don't really notice.
Click to expand...

Oh yes, "the listeners don't notice" argument which has gotten a lot of the radio stations today to sound almost worse than the average downloaded MP3.... How would you know that listeners don't notice? How many of them did you actually asked, interviewed, polled?

If you're expecting them to come to you and tell you, you know your processing is adjusted badly, or your bitrate is low or just your sound is bad (whatever that may mean) like I said above, who would feel confident and who would bother? Not your average listener. Especially when there are other stations accessible as easy as a push of a button or a mouse click. Not to mention other sources of entertainment and music you can actually enjoy listening to.

Bad line of thinking, IMO...

And don't get me started on the 32 kbps aacPlus... You use 32 kbps for mobile streaming or elsewhere where bitrate is restricted or expensive (IOW where you have to or have no other choice) not for your listeners on flat-rate broadband.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
From a purist standpoint, I can't possibly disagree.

However, meet with a panel of actual radio listeners, talk to them about audio quality, much less streaming quality....much less any talk of bitrates and enjoy the blank faces.
 
Sgeirk said:
From a purist standpoint, I can't possibly disagree.

However, meet with a panel of actual radio listeners, talk to them about audio quality, much less streaming quality....much less any talk of bitrates and enjoy the blank faces.
Click to expand...

I have a pretty strong opinion about this: There is not and has never been any point in asking radio/audio listeners about quality! Generally speaking, they do not think about it, never mind talk about it. More often than not, they react on a primitive basis, impulsively and subconsciously. As with any animal, one can be expected to instinctively move away from pain or discomfort, and towards pleasure or potential pleasure, whether they are cognizant of the action or not.

Our job, as controllers of the quality of sound, is to give the listener as few purely technical reasons to reach for the knob...any knob.. as possible. Because when they reach for the volume, they may just go for the tuner or even the power button.

It's all just varying degrees of the same thing as far as they are concerned.

Kind Regards,
David
 
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