The two translators are really just too close together. The FCC is doing to FM what they did to AM - closing their eyes to the laws of physics - creating small areas of useable signals surrounded by vast areas of noise. I tried out 101.3 while driving between the West Roxbury Home Depot and rte 128/95 - both signals were strong, but there was continual jumping from one to the other as the radio captured the strongest. At Home Depot, WMRC was the winner, for a half mile near the Dedham Mall, WJIB became perfect, then the alternating continued until WMRC won near 128/95. There is probably a lot of terrain blocking at work. Tried 740 AM - and Toronto had the channel exclusively.
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WJIB may debut // 101.3 Fri
- Thread starter raccoonradio
- Start date
If WJIB's xlator didn't exist, then could WMRC rimshot Boston?
i would say yes. Before the WJIB translator came on, Milford was giving Big City a run for its money in North Cambridge.
That reminds me of a situation in Connecticut several years back. WALK 97.5 from Patchogue, Long Island blasts into Central Connecticut. There was a translator on 97.5 in Bolton, Connecticut (on the Eastern side of the Connecticut River past Manchester). Originally just 10 watts. New owners bought the translator and upped the power. There was one particular area - The parking lot of the Stop & Shop on Pine Street in the Forestville section of Bristol where seemingly it depended on which way the wind was blowing whether you would get WALK or this translator on the car stereo. Eventually after listener complaints about WALK, the translator moved to 97.1 FM.
WJIB 101.3 translator to go full time stereo Aug 31. Will sound better for many but multipath interference in fringe area will get worse. Some news-talk or sports stations broadcast on FM in mono to help with that, improve fringe area recep, like WNIR "the talk of Akron" Kent OH
Actually, multipath WILL NOT get worse on WJIB 101.3 because it has been broadcasting a stereo carrier signal since it came on the air, the issue has been that just the programming feed simulcast line from WJTO in Maine has been in mono audio. The simulcast line from Maine is supposed to become stereo enabled on 8/31.
If WJIB 101.3 had been broadcasting a mono carrier signal, and then switched to a stereo carrier signal, then you may have had increased multipath, but in this case it's only the audio that has been in mono, the stereo carrier signal will still be the same.
Also, WJIB 740 AM will be full-time AM Stereo when this is done.
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WJIB AM broadcast in stereo until a few years ago. Maybe that was when Bob began feeding from Maine in mono only?
First, WJIB's older AM stereo generator was blown up when an NStar repair crew sent a power surge into his building a few years ago, so it went mono then even though it was still locally programmed from Cambridge.
Then, Bob replaced the AM stereo generator last year, but by then he was programming WJIB from the mono Maine feed most of the time. Occasionally, he switches WJIB to local programming from Cambridge for a day or two, and it would be in stereo for those periods, also recently including on the FM translator a couple of times since it went on the air.
Right now (4 pm Friday) WJIB AM 740 and FM 101.3 are both broadcasting stereo audio, programmed locally from Cambridge, not the feed from Maine. Don't know for how long.
Are we talking the venerable C-QUAM (or similar) method of AM Stereo, or HD?
WJIB 740 AM is C-Quam (analog) AM Stereo. Bob will not do HD on either AM or FM.
ANALOG AM Stereo, from what I remember, is very, very good.
Good for Mr Bittner for not buying in to the HD baloney.
Until the FM recently came on, I was still listening to WJIB in AM Stereo in the car by plugging a 1990's Sony AM Stereo Walkman into an FM transponder, broadcasting it into my FM car stereo. Those Walkman's went into "wideband" mode on AM Stereo signals. When WJIB is programming locally from Cambridge in AM Stereo, and if I'm in a clean signal area, it sounds better than most people know that analog AM can sound. Just about as good as FM stereo, maybe better at times.
I like HD on FM because of the potential for different types of programming on the subchannels (though unfortunately, the form has remained underdeveloped, undermarketed, and underpromoted).
I don't see much use for HD on AM compared to if analog AM Stereo had been developed. You wouldn't get HD AM reception any farther from the station than a clean AM Stereo signal, and there are no AM HD subchannels.
When my wife had an HD receiver in her car, I'd often catch WBZ 1030 in HD, and it sure sounded a helluva lot better than their analog channel. However, when listening to WBZ 1030 on a non-HD receiver, the audio bandwidth sounds very restricted, with barely any response above about 5 KHz, and the background hiss from this 50,000-watt blowtorch in its primary service area seems so incongruous. I don't recall if 'BZ sounded this poorly on a mono receiver when they were broadcasting in AM stereo.
And, on that same HD receiver, I could often get WCBS NewsRadio 880 in HD in the evening up here in the Merrimack Valley, though the HD signal was intermittent at best.
I really wish WBZ would drop the HD on AM and go back to normal bandwidth. I used to listen regularly, but now the sound is no better than if they were talking on the telephone. It's seems silly to me to degrade the signal for 99% of the population while catering to the 1% that have HD radios.
Oh, you have this exactly right! I wish I had said it this well.
I was implying that I, too, wish 'BZ would drop the HD on AM, since so few listeners have HD to begin with. Only if they really want to, should they resurrect their AM Stereo system. (I assume they still have the generator. Problem is, there may be very few AM stereo receivers around anymore.)
Since 680 WRKO does not do HD on AM, their signal is clear and noise-free (well, I mean, as far as AM can be noise free), and because of how their signal is beamed, I get them really loud and clear up here in the Merrimack Valley. If only they'd stop using those sucky AoIP links for broadcasts of The Financial Exchange and The Howie Carr Show!
It will be interesting to see if 'BZ's new owners (it REALLY, REALLY hurts to even think about that!) keep the HD on AM.
WBZ 1030 sounded great on a good quality AM mono radio with good AM bandwidth when it was broadcasting in AM Stereo.
AM stations that broadcast in HD have to drastically cut their analog high-end audio bandwidth to prevent any artifacts from getting into their sidebands which could interfere with the HD, as WBZ did when they went HD.
Don't most new cars come with HD?
About half have HD now.
The average age of cars in the US is 11 years. The replacement rate is about 5% annually.
At this point, less than 10% of car radios have HD. And at the low power levels of translators, it does not make much sense to put HD on them.
No. And besides, only a tiny fraction of total car owners buy new cars in any given model year. If people were required to turn in their old cars and buy a new model at the start of every year, then yes, you'd have a significant percentage of Americans driving HD-equipped cars. But the guy driving a 2008 VW (that would be me!) who will probably just buy another used car when that one fails doesn't have HD now and is likely not to have HD in the foreseeable future.
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