WRIF's audio has gone to shit yet again

[MWmetalhead]

What the hell has happened to their bass response?

Audio was sounding pretty good for the last month until a day or two ago. Now, as has often been the case for the past several years, bass is completely washed out in songs that feature significant rhythm sections.

In contrast, Fault 98.7 deserves credit in this area. Their audio chain these days sounds full bodied and rich. MUCH, MUCH better sound than WRIF. They've clearly gotten their technical act together over the past 12 months.

Also, whoever produced the current batch of Summit Place Kia commercials did a terrible job. The audio mixing is trash. Very heavily distorted. I have no idea if these were produced at the Beasley complex or elsewhere. Only mentioning this because the commercial recently played on 101.1.

[Mega Hertz]

Spots like that were always produced elsewhere and sent to the station via download.

[radioandtventhusiast]

Those Summit Place Kia ads air on pretty much every commercial radio station in Detroit. Sometimes I've seen ads that had bad copies on certain TV stations. In the case of the Summit Place ads, I'm not sure if it's the same on every station.

[MWmetalhead]

WRIF's song and artist tags are functional again on both the analog and HD broadcasts. It seems the audio quality went to shit as soon as that feature was reactivated.

Apparently, the crack engineering staff at Beasley hasn't mastered the art of providing song and artist info without severely degrading the audio.

Not to be outdone, WLLZ's audio suddenly sounds like utter garbage, too. The highs are greatly overemphasized to the point that the listening experience becomes fatiguing after three minutes. "Sad but True" by Metallica, played moments ago, sounded horrendous.

Did someone break into the transmitter shacks around town at area rock stations and change the audio settings to a pre-programmed "shit sandwich" setting?

I'll take the lossy compression on SXM any day of the week over this shit. At least the SXM audio doesn't give me a headache or earache!

[Sherwood420]

How is the music selection on WRIF these days? I admit that I haven't listened in a couple years actually.

Hopefully by now they've scaled back on massive amounts of "Butt Rock."

[SolidGoldDancers]

I usually avoid terrestrial radio because the programming is so depressingly awful, but tuned in to WRIF out of curiosity. Good grief, how can the audio be this variable? I don't think it is a matter of someone mucking with processing settings, the source material is just fubar.

Commercial levels are all over the place, music seems to run the gamut of good quality to something ripped off a Youtube video.

Who is responsible for this and why are they still getting paid?

[MWmetalhead]

The audio sounds worse today than it did over the weekend, in my opinion (when it already sounded bad). All bass notes completely crushed during "Cult of Personality" and during "On a Plain," with treble sounding artificially high and distorted.

[MWmetalhead]

I can literally have the dials on my Klipsch subwoofer dialed up as high as humanly possible, and when tuned to WRIF, the bass hardly makes a ripple. PATHETIC. Compare that to WCSX, WDZH, and WKQI, where the windows and wall decor rattle.

Many high school stations have better sounding audio than WRIF.

Either their equipment is pure garbage or their lead engineer is incompetent.

It is also true that the source material makes a difference, some songs definitely sound worse than others (older songs from the 80s and 90s have a tendency to sound the crappiest on WRIF), but dynamic range and in particular bass rendering have each taken a gigantic leap backward over the past 3 or 4 days.

[MWmetalhead]

"My Hero" by Foo Fighters sounds like it's being piped through walkie-talkies. Seems like all dynamic range below about 1 kHz is missing.

[Mega Hertz]

You're pretty hefty on this topic, so I went down to check it out.

Song playing? Home Sweet Home.

I'll try again 4 minutes.

[MWmetalhead]

I don't blame ya; I hate that song with a passion!

[Mega Hertz]

I fucking hate Crue with a passion.


Anyway, I took my analyzer down to 0 on everything. The audio on WRIF does have a mid 80s CD quality to it. I hear bass, but Incubus on 98.7 has more of a subwoofer quality feel to it.

I can't say much about the treble quality. Midrange sounds solid to me, I see where you walkie talkie comment comes from.

Ooh! I'm getting Q94-5!

Anyway, I hear your complaints. Other stations have more lingering bass (pun intended, Zombies are playing on Alt now).

[MWmetalhead]

Low frequencies are woefully absent on 101.1, and yes, the low bass on 98.7 and other stations has a nice, robust, enveloping feel to it.

[syntheticexctasy]

I noticed this this morning, especially on the HD stream (HD1). No bass.

[MWmetalhead]

WCSX (whose low bass actually sounds pretty good at the moment), WRIF, WLLZ and WGPR all have their high end treble cranked up too high. I cannot recall WLLZ ever sounding this bad.

The lack of low bass on WRIF adds severe insult to injury. Again, 101's issues began as soon as artist & song title RDS data was reactivated. So, the two issues must be related somehow.

I have no idea why a hip-hop station like WGPR feels overemphasis of high-end treble is a good idea.

Aurally, 96.3, 98.7, 102.7, 104.3, and 105.1 all sound really good to my ears. 95.5 would belong in that group, too, if they didn't speed up the music so aggressively.