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BANDSCAN THREAD

msg11

If I have the time I will do full one

Dublin Pirates

North Dublin 22/04/2013

87.6 POLSKIE (LEGO) WEAK
88.1 NRG (ENERGY) STRONG
91.6 EASY91.6 (EASY) STRONG
93.2 P.D.N (PLAY DANCE NETWORK) STRONG
99.5 REAL80S (RELAY) WEAK
107.1 ID RADIO (TONIC RADIO) STRONG

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Declan A Walsh

JDxtra wrote: »

87.6 Chill FM
88.1 Pirate FM
91.0 Pulse
92.0 Retro FM
93.2 Pure FM
94.3 Unknown oldies station (RDS "AT HOME")
99.3 Unknown oldies station (same as 94.3)
102.5 RetroNow
105.2 Easy
107.1 Club FM

Unable to get a signal for 98.4, 99.5 or 105.7 today.

94.3 was displaying that RDS yesterday as well. Retro FM is being relayed on 94.3 and 1395 kh MW, belonging to Energy Power AM, this afternoon. The same would apply to 99.3 as it always streams what is on 1395 kh.

Infoanon

The Beach are back on 105.7,
The 90s Network continue on 98.4

99.5FM is off air at the moment, Energy 103 remain off following storm damage to their antenna earlier in the yea but will be back asap.

Losty Dublin

JDxtra wrote: »

With software audio processing, there is no excuse for poor audio anymore!

As long as the broadcaster uses good quality source material of course (not YouTube rips!).

On the contrary, audio processing is a niche of it's own and with the amount of kit out there it's easy to make major errors. To get it right audio needs to be engineered by some sort of Tx or sound pro who knows what the output of the station is, the nature of their listeners, where and how they listen and their specific needs, and crucially how to manipulate the software and hardware to it's best.

With you 100% on the second point. Your output depends primarily on the source of your material and it's initial quality.

JDxtra

Losty Dublin wrote: »

On the contrary, audio processing is a niche of it's own and with the amount of kit out there it's easy to make major errors. To get it right audio needs to be engineered by some sort of Tx or sound pro who knows what the output of the station is, the nature of their listeners, where and how they listen and their specific needs, and crucially how to manipulate the software and hardware to it's best.

With you 100% on the second point. Your output depends primarily on the source of your material and it's initial quality.

Agree it's a specialist skill and takes huge effort to get it right.

In terms of pirates though, I suspect that most will not be using any audio hardware in their chain (except an audio DAC to generate MPX). They can achieve reasonably good audio these days in software alone. Of course software processing still requires an amount effort and knowledge to get it set up and customised to suit the sound of the station – but it’s all within the same interface and the bundled audio presets the software will come with (StereoTool, BreakAway One and Omnia SST) will have good options for most types of stations.

Losty Dublin

JDxtra wrote: »

Agree it's a specialist skill and takes huge effort to get it right.

In terms of pirates though, I suspect that most will not be using any audio hardware in their chain (except an audio DAC to generate MPX). They can achieve reasonably good audio these days in software alone. Of course software processing still requires an amount effort and knowledge to get it set up and customised to suit the sound of the station – but it’s all within the same interface and the bundled audio presets the software will come with (StereoTool, BreakAway One and Omnia SST) will have good options for most types of stations.

That is true, yeah. Once they are playing decent sound files from a PC that has a decent sound card out or even an iPod then the base product should be passable, if thinny. Not like the old days when a clapped out mixer and a homemade exciter (Veronica, if you were loaded) feeding one folded dipope was what got many a station on air, with your studio playback coming from budget CD and tape decks from Richer Sounds! And here comes a memory stray...

In the early 90's it was big news when a few stations got hold of professional transmission units, usually CTE units, and the difference was huge even with the modest studio set ups. Radio Dublin at the time had two decent units and a useful site in the hills west of the city, DLR covered well on a then clear 106FM from Sallynoggin but Sunset le lucky in having an owner with good electronic skills and a few staff members who knew how it could sound if it was done a certain way and for a long time it was the benchmark.

When Kiss FM got itself a good site serviced with a UHF link system, some high end if old professional studio equipment and, pull out the bugles, an actual optimod it really should have led the way. And for a fleeting few weeks it did until an unscrupulous rival decided to jam them. Caught between a Rock and a hard place, if you will

Soon after it got beyond this issue but the scope of what they wanted to do meant that damage was political as much as anything. Not long after this it's first raid stifled it's dreams and the second it's hopes.

Where were we? Oh yeah, audio

radioguru02

Infoanon wrote: »

Sourced from the Energy stream.

Is this public?

JDxtra

pirateradiohed wrote: »

Is this public?

At one stage it was relayed via pirate.ie (through an SDR) but not sure if this is still happening.

Infoanon

Some pirates using breakaway use one of the available presets - audio hardware is only found at the legals these days afaik and even then audio processing for online tends to be software only.

Losty you have started the cogs in the old memory - wasn't there a battlebetween Kiss and the unscrupulous rival for the Q102 prism !

Radio Dublins FM audio improved immenselywhen the 5kw AM was seized ! , Pulse 103 had an optimod, as did KIC104 (Pulses ! Iirc) , Freedom had an Omnia iirc and Sunset had the famous BartImod !
Sun 101 had a wonderful processor in the early day.
Losty - wasn't the Kiss desk the old Nova desk ?

These days Energy AM are afaik the only pirate using an optimod.

Speaking of Nova and the posting about the difficulties in setting up the audio processing chain - Chris Cary used to comment that Novas AM processing gave him a headache after 15 minutes - good audio processing is an Art form !

Losty Dublin

Infoanon wrote: »

Losty you have started the cogs in the old memory - wasn't there a battlebetween Kiss and the unscrupulous rival for the Q102 prism !

Radio Dublins FM audio improved immenselywhen the 5kw AM was seized ! , Pulse 103 had an optimod, as did KIC104 (Pulses ! Iirc) , Freedom had an Omnia iirc and Sunset had the famous BartImod !
Sun 101 had a wonderful processor in the early day.
Losty - wasn't the Kiss desk the old Nova desk ?

These days Energy AM are afaik the only pirate using an optimod.

Speaking of Nova and the posting about the difficulties in setting up the audio processing chain - Chris Cary used to comment that Novas AM processing gave him a headache after 15 minutes - good audio processing is an Art form !

God, the plans for Kiss were as big and exaggerated as an elephants todger. I don't know about the Prism but there were definite plans for city centre studios, then city centre offices, then out of town studios, offices, a mountainside studio and offices before it, ahem, settled on Innovation House, a up to the minute media centre in the suburbs of Dublin. Or to be precise, located upstairs above a video store

But screw that; it had stickers and t shirts, headed notepaper, offices computers (Which I never recall ever being on.) and, of course, the Nova desk, the Orban and a three stack cart machine. I believe that Energy AM actually use it now but am open to correction while the desk was use for the temps that Kevin rain in the 00's.

Pulse, well it ended up being the station that Kiss shudda cudda have been in every sense of the word. Certainly it benefited greatly from the lessons learnt from Kiss, but it also drew in a lot from what happened at Sunset, and to a lesser extent Club FM. On and off air, it's had knowledgeable management, a well equipped studio, well prepped on air talent and a tidy on air sound. When they moved into the city, well it goes a lot bigger and better. Pulse was the real deal and undoubtedly it was the station of the 90's.

I had heard that tale about Radio Dublin before. Then again it's audio improved anytime Joe Doyle opened a fridge or somebody rang their 088 phone number

Freedom had the Omnia but they also had access to the use of some other professional audio rigs from, shall we say, a man with a bit of power, who would lend them bits and bobs over weekend to give them a wee test. And God be with the Bartimod. Gary was fund of prodding at the Sunset processor with a screwdriver, causing the transmission audio to randomly rise and drop mid show.

I can't help you about the Sun 101 processing early on but towards the end it was pretty ropy audio wise. I must ask a man who knows

Ger Roe

Just an observation on the Radio Dublin AM audio comments :

When the big AM rig arrived over from USA, in and around 1981, it was the biggest rig I had ever seen - one of the tall cabinet jobs, the like of which I had only seen in pictures of the offshore stations (see Caroline and RNI transmitter halls). There were high hopes for it to far outperform the home made cobbled together units that had been in use up until then.

It was supposed to operate at 10kw max but I am not sure if local conditions ever allowed for that - the mast lit up with RF arcs a couple of times when it was tried at full whack. The audio quality however was terrible, but despite making the mighty 253 sound like it was being fed from a telephone line, power was considered to be more important than quality and the considerable step back in audio quality was ignored.

The rig had a name plate on it that said it once belonged to The Philidelphia Power Company, and therein lay the problem. They were a utility company and not a radio service, the rig was used as a repeater relay for their fleet of service trucks and so was only rated to operate at a reduced voice frequency bandwidth. It couldn't handle the full frequency AM bandwidth.

The rig remained in situ at Inchicore road (cemented to the floor) until a forensic post legislation raid in 1989 when it was removed....very carefully, to avoid collapsing the practically derelict building.

Losty Dublin

Ger Roe wrote: »

Just an observation on the Radio Dublin AM audio comments :

When the big AM rig arrived over from USA, in and around 1981, it was the biggest rig I had ever seen - one of the tall cabinet jobs, the like of which I had only seen in pictures of the offshore stations (see Caroline and RNI transmitter halls). There were high hopes for it to far outperform the home made cobbled together units that had been in use up until then.

It was supposed to operate at 10kw max but I am not sure if local conditions ever allowed for that - the mast lit up with RF arcs a couple of times when it was tried at full whack. The audio quality however was terrible, but despite making the mighty 253 sound like it was being fed from a telephone line, power was considered to be more important than quality and the considerable step back in audio quality was ignored.

The rig had a name plate on it that said it once belonged to The Philidelphia Power Company, and therein lay the problem. They were a utility company and not a radio service, the rig was used as a repeater relay for their fleet of service trucks and so was only rated to operate at a reduced voice frequency bandwidth. It couldn't handle the full frequency AM bandwidth.

The rig remained in situ at Inchicore road (cemented to the floor) until a forensic post legislation raid in 1989 when it was removed....very carefully, to avoid collapsing the practically derelict building.

Amazing story, and one that has never ever got mention in the annals of Anorakadom!! Ger, what pray tell was the Cap'n using with this behemoth by way of an aerial rig?

KildareP

Some of the pirates have better audio than the legals these days!

Fm104 have gone back to days of old, turn everything up to the max, base thumping away that would make both East Coast and Nova's Optimod 8200's sound clean (and they're being driven hard).

The Communicorp stations all have this weird ringing noise when there's a lot of bass activity.

iRadio on 104.7 sounds horrible compared to the rest of their frequencies - really toppy and any quiet portions of audio cause loads of noise to be dragged up.

Thought it was the car radio on the blink until I stuck in some headphones.

Classic Hits, KFM and Spirit all sounding good on the other hand.

(The joys of long commutes stuck in traffic, you start noticing the weirdest of details!)

Infoanon

mick masterson wrote: »

only moved into the new studio so it might be a while before were on line be a w

KildareP wrote: »

Some of the pirates have better audio than the legals these days!

Fm104 have gone back to days of old, turn everything up to the max, base thumping away

Reinforces Losty point that the audio setup has to take into account the stations output and listener's hence FM104s processing.
The noticeable difference between I Radio 1047 and 105 date back to a transmitter failure,other stations eg East Coast-the tx source is the root course while Today FM 101.8 3 Rock is not hosted by RTENL

Infoanon

Losty Dublin wrote: »

Amazing story, and one that has never ever got mention in the annals of Anorakadom!! Ger, what pray tell was the Cap'n using with this behemoth by way of an aerial rig?

Always thought it was a 5kw , thanks Ger , amazing story - 10kw would have probably melted the roof !

There are pictures of the antenna farm in InchIcore - along with the many holes in the roof (and this was the early 80s ) on line.2 MWS, SW and 1 FM

KildareP

Infoanon wrote: »

Reinforces Losty point that the audio setup has to take into account the stations output and listener's hence FM104s processing.
The noticeable difference between I Radio 1047 and 105 date back to a transmitter failure,other stations eg East Coast-the tx source is the root course while Today FM 101.8 3 Rock is not hosted by RTENL

Sorry on East Coast and Nova references I meant the 8200 bass limiter behaviour where a sudden kick of bass badly distorts for a second or two but then cleans up. Both stations are trying to stay up with the rest of the Dublin stations so have to expect it won't be clean when working with an 8200. Whereas Fm104 just has constant distorting bass and horrendous distortion on the mid, they did change processing recently from their 8500 (which actually sounded very decent) so despite newer processing it sounds far worse.

The Communicorps - 98FM, Spin 1038, Today and Newstalk all have the same ringing on bass activity. Billy Eilish songs sound completely different through those stations than any others!!

Interesting to know on iRadio - wonder why it hasn't been fixed. AFAIK they're driving a sat link with two Omnia's (one for the NE franchise and one for the NW) so every TX should be getting the same feed and only stereo encoding done locally, no processing as such.

marno21

Daytime bandscan, Cork City. Stations in bold are listenable

549 - IRL - Spirit Radio - Carrickroe (25kW)
558 - E - RNE Radio 5 - San Sebastian (50kW)/A Coruna (25kW)
639 - E - RNE Radio Nacional - La Coruna (300kW)/Bilbao (50kW)
693 - G - BBC Radio Five Live - Start Point (80kW)
756 - G - BBC Radio 4 - Redruth (2kW)
801 - G - BBC Radio Devon - Barnstaple (2kW)
882 - G - BBC Radio Wales - Washford (100kW)
909 - G - BBC Radio Five Live - Clevedon (80kW)
990 - G - BBC Radio Five Live - Tywyn (1kW)
1053 - G - TalkSport - Droitwich (500kW)
1089 - G - TalkSport - Washford (80kW)
1170 - G - Swansea Sound - Swansea (0.58kW)
1215 - G - Absolute Radio - Washford (50kW)

Starting to properly empty out nowadays. The two BBC Radio Cornwall outlets on 630 and 657 went last week, and the French signals from Brittany are also absent. Power reductions by Absolute have made 1215 unlistenable during daylight hours now.

Infoanon

marno21 wrote: »

Daytime bandscan, Cork City. Stations in bold are listenable

549 - IRL - Spirit Radio - Carrickroe (25kW).

Surprised you can receive Spirit - nowadays it runs at 5kw afaik

Infoanon

The Unid on 94 1 is back on the air tonight in Dublin.
94.3 is relaying All 80s and The Beach remains on 105.7

The 90s Network seems clearer on the Southside

Oscarziggy

Spirit on 549 khz always a good signal during the day on south west Wales coast.

Out of interest FusionFM on 87.5 in the Midlands UK has been raided .

https://m.facebook.com/FusionFmBirmingham/#

No rest for the wicked even in this health crisis.

ka2

Speaking of East Coast, I noticed that the signal on 96.2 had degraded over the last few days since an outage on Wednesday evening. I have an FM dipole and can’t get RDS lock on it anymore. I live in Drogheda so am well outside their service area in fairness, but East Coast, Classic Hits and BBC Radio 2 would be my go-to stations.

Nonetheless I dropped them a mail earlier to check. Was quite surprised to receive a call from one of their engineers. Very nice guy to chat with. Long story short, the Bray Head TX was replaced at short notice on Wednesday evening, hence the outages, but the new unit is 2kW ERP and the old one was rated for 3kW. So I probably have to live with it, it’s not terrible but there’s a noticeable hiss. I actually thought I was getting my signal from Saggart all this time.

KildareP

ka2 wrote: »

Speaking of East Coast, I noticed that the signal on 96.2 had degraded over the last few days since an outage on Wednesday evening. I have an FM dipole and can’t get RDS lock on it anymore. I live in Drogheda so am well outside their service area in fairness, but East Coast, Classic Hits and BBC Radio 2 would be my go-to stations.

Nonetheless I dropped them a mail earlier to check. Was quite surprised to receive a call from one of their engineers. Very nice guy to chat with. Long story short, the Bray Head TX was replaced at short notice on Wednesday evening, hence the outages, but the new unit is 2kW ERP and the old one was rated for 3kW. So I probably have to live with it, it’s not terrible but there’s a noticeable hiss. I actually thought I was getting my signal from Saggart all this time.

Saggart is 99.9 but is directional so may be out of range for you

ka2

KildareP wrote: »

Saggart is 99.9 but is directional so may be out of range for you

Ah, no chance of that with the Drogheda Today FM relay being on 100.0.

JDxtra

Just skipping audio on 91.0 Pulse in Dublin.

Infoanon

Oscarziggy wrote: »

Spirit on 549 khz always a good signal during the day on south west Wales coast.

Out of interest FusionFM on 87.5 in the Midlands UK has been raided .

https://m.facebook.com/FusionFmBirmingham/#

No rest for the wicked even in this health crisis.

Any particular reason for the raid? ,what is the pirate situation like in the UK these days - seems to be a lack of websites providing information these days

Infoanon

JDxtra wrote: »

Just skipping audio on 91.0 Pulse in Dublin.

Ok now,

Retro 92fm,94.3 and Energy 99.3 FM relay all on air this evening (Saturday )

radioguru02

Infoanon wrote: »

Any particular reason for the raid? ,what is the pirate situation like in the UK these days - seems to be a lack of websites providing information these days

Going by radionecks.co.uk about 100 stations on, very few raids unless you use 108 or 87.5MHz in certain parts in which case you’ll be off in a few days

end of the road

Infoanon wrote: »

Any particular reason for the raid? ,what is the pirate situation like in the UK these days - seems to be a lack of websites providing information these days

use of 87.5 and covering a huge area is what is speculated but it's hard to say either way.
station could apparently be received in derby dispite being a bermingham station.

JDxtra

Infoanon wrote: »

Ok now,

Retro 92fm,94.3 and Energy 99.3 FM relay all on air this evening (Saturday )

Pulse is still skipping. Its easy to mistake for a dance track, but it's definitely on a very short loop!

SATNAV

Just listening this evening and their audio seems to have changed ? , I know some people mentioned earlier in the week about audio processing, have to say it's one of the best audio of whats on non official FM at the moment is 94.3 FM and Pirate FM?

JDxtra

SATNAV wrote: »

Just listening this evening and their audio seems to have changed ? , I know some people mentioned earlier in the week about audio processing, have to say it's one of the best audio of whats on non official FM at the moment. ?

Which station do you mean? Can't be Pulse because that has been skipping since yesterday afternoon.