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Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Topics of general interest that just don't fit anywhere else.
innate-in-you
Posts: 684
Joined: Wed Oct 31, 2018 8:54 am

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by innate-in-you » Sun Jun 14, 2020 12:11 pm

Art Van Damme wrote:
Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:51 am
1090am WCAR Livonia. Waste of electricity and real estate.
Though very little electricity.



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ZenithCKLW
Posts: 833
Joined: Sat Nov 13, 2004 11:21 am
Location: Livonia, MI

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by ZenithCKLW » Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:01 pm

I live 2 miles from WCAR. Voices on that station sound like the Charlie Brown teacher.



thatonedude
Posts: 380
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:39 am

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by thatonedude » Fri Jun 19, 2020 2:47 pm


WOHO wrote:All of the Sirius-based stations and 1/3 of the XM-based stations.
If you have the 2.0 SXM tuner, they don't sound too bad. I wish they'd just shift everything over to that system, but that won't happen for a long time...

I agree with you on WWJ, especially when you lock them in HD. Way too much low end...

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take this job and shove it

radioandtventhusiast
Posts: 1233
Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:08 pm
Location: Toledo, OH

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by radioandtventhusiast » Sun Jun 21, 2020 9:45 pm

When it comes to speeding up music excessively, the former 94.3 the Bone takes the cake.



thatonedude
Posts: 380
Joined: Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:39 am

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by thatonedude » Sun Jun 21, 2020 11:53 pm

radioandtventhusiast wrote:
Sun Jun 21, 2020 9:45 pm
When it comes to speeding up music excessively, the former 94.3 the Bone takes the cake.
What format did it have, again? Alt? Seems like a format where pitching/speeding up music would be verboten...


take this job and shove it

Scooter
Posts: 38
Joined: Wed Dec 04, 2019 7:56 pm

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by Scooter » Sun Oct 04, 2020 9:51 am

ALL NPR stations, the modulation is so low, all you hear is static and noise....until they add music, and it blows out your ears.

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djb
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:20 am

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by djb » Fri Oct 09, 2020 7:25 am

matt1 wrote:
Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:26 am
WCHW FM Bay City Central high school (91.3) late 70's through the 90's because it was in MONO.
Not only was it in mono, but audio was fed from a Gatesway II console to a CBS Labs Volumax, then to a Dorrough DAP 310. The Gateway II often had leaking caps, "steps" in its pots, and was rotting away fast. In 95-96, the old Gates relic was replaced with an LPB Signature (still mono) board - but in much better condition.

The Dorrough was installed in '93, if I remember correctly. Finally got a bit of modulation out of the (I believe it was a BE) 10 watt exciter/Harris FM100K combo. The Dorrough had been re-capped; the Volumax had not and was finicky at times.

On a recent 20-year reunion tour of the school, witnessed a major upgrade of equipment. BE FM250B TX/BE FX50 Exciter, BEXT XT100 Backup TX, and CRL Amigo for AGC/Stereo Generation.



ChrisWL1980
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Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by ChrisWL1980 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:09 pm

Star 105.7 in Grand Rapids speeds up its music. If you thought Madonna circa 1984-85 (when her voice was artificially sped up on her recordings to start with) already sounded like Minnie Mouse, on Star she sounds like Minnie Mouse on helium. I guess the purpose is to make WLHT sound "draggy" by comparison. Instead, it makes WSRW virtually unlistenable.



radioandtventhusiast
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Location: Toledo, OH

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by radioandtventhusiast » Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:49 pm

ChrisWL1980 wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:09 pm
Star 105.7 in Grand Rapids speeds up its music. If you thought Madonna circa 1984-85 (when her voice was artificially sped up on her recordings to start with) already sounded like Minnie Mouse, on Star she sounds like Minnie Mouse on helium. I guess the purpose is to make WLHT sound "draggy" by comparison. Instead, it makes WSRW virtually unlistenable.
I noticed that Star sped up its songs during a trip to GR last year. Both sisters 101.5 the River and 100.3 WNIC don't do this, so I don't know why 105.7 does it. As far as I know, most AC stations don't speed/pitch up music.



BigFreq
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Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by BigFreq » Tue Oct 13, 2020 6:07 pm

Driving down I-75, I caught WQON-FM the other day. It sounded as if they were playing songs directly from You Tube... or from a Memorex cassette recorded in the mid-80's (and pulled from a dusty shoebox). It doesn't help that the processing isn't good, but the audio quality I heard was some of the worst I've ever heard over a broadcast station. I kept switching off of it, then went back to it to see if it was just a corrupt song file. Over a period of time, I heard 20+ minutes of bad audio, then it leveled off to every couple of songs were poor audio cuts. Not sure if it's the music loaded in their automation, or someone grabbing stuff from another source and sticking it straight over the air. If it's music in the automation; they need to do an overhaul with some uncompressed audio to clean that up.



ChrisWL1980
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Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by ChrisWL1980 » Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:35 pm

radioandtventhusiast wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:49 pm
ChrisWL1980 wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:09 pm
Star 105.7 in Grand Rapids speeds up its music. If you thought Madonna circa 1984-85 (when her voice was artificially sped up on her recordings to start with) already sounded like Minnie Mouse, on Star she sounds like Minnie Mouse on helium. I guess the purpose is to make WLHT sound "draggy" by comparison. Instead, it makes WSRW virtually unlistenable.
I noticed that Star sped up its songs during a trip to GR last year. Both sisters 101.5 the River and 100.3 WNIC don't do this, so I don't know why 105.7 does it. As far as I know, most AC stations don't speed/pitch up music.
It's especially noticeable when they're all-Christmas. How to make "I Want a Hippopotamus" or "Grandma Got Run Over" more intolerable: speed it up.



radioandtventhusiast
Posts: 1233
Joined: Wed Nov 20, 2019 4:08 pm
Location: Toledo, OH

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by radioandtventhusiast » Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:11 pm

ChrisWL1980 wrote:
Thu Oct 15, 2020 6:35 pm
radioandtventhusiast wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 8:49 pm
ChrisWL1980 wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 6:09 pm
Star 105.7 in Grand Rapids speeds up its music. If you thought Madonna circa 1984-85 (when her voice was artificially sped up on her recordings to start with) already sounded like Minnie Mouse, on Star she sounds like Minnie Mouse on helium. I guess the purpose is to make WLHT sound "draggy" by comparison. Instead, it makes WSRW virtually unlistenable.
I noticed that Star sped up its songs during a trip to GR last year. Both sisters 101.5 the River and 100.3 WNIC don't do this, so I don't know why 105.7 does it. As far as I know, most AC stations don't speed/pitch up music.
It's especially noticeable when they're all-Christmas. How to make "I Want a Hippopotamus" or "Grandma Got Run Over" more intolerable: speed it up.
And those slow crooner Christmas songs shouldn't be sped up at all.



fuzzpower
Posts: 1027
Joined: Sun Mar 17, 2019 3:37 pm

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by fuzzpower » Wed Oct 21, 2020 4:49 am

Outside the state, the now silent WBCP 1580 in Champaign-Urbana was extremely over modulated on an old aircheck found on Youtube. Hearing the station in person last year, the audio was so low you couldn’t even hear it well when cranking the volume knob!
WWJ has had issues with digital artifacts the past few months. Listening to a traffic report especially, you could hear the last few words faintly after the speaker had finished. I even called the station to report this, and it was not fixed at that time.



djb
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 11:20 am

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by djb » Thu Oct 22, 2020 7:41 am

djb wrote:
Fri Oct 09, 2020 7:25 am
matt1 wrote:
Mon Jun 01, 2020 1:26 am
WCHW FM Bay City Central high school (91.3) late 70's through the 90's because it was in MONO.
Not only was it in mono, but audio was fed from a Gatesway II console to a CBS Labs Volumax, then to a Dorrough DAP 310. The Gateway II often had leaking caps, "steps" in its pots, and was rotting away fast. In 95-96, the old Gates relic was replaced with an LPB Signature (still mono) board - but in much better condition.

The Dorrough was installed in '93, if I remember correctly. Finally got a bit of modulation out of the (I believe it was a BE) 10 watt exciter/Harris FM100K combo. The Dorrough had been re-capped; the Volumax had not and was finicky at times.

On a recent 20-year reunion tour of the school, witnessed a major upgrade of equipment. BE FM250B TX/BE FX50 Exciter, BEXT XT100 Backup TX, and CRL Amigo for AGC/Stereo Generation.
The stupid things that keep me up at night...

I could keep picturing (although hazy - quite a few brain cells ago) the rack that sat in the studio. Exciter right on top. Finally tracked down what is was - a Cetec/Sparta 680.

Not that any of this matters; just wanted to share. :lol:

Oh, and the Volumax long died by the time I was in High School. It was the Audimax 4440A that got the audio from the board, and the off to the Dorrough before hitting the exciter.



organman95
Posts: 583
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 9:49 pm

Re: Worst-sounding radio stations of all-time.

Post by organman95 » Fri Nov 13, 2020 9:23 am

When I was at Aquinas (I'm sure it has gotten better by now - 14 years later) the campus radio station was consistently going off-air. No one knew why that happened, but there was an internet feed through the campus intranet, so those anywhere on campus with a laptop could tune in.

I don't remember the models, but I do know the sound source came from a Pentium II running Windows 98, and a playlist through WinAmp. The mixer was a four-channel board from the 70s, and someone took the headphone jack out of the board, so you had literally no idea what the sound was like when you used the mic.

I did a two-hour "70s/80s" lunch block twice a week. Connected my laptop to the aux on the PC and just bypass WinAmp to do what I wanted. It obviously worked, but one massive ad hoc.



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