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Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion
Improve CD101's muffled audio!
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Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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Is there really any way to improve it? I was under the impression this was due to their new transmitter tower location for 102.5...
FROM HERE: http://www.columbusunderground.com/forums/topic/whats-the-deal-with-cd101/page/2#post-310721
Posted 1 year ago # -
somebuckeye
Franklin Park
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101.1 sounded fairly terrible in my car tuner, and 102.5 actually sounds much worse. I try listening to other stations, but the other day two Columbus stations were playing "love in an elevator" at the same time? Really, Columbus radio is the worst.
Posted 1 year ago # -
FSonicSmith
Columbus-downtown for work, East for the residence
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I think there is some cross-talk here. To some people, "muffled audio" just means poor reception. To others like me, it means crappy audio quality regardless of how good the reception is. CD101 has always had poor audio quality. The management evidently cares more about convenience to the disc jockeys in terms of plugging in various media than it cares about the end-user. Compression is the primary culprit. There are two types of compression. Compression (or truncation) of digital bandwidth into lower bit-rates and compression of the dynamics between loudest and softest passages of music. Both serve to facilitate ease and convenience for the radio station at the expense of good sound. Perhaps due to lack of money to update equipment WCBE still seems to use more analogue equipment and less digital and WCBE's sound is actually pretty decent other than their systematic failure to match volume levels between feeds.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Nitsud Regnifloh
Valerio Heights
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let's boycott them! the only reason they switched was for the $$, and now it's worse than it was! i guess being independent radio doesnt save you from being money-hungry...
Posted 1 year ago # -
melikecheese
Merion Village
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I also noticed the signal is worse since the change. There is a consistent static to the station now, in the 2 cars my household owns.
I was hoping for an improved signal with the move. Now I just listen less.
Posted 1 year ago # -
groundrules
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Mister Shifter
Lewis Center
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The last word I would use to describe CD101 would be "money hungry". Roger Vaughn, the owner, is one of the coolest and most generous guys I've ever met. The music scene in Columbus would be crap without CD101. Think of how much they give back to us in the form of $5 low-dough shows and their support of independent and local artists.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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It's true there are two things at work here. There is a signal strength and/or interference issue that keeps your radio from receiving the signal and there is a quality of audio issue on the audio being passed over that signal.
"Static" is a signal strength or interference issue. That's locational for the most part. Some locations will not get this signal very well for various reasons. Some will get it fine.
The audio issue has nothing to do with distance to the receiver, as even with perfect signal reception (I can pick it up perfectly except on my shower radio) the audio has two separate problems: it sounds "muddy", and is at a low level compared to the level most other stations broadcast (My own house-wide station included).
The audio issue is more likely to be an issue with the feed into the transmitter, as Fsonicsmith has suggested. The "muddyness" may be that they are trying to pass the audio feed through a compressed channel and are losing the high end and some of the low end in the process. The audio dynamic level being low is a mystery to me, because if the dynamic range is compressed ('bout all FM radio stations use dynamic range compression to prevent overdeviation) then they should not have too much trouble just adjusting the level up.
Regardless... it sounds pretty crappy even when you can receive the station well, which here in east Grandview is a bit tricky because of interference from 99.7's splatter.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Nitsud Regnifloh
Valerio Heights
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Mister Shifter wrote >>
The last word I would use to describe CD101 would be "money hungry". Roger Vaughn, the owner, is one of the coolest and most generous guys I've ever met. The music scene in Columbus would be crap without CD101. Think of how much they give back to us in the form of $5 low-dough shows and their support of independent and local artists.if you like the bands they bring, yeah...
and, why do you think they switched from 101.1 to 102.5?? you dont think there was a check involved?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Mister Shifter
Lewis Center
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Of course there was. It's called staying in business.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Nitsud Regnifloh
Valerio Heights
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and the price was making your station sound like amateur hour.
Posted 1 year ago # -
melikecheese
Merion Village
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Nitsud Regnifloh wrote >>
Mister Shifter wrote >>
The last word I would use to describe CD101 would be "money hungry". Roger Vaughn, the owner, is one of the coolest and most generous guys I've ever met. The music scene in Columbus would be crap without CD101. Think of how much they give back to us in the form of $5 low-dough shows and their support of independent and local artists.if you like the bands they bring, yeah...
I think even if you do not like the bands they play and get you should still be able to see and appreciate what the station has done for music and local music in this city. It's played a huge role in building a nice diverse music culture in the city, we are very lucky to have it, like the music or not.
Posted 1 year ago # -
GCrites80s
5xNW
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Kinda sucks for them that CD102 now doesn't come in well in Grandview, 5XNW and parts of campus due to the aforementioned interference from Der Blitz; those areas have a high concentration of their demographic.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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Snarf wrote >>
muffled cd101 > no cd101.this is outside of the topic of this thread, but...
if they had a basic no frills mp3 stream available from their web server (like a great many radio stations do now) and not that stupid silverlight thing "liquid compass" us doing for them, it wouldn't be as much of an issue.
There are a huge number of devices now that can play a basic mp3 stream and a lot of radio stations using that as a standard now. Silverlight is VERY restrictive and bandwidth heavy. There is a way to get this to play on *nix systems via mplayer, but non-computer 'internet radio' devices (which are becoming prolific) don't have that option at all. There are literally hundreds of brands of these devices and hundreds of radio stations offering basic mp3 streams for them.
An fun example of one such device, if you have a roku box there is a channel you can add that will, based on your location, allow you to listen to any of your local (or non local) radio stations that have a standard audio (mp3) stream. Nope, WWCD is not available. WCBE is. As is WOSU, and a bunch of other Columbus radio stations.
No, they seriously need to dump whoever these "liquid compass" people are and do it right.
I also notice that their stream is apparently 64k... which is compressed enough it's going to sound muddy and nasty. Maybe this is what they're using to run that transmitter? Just up that to 128k and it'll be major improvement.
Posted 1 year ago #
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