What is wrong with the audio on WYAY?

[secondchoice]

To Widow's_son:

The signal from the new facility is great! Anyone who understands the technical side of the business would not question the reason for the move. There is practically no difference between 77,000 watts and 100,000 watts but the additional height makes a measureable difference.
WYAY's signal was improved noticeably with the move in the western metro area. I would think the only coverage loss would be well north of the 15 county metro Atlanta area.....

Just from personal experience the signal in Douglas, Western Cobb, Bartow and north of Canton [where I drive a lot] will not stop the scan on my car as often as 92.9 (which is not a true "C"). But back to the audio. You would think a big time operator (Citadel) would have a "bullet proof" STL in the #7 market!! The half to a whole second dead audio "burps" [some times more than 3 times in a hour] have to stop. Salem does not have this problem with 104.7 and they are on the same tower. There are "off the shelf" answers. I personally have worked a with tunneling protocol systems that are more "forgiving" than what I hear on 106.7. Does any other of the top rated FM's in the Atlanta market have this problem?

 

[jabba17]

Audio Processing is like art, everyone has an opinion... Most of you that have commented in this thread are really clueless (with the exception of taylorengineer). The general public care about content, and if the "proceesing" isn't god awfull, 99% could care less who's louder, softer more compressed, clipped and so on. There are SO many varibales to consider. 90% of all radio listening is in a car. So, dynamic range can be a killer in the signal. Soft passages getting lost due to road noise, phone callers getting lost... There are also settings on all radios called "Bass", "Treble" and Volume. I for one will always go for dynamic range and an "open" sound, rather than a compressed sound and use the end user adjustments to taylor my personal listening enviorment. Loudness does not equate to "quality".

How am I being clueless? It doesn't take a rocket scientist or radio engineer to be able to tell that one station sounds significantly worse than all the rest.

Now, if the argument is that it's not worth the money to make it sound better, I can deal with that. That's not a technical question, that's a financial and marketing question. Although there has to be a limit to that argument, otherwise we'd all still be listening to mostly AM and every FM station would increase their listenable range by switching off their stereo. Maybe there's another marketing angle at work--maybe they figure a compressed signal with weak lows and highs would be great for the LWYW audience. I can buy that. But it still sounds like crap on a receiver of reasonable quality in a reasonable listening environment, compared with most other stations, and there are apparently enough other people who agree. You never hear about audio quality at, say, B98.5.

Lastly, I don't like setting my tone controls for each station on the dial (or, rather, one in particular among five other similarly-sounding presets). And no radio I know of has a compander control to restore lost dynamic range or, if you prefer, add additional compression to compensate for environmental noise (not a bad idea to have such a control, now that I think about it).

 

[RoddyFreeman]

Audio Processing is like art, everyone has an opinion... Most of you that have commented in this thread are really clueless (with the exception of taylorengineer). The general public care about content, and if the "proceesing" isn't god awfull, 99% could care less who's louder, softer more compressed, clipped and so on. There are SO many varibales to consider. 90% of all radio listening is in a car. So, dynamic range can be a killer in the signal. Soft passages getting lost due to road noise, phone callers getting lost... There are also settings on all radios called "Bass", "Treble" and Volume. I for one will always go for dynamic range and an "open" sound, rather than a compressed sound and use the end user adjustments to taylor my personal listening enviorment. Loudness does not equate to "quality".

I'm going to speak for all of us "clueless" folks, and I hope that's okay with the rest of the clueless posters. With all due respect, nowhere near 90% of listening takes place in cars. When Arbitron reported it, it was generally around 50-60%. With the PPM, Arbitron can report only "in home" and "out of home," but not in car. Out of home listening for FM ranges from 53% for WABE to 79% for B98.5 FM. But keep in mind that out of home listening includes at-work listening, which on B98.5 is a substantial percentage of out of home.

 

[taylorengineer]

I think the point Jambox is trying to make is that most folks don't really care about audio quality. My opinion is certainly not more "clued in" than anyone else who has commented.
If you think WYAY audio is bad then go to New York City and listen to the crap they parade as "audio" on the radio. And some of these stations cume 5 million listeners every week. I promise you the average New Yawker could care less about audio quality.
Noise is the radio listener's real "boogie man." Multipath, hiss, static crashes from lightning.......this is the stuff soccer moms and urban warriors identify as turnoffs when listening. But I would also agree that distortion caused by clipping causes subtle dissonances which research shows affects TSL - especially with females.
Seems most who have commented do not like the WYAY sound. The same engineer set up the WKHX audio. I know Roddy has commented in the past that he thinks they(WKHX) sound great.....what say you??

 

[jabba17]

Seems most who have commented do not like the WYAY sound. The same engineer set up the WKHX audio. I know Roddy has commented in the past that he thinks they(WKHX) sound great.....what say you??

And I would agree. I don't understand that at all, for the reason you mention.

 

[taylorengineer]

To Widow's_son:

The signal from the new facility is great! Anyone who understands the technical side of the business would not question the reason for the move. There is practically no difference between 77,000 watts and 100,000 watts but the additional height makes a measureable difference.
WYAY's signal was improved noticeably with the move in the western metro area. I would think the only coverage loss would be well north of the 15 county metro Atlanta area.....

Just from personal experience the signal in Douglas, Western Cobb, Bartow and north of Canton [where I drive a lot] will not stop the scan on my car as often as 92.9 (which is not a true "C"). But back to the audio. You would think a big time operator (Citadel) would have a "bullet proof" STL in the #7 market!! The half to a whole second dead audio "burps" [some times more than 3 times in a hour] have to stop. Salem does not have this problem with 104.7 and they are on the same tower. There are "off the shelf" answers. I personally have worked a with tunneling protocol systems that are more "forgiving" than what I hear on 106.7. Does any other of the top rated FM's in the Atlanta market have this problem?

But 92.9 is 30 miles closer to Douglas/Cobb than 106.7! Huge difference - you're comparing apples to oranges.
106.7 stops the scan in both my car and truck - I live in Douglasville. The signal was not bad before - for a rimshot - but it was noticeably better after the move in Douglas County.

 

[taylorengineer]

OK....after listening this morning I agree with all others who don't like the processing. It is abnormally "thin" sounding, very compressed, and not loud at all.
My guess: they are running a pre-processor called "Arianne" which is a multiband AGC cruncher whose purpose is to re-equalize music so it all has the same sound equalization or "texture." It's a stupid concept in my opinion.....part of the artistic effort is in the equalization. Some songs have thundering bass on purpose - it's part of the compositional focus. Why would you disturb or change that??
I'm almost sure that's an Omnia 6 afterwards.
I still think this is an effect that the programming people desire - they want it to sound like radio used to back before modern audio processing came along. I'm not sure that's a desirable goal but hey....I just unplug the toilets.
For those who have lived in Atlanta for a while you may remember the early WKLS sound pre-Jacor/ClearChannel. It was an amazingly good sounding station! Bob Helbush, former CE and the guy responsible for the sound, said the secret is simplicity. All he ran was an Optimod 8100 with the XT chassis - and he ran that very gently. No mic processing or pre-processing.....he even resisted putting the kitchen sink in the chain....it was just gentle processing and good equipment up front. I think he was the only guy to run a Neumann U47 tube mic as the announce mic.
The guy who developed the Optimod said that the best sounding stations were usually in small markets. They sounded good because they didn't have the money and manpower to screw up the audio.......

 

[secondchoice]

I had heard about the Neumann U47 tube microphone from a friend who worked at the old Z93. I heard it could make the average male announcer sound like a “manly man”. Didn’t a “Racing Association” own 96.1 at one time? I suppose there will never be a consensus on personal experiences of 106.7’s reception. 92.9 is a C1 not even a C0. 106.7 has a 542 ft* and 13 KW “advantage.”* Of course an in town antenna location is the best **and 30 miles should be an equalizer. One thing you can say about Cumulus is they tend to improve their facilities. Examples in Atlanta are the translators for WCNN and the 99.7 HD 2 plus the CP for 100.5. Who knows what Cumulus will do with their properties when the buy out dust settles? I look for an “in town antenna” even if they have to down grade, and smaller electric bills someday for 106.7.

Back to the original subject to the tread: The audio sound is a very subjective subject. Even if you are of the school that the only thing that matters is “noise”, why does the “noise” stop for a half second at times? My wife listens to 104.7 and they do not have this problem. The last time I listened to WYAY, there were two “no noise gaps” during the same commercial break. I guess none the advertisers or sales weasels heard it.

*A 1762+ ft tower is expensive. Besides 104.7 who else is on this tower?

**Is the rumor of a downgrade and in town move for Cox’s 97.1 and WSBB still being speculated? The last I heard Cox was going to move 95.5 to the old Channel 2 analog tower once they got an ownership waiver. Would WSRV get to move too?

 

[taylorengineer]

So I tune in to 106.7 last night after 7PM and the audio sounds OK. They sounded like everyone else for the most part. This morning they sounded like they did yesterday morning - thin, dull, and not loud.
Are they dayparting the processing, using different processing day/night, audio server direct to air at night - studio output during day etc. etc.??? Now I'm curious as to why such a dramatic change in their sound.

 

[taylorengineer]

I had heard about the Neumann U47 tube microphone from a friend who worked at the old Z93. I heard it could make the average male announcer sound like a “manly man”. Didn’t a “Racing Association” own 96.1 at one time? I suppose there will never be a consensus on personal experiences of 106.7’s reception. 92.9 is a C1 not even a C0. 106.7 has a 542 ft* and 13 KW “advantage.”* Of course an in town antenna location is the best **and 30 miles should be an equalizer. One thing you can say about Cumulus is they tend to improve their facilities. Examples in Atlanta are the translators for WCNN and the 99.7 HD 2 plus the CP for 100.5. Who knows what Cumulus will do with their properties when the buy out dust settles? I look for an “in town antenna” even if they have to down grade, and smaller electric bills someday for 106.7.

Back to the original subject to the tread: The audio sound is a very subjective subject. Even if you are of the school that the only thing that matters is “noise”, why does the “noise” stop for a half second at times? My wife listens to 104.7 and they do not have this problem. The last time I listened to WYAY, there were two “no noise gaps” during the same commercial break. I guess none the advertisers or sales weasels heard it.

*A 1762+ ft tower is expensive. Besides 104.7 who else is on this tower?

**Is the rumor of a downgrade and in town move for Cox’s 97.1 and WSBB still being speculated? The last I heard Cox was going to move 95.5 to the old Channel 2 analog tower once they got an ownership waiver. Would WSRV get to move too?

Neumann mics are found in every major recording studio on earth. Practically every vocal on every hit record was recorded on a Neumann of some model and vintage. I do not have "golden ears" but I can tell the difference in a Neumann and , say, a RE-20. I wonder why more stations don't use a Neumann as the announce mic - I don't think there are any in Atlanta that do with the exception of my college station, WRAS. (The Neumann is temporarily out of service - we have new mounting hardware on order.)
Before Jacor/Clearchannel, WKLS was owned by Great American which was the offspring of Taft Broadcasting. Before that was Gulf, I think Malrite, and I believe before that Don Kennedy. I'm not sure if any of those groups were associated with racing.
The engineering studies predicted an improvement in coverage with the move to the south and to the west. Widow's son has already given the stats on pop count and diary additions with the move. Moving a HF signal is a crap shoot at best - all you can do is go by the theoretical numbers and pray for "travelin' mercies....."
I think WYAY and WFSH are the only two stations on the tower.
Cox is still waiting and probably will be 'til hell freezes over for permission to move. I'd dump the fish wrapper newspaper in a heartbeat ....don't know why the sister insist on keeping the print business.

 

[jefflaurence]

Big reason for stations shying away from Neumann mics is that they are $$ expensive and rather delicate. Many of us imaging guys use them in a one man studio so nobody will blow into it, or otherwise abuse it. I first heard the Neumann "sound" dng mornings at WQAM in Miami. We had Neuman U67s there..and they were awesome. Later at a studio in Tampa I had the pleasure of working a VoiceOver project with a U47. Just unbelievable. So I was totally sold on them. Love my tube Neumann mics. I am also partial to vintage Sennheiser shotgun mics..particularly the 415-T model..really good.

WYAY has a pretty good signal up here in NC, and their audio does have kind of a "retro" sound to it..kind of like an old Audimax III with the resistor cut out..know what I mean Taylorengineer?

 

[taylorengineer]

Big reason for stations shying away from Neumann mics is that they are $$ expensive and rather delicate. Many of us imaging guys use them in a one man studio so nobody will blow into it, or otherwise abuse it. I first heard the Neumann "sound" dng mornings at WQAM in Miami. We had Neuman U67s there..and they were awesome. Later at a studio in Tampa I had the pleasure of working a VoiceOver project with a U47. Just unbelievable. So I was totally sold on them. Love my tube Neumann mics. I am also partial to vintage Sennheiser shotgun mics..particularly the 415-T model..really good.

WYAY has a pretty good signal up here in NC, and their audio does have kind of a "retro" sound to it..kind of like an old Audimax III with the resistor cut out..know what I mean Taylorengineer?

Back in the "good ol' days" of radio, stations would run multiple Audimax/Volumax boxes, each with processing set a little more aggressive. The boxes were in a chain, the least aggressive box first. Equalizer boxes to emphasize certain "secret" frequencies were used, reverb was added, and all of this was sometimes followed by a couple of diodes (sometimes biased and filtered - sometimes not!!)for clipping. Some New York stations also wired in the kitchen sink.......
I don't know about you guys but I would never wish to go back to the "good ol' days".....at least technically. Today's transmitters, both AM and FM, are in a whole different league when it comes to performance and the same is true for the equipment used to process audio. I would never subscribe to the "let's make it sound like the 60's" school of thought but hey....like I said before.....I just clean out the bathrooms. What do I know??!!
Neumanns are special mics - it's hard to find anything close. They are delicate - I had to get rid of the "rubber band" isolation mount because the kids kept pulling the mic out of the mount. It was funny to see some of the band configurations they would come up with to try to get it back "in the air." You could easily pick out the kids with lower IQs.......
One question. Why does every jock I have ever met need to "play"with the mic while on air? Is it a Freudian thing...kinda' like the infantile tendency to put things in your mouth? Guys who make millions every year as radio "professionals" and you watch through the window while they move the mic up and down, side to side, front to back......while on the air doing a break.......and then they shove it away, with all their might, when the break is through. On the air, listeners are hearing thumps, boings and other mysterious noises. And this is every freakin' break. The college kids (much to my chagrin) do it too. Did no engineer, back in their early days, not whack them on the hands with a ruler and make them break this annoying habit??
I've been thinking about doing what one of my neighbors with an Autistic child does.....he gives him a spoon to hold.......

 

[jefflaurence]

Wow..you are right. You will see that a lot. I remember in the intro to WKRP Dr. Johnny Fever is seen flailing around and shoving the mic back..wonder if it's an attempt at mimicking the TV deejay.

And did ya ever notice that no TV show ever really "got it right" when it came to depicting a radio station on the various shows?

As close as I have heard about I'd some movie that actually used KLIF'S studios in Dallas to shoot some scenes.

Oh yeah back on topic...WYAY audio is ubersquashed.

And I remember those cascading Audimax III's..complete with an Orban Spring Reverb unit..aand a SHURE Level-Loc on the mic....yeeeesh

 

[johnsummers]

There IS a way to have a radio station sound tight and processed WITHOUT driving listeners away in droves. Especially true with today's processors. That's the 'art' of it. Some formats require a 'hotter' sound to get the feel of the station across, and I'm only referring to those in this post. Triple 'A's, Classical, Jazz, Soft A/C's, free-form college radio, etc. require a different approach. It's annoying to hear stations with too little processing where, as a listener, you're always adjusting the volume. The songs fade prematurely and forward momentum is hampered by attack and release times that are too slow. You've all heard it...a jingle, then...the song level eventually fades up to the correct level, but it takes a second or two (lol). Sloppy. Of course, some of this can be attributed to the way songs are enetered into the data base, as most times they are just ripped in. Another problem is the fact that engineers have so much to do, that the days of spending time to 'tweak' the audio to get get it juuuust right, are over. They just use a pre-set and forget it. To this day, though, many listeners still tell me that their favorite song sounds 'better' on the radio. That's the processing, as long as it's done artfully. What's 'artfully'? Well, that's a whole other show...(lol)...
One more thing. dedicated mic processing is always a must. Again, it depends how it's done.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

There IS a way to have a radio station sound tight and processed WITHOUT driving listeners away in droves. Especially true with today's processors. That's the 'art' of it. Some formats require a 'hotter' sound to get the feel of the station across, and I'm only referring to those in this post. Triple 'A's, Classical, Jazz, Soft A/C's, free-form college radio, etc. require a different approach. It's annoying to hear stations with too little processing where, as a listener, you're always adjusting the volume. The songs fade prematurely and forward momentum is hampered by attack and release times that are too slow. You've all heard it...a jingle, then...the song level eventually fades up to the correct level, but it takes a second or two (lol). Sloppy. Of course, some of this can be attributed to the way songs are enetered into the data base, as most times they are just ripped in. Another problem is the fact that engineers have so much to do, that the days of spending time to 'tweak' the audio to get get it juuuust right, are over. They just use a pre-set and forget it. To this day, though, many listeners still tell me that their favorite song sounds 'better' on the radio. That's the processing, as long as it's done artfully. What's 'artfully'? Well, that's a whole other show...(lol)...
One more thing. dedicated mic processing is always a must. Again, it depends how it's done.

A good example of nonexistent audio processing is on KGVL, Greenville, Texas. It has been discussed on the Dallas board. One format that definitely needs compression and reverb is an oldies format. Most 50s and 60s music had lots of processing when it was originally aired. Hearing 50s and 60s music on a station like KGVL with no processing makes the music have no excitement and sound as flat and dead as the djs playing it there.

As far as the Neumann U47 goes, it is one of the best mics ever made. The Neumann U47 with the original tube goes for about $14000 on the used equipment market. Only an idiot would let a radio station dj get within 100 miles of one. The Neumann U47 should be used in recording studios only by the likes of jingle singers or real voice over pros.

 

[taylorengineer]

An Atlanta radio station can pay for several Neumann TLM103s with one spot. One can be had for around $1000 - that's only twice what you would pay for a RE20. And that's a sweet sounding mic! That model is used as a workhorse mic in studios around the world.
The guy who ran U47s was no idiot! He had the best sounding mic in Atlanta and isn't that the whole point.....to have the very best sound.....to make the technology have a showbiz zing to it? That mic was never touched by engineering except to change the tube......the jocks all knew it was special and they treated it like the GM's daughter.........
Mic processing is not necessary when the user knows how to properly use the mic.....which is, these days, practically never! There are times when you want the mic to sound like the user has to wear a seatbelt to keep from being sucked into the mic but that depends on the format. A country station should not make it's announce mic sound that way......a high intensity CHR - maybe so. Noise gating is useful if you have noisy studios.......
Knowing how much processing to use is like knowing how much salt and pepper to use......too much and you spoil the flavor. Same thing for not enough. Too much dynamic range makes it difficult to hear the quiet parts of a song in a noisy car but too much restriction makes music sound unnatural. Sophisticated processing today can make music appear to have dynamic range (loud parts and soft parts) but can keep the RMS levels (the average level) high. Anyone can make a box which crunches audio......the secret is to make one that does it without sounding that way.

 

[johnsummers]

Agreed.
But, I still advocate mic processing. When set up properly, it makes improper mic technique less of an issue. In other words, the mic sound is then 'idiotproof'. In an ideal world, the personality should be focused on content first, without having to worry about whether they're 'on axis' or hitting the processing with enough level. A properly used mic processor will eliminate most of the guesswork and allow the sound of the mic to complement the rest of the chain rather than fight it. It also can give that nice fat sound we all want but don't have the voices for (lol)...

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

An Atlanta radio station can pay for several Neumann TLM103s with one spot. One can be had for around $1000 - that's only twice what you would pay for a RE20. And that's a sweet sounding mic! That model is used as a workhorse mic in studios around the world.
The guy who ran U47s was no idiot! He had the best sounding mic in Atlanta and isn't that the whole point.....to have the very best sound.....to make the technology have a showbiz zing to it? That mic was never touched by engineering except to change the tube......the jocks all knew it was special and they treated it like the GM's daughter.........
Mic processing is not necessary when the user knows how to properly use the mic.....which is, these days, practically never! There are times when you want the mic to sound like the user has to wear a seatbelt to keep from being sucked into the mic but that depends on the format. A country station should not make it's announce mic sound that way......a high intensity CHR - maybe so. Noise gating is useful if you have noisy studios.......
Knowing how much processing to use is like knowing how much salt and pepper to use......too much and you spoil the flavor. Same thing for not enough. Too much dynamic range makes it difficult to hear the quiet parts of a song in a noisy car but too much restriction makes music sound unnatural. Sophisticated processing today can make music appear to have dynamic range (loud parts and soft parts) but can keep the RMS levels (the average level) high. Anyone can make a box which crunches audio......the secret is to make one that does it without sounding that way.

The comment about the Neumann U47 was not made to knock the engineer using it but, to point out the fact that
99.99% of all djs don't respect equipment and you are asking for trouble putting vintage, expensive equipment where a dj animal can destroy it.

 

[littlejohn]

The gent using the Neumann here had a saying for new hires "Work away from the mic at least the length of your penis, or the length of the penis of your significant other". They did, it and his station ruled as far as on air sound.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

The gent using the Neumann here had a saying for new hires "Work away from the mic at least the length of your penis, or the length of the penis of your significant other". They did, it and his station ruled as far as on air sound.

I assume that the gent you are talking about is Bob Helbush. I hold Bob Helbush in high esteem both as an engineer and as a human being. Among Atlanta broadcast engineers, I also thought that Dick Byrd was really good.