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Veteran Engineer Complains Of Poor Sounding Radio Stations
This story is about radio stations in Ohio, but I thought the comments were interesting enough to post it here. It's about a longtime engineer driving through the Buckeye State while listening to his car radio and lamenting not the formats he heard but the way some of the stations sounded as he passed through their reception areas.
"I heard FM stations that I know had no high frequencies anywhere near 15 kHz. There were some FMs that were “flat as pancakes” in terms of frequency response. It was like listening through cotton balls...
One station was clearly voice-tracked, but ALL of its voice tracks were totally distorted, like they had just cranked the mic open and recorded “balls to the walls” with level! Distorted and it sounded like holy hell!
Then there was “the screamer.” No, not an annoying jock … the station itself had a high-frequency squeal on top of the audio (it modulated only slightly)."
Are there any in Southern Ontario that would merit similar complaints?
An Annoying Drive Through the Middle of Ohio
- paterson1
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Re: Veteran Engineer Complains Of Poor Sounding Radio Stations
The stations themselves for the most part sound alright to my ears. My only bug bear is some of the voice tracking which we have spoken about many times. CBC radio usually has a lower audio level than other FM stations, but the actual sound quality is alright.
I check out the Michigan Radio and TV Buzzboard and this topic comes up from time to time. Virgin Radio out of Windsor had some audio problems months ago. WRIF and WCSX in Detroit get criticized quite a bit for poor audio quality and believe it or not speeding up some songs.
Listening to WRIF off air a few months back, they sounded okay to me but a more processed sound than I was used to. I did find some of their commercials had poor audio quality and didn't sound like they were stereo. Many of the spots sounded overly processed with no bottom or bass. This seems to be the big complaint about the sound quality on these two stations, inconsistent processing that removes too much bass and lower end to the sound.
- markow202
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Re: Veteran Engineer Complains Of Poor Sounding Radio Stations
I dont find many of the Toronto stations the best they should sound except for Jazz FM 91, CBC 94.1 and Boom sounds decent. The worst I find is CHFI. In the past year its dull sounding and a lot of flat midrange enhanced.
The sound in general is too loud, needs to be a few DB lower to enhance the quality.