[BC] Sibilant artifacts in Digital Radio

[Rich Wood]

------ At 02:40 PM 12/3/2005, Williams, Chris \(Albuquerque\) wrote: -------

>How are MOST engineers supposed to process HD when they cant get radios?
>I know many markets that have HD on and can't process it because HD
>radios are back ordered. I know here we are waiting on 10 or so.

In my part of the business you're not allowed to sign a contract with 
any program supplier that takes control away from the licensee. It 
seems to me it should be the same on the tech side. I would tell 
iBorg to go pound sand if they forced me to put something on the air 
I felt wasn't right or couldn't be monitored properly. Of course that 
(Schulke Radio Productions) decision was made before politicians were 
easy to buy in the 70's. The radio station is the licensee, not some 
tinhorn manufacturer of jamming equipment.

>And I can also tell you that our HD signals sound better then our FM's.

If you can't monitor, how can you tell? The stations I'm hearing the 
worst artifacts from are NPR Talk and Classical. These aren't 
engineers who are pumping the daylights out of the signal. That seems 
to make the artifacts more obvious.

>Mainly because the PD's don't have radios and we have free run of the
>processing.

Hogwash. I don't believe engineers have a corner on good processing. 
I've worked with engineers where I've had to badger them to back off.

>It goes back to implementation. Most engineers were forced
>to have their stations on in HD to meet the Ibiquity Fire Sale price.

See above. Who the Hell runs your station? You or someone who has so 
little respect for you they didn't think your input was important. 
There's very little that makes me angrier than syndicators and 
manufacturers who lock stations into agreements that take control 
away from the station. In programming any station has the right to 
remove any syndicated programming they wish, regardless of the 
contract. The only obligation is to run the spots for the duration of 
the contract. You have absolute control and responsibility for what 
you air. People usually continue to run a show they don't want 
because of the burden of running extra spots.

>With existing bit rate reduced STL's multiple codecs and multiple A/D
>conversions. I say lets give everyone 6 months to "clean house" then
>start with the microscopic analysis.

Are you trying to tell me there are no competent engineers/PDs of the 
alleged 581 stations who understand good processing? Herb Squire 
(formerly of WQXR, New York) warned us all about multiple codecs a 
few years ago. Even if Herb hadn't performed his experiments is there 
no one who would have come to the conclusion (data or no) that 
snipping bits at a time from multiple devices in a program line would 
affect the sound? How are you going to "clean house?" Virtually 
everything uses codecs. It seems we're about 3 years into the IBUZ miracle.

>And I also agree the more we are exposed to the artifacts the more we
>ignore them.

Consciously, possibly. Subconsciously the artifacts will probably 
reduce the station's TSL. It was programmers who did the research on 
that. We found women tuned out sooner than men when the sound was 
distorted, particularly at the high end. Guess where the IBUZ 
distortion is. Excuse me - artifacts.

Rich


Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010