WXKS-FM's Audio?

[chrisradioanimal]

I Was Listening To Kiss 108 Today And I Noticed That The Audio Sounded Different Then Normal. It Sounded Almost Robotic. Did Anyone Else Notice Anything Different? It Sounded Like This For The Past Couple Of Days

 

[GovtMule1979]

Not being a 14 year old girl, or fan of the Jonas Brothers I have not tuned into KISS 108 on purpose in a long...long time.

 

[Skynet74]

The oddest thing I noticed about Kiss 108 this morning was Matty talking about how good The Pumpkin Muffins are this time of year (Halloween time) at Dunkin Donuts...... and.... Thank God Halloween is coming up. Those Muffins are great!

I felt like I was in a time warp until I heard the "BEST OF" Bumper. Couldn't they edit out the spots and replace them with new ones. Geeeez!

 

[Bigtime Bowler]

GovtMule: SO cliche. Yawn.

 

[MR. JAROME_CALVIN]

I Was Listening To Kiss 108 Today And I Noticed That The Audio Sounded Different Then Normal. It Sounded Almost Robotic. Did Anyone Else Notice Anything Different? It Sounded Like This For The Past Couple Of Days

I've noticed, it's a turn off

 

[LA_Guy]

In the '80s and '90s, KISS-108 had the BEST on air audio anywhere. Most of their audio processing was custom-and sounded it-GREAT! These days, it's just a generic Omnia processor.

McRadio at its finest!

 

[Oldbones]

In the '80s and '90s, KISS-108 had the BEST on air audio anywhere. Most of their audio processing was custom-and sounded it-GREAT! These days, it's just a generic Omnia processor.

In the 80s, most EVERYBODY's processing was custom. There wasn't really any processor powerful or flexible enough to do much customization of sound, so engineers had to put together their own secret air chain to get a sound that programming liked. With today's digital processors, you can pretty much custom-tweak it to sound any way you like. Yes, it can sound dreadful when mis-adjusted, but I don't think Kiss sounds bad at all.

Part of the problem today is the the way the music is mixed and processed at the recording studio. Unfortunately, the producers process it to sound "good" (and I use the term very loosely here) on an mp3 player. Sounds like crap on a good stereo, but who has a good stereo today? Between mp3s, web streaming and satellite radio, good audio is a lost art. And very few people seem to care.

McRadio at its finest!

Let's lose the lame McClichés.

 

[nd2023]

Part of the problem today is the the way the music is mixed and processed at the recording studio. Unfortunately, the producers process it to sound "good" (and I use the term very loosely here) on an mp3 player. Sounds like crap on a good stereo, but who has a good stereo today? Between mp3s, web streaming and satellite radio, good audio is a lost art. And very few people seem to care.

Music used to be optimized for records and AM radio from the 50s-70s, then when FM came out, they were not processed as much. Then, they optimized it for CDs and radio, but soon, they got into a "loudness war" and overprocessed the music. Now, it is still done like that for much of today's hits. What you hear on the radio has been processed twice, and on HD radio and the webstream, it's also digitally compressed. Add the analog multipath (and overloading near the Pru) in the city of Boston, and you get crap audio.

 

[diamondj]

I notice the jock breaks as sounding funny, almost robotic as the original poster mentioned. It's kind of tinny like listening to a compresssed digital file when the DJ speaks, whereas to me the music on Kiss sounds
"normal."
For the over 14 crowd, I recommend at least catching the noon hour or the 7P countdown of the top songs of the day. That way you can at least know what our yutes are being exposed to - like "I kissed a girl and I liked it" (too funny to hear the neighborhood pre-teens singing along)...

 

[Laurence Glavin]

I was watching the CBS Evening New with Katie CouriCK (ever notice how Walter REALLY hits that last consonant?) last week; they ran a story about the Capitol Records studio in Hollywood, and how its uniqueness for sound processing was threatened due to construction in that part of L. A. As an example, they played a "naked" cut of Tony Bennett, then the same source AFTER Capitol had worked its wonders. So "over-processed pop sound" has been around a while.

 

[Eli Polonsky]

I notice the jock breaks as sounding funny, almost robotic as the original poster mentioned. It's kind of tinny like listening to a compresssed digital file when the DJ speaks, whereas to me the music on Kiss sounds "normal."

Aren't some of their jocks voicetracked from NYC and/or elsewhere? If it was a voicetracked out-of-town jock, perhaps you were hearing the compression from whatever kind of file transfer method they use to send his voice to Boston. It could be a low-bitrate lossy ISDN, or maybe they send the breaks as extremely compressed .mp3 files attached to emails. Who knows?

 

[Retro]

In the '80s and '90s, KISS-108 had the BEST on air audio anywhere. Most of their audio processing was custom-and sounded it-GREAT! These days, it's just a generic Omnia processor.

McRadio at its finest!

Now you are joking, right?

 

[LA_Guy]

In the '80s and '90s, KISS-108 had the BEST on air audio anywhere. Most of their audio processing was custom-and sounded it-GREAT! These days, it's just a generic Omnia processor.

McRadio at its finest!

Now you are joking, right?

Actually, no....

Back in the 1980's, kiss had superb audio! Every single piece of their air chain was tweaked. They directly played CDs on air-no automation! Every capacitor was either a 2% mil spec. polypropolene one or bypassed with one. I mean EVERY ONE-cart machines, consoles, EVERYTHNG!

Every circuit was analyzed. Unnecessary circuitry within a component was bypassed and/or removed. Every opamp amplifier was upgraded from vanilla cheapos to expensive premium. They had an Aphex Compellor compressor followed by an Aphex Dominator limiter. They ran dual (left/right) studio transmitter microwave links to achieve low noise. At the transmitter, the only processing used was an 8100 Optimod with a zero card installed. Their FM exciter was a BE FX50-the finest exciter available at the time!

KISS had a simple air chain-with every piece chosen for its high quality and then 100% optimized.

Their CE was a genius who has since left radio, got his PHD and now works in industry.

 

[Retro]

During the 1990's Kiss sounded quite squelched and it was quite noticeable listening to WXKS-FM versus other stations. During the 80's they didn't sound that bad at all.