[BC] Nominations For Best sounding AM

[Mike McCarthy]

As one in the same market in Warren and fighting the same syndication
audio quality battles, I'm finding audio quality is directly related to
the incoming audio from the sources. Our home studios ALWAYS sound 100%
better than the compressed junk sent up to the bird. Espeically when it
comes to talk. Different shows have different pre-processing and it's a
HUGE PIA adjusting the station's gear around it.

I'd say if music was played, the battle would be between WGN and WLS. 
However, the junk talk which Warren's station imports hamstrings him
considerably during those dayparts which are syndicated.

On any of our stations which have been broadbanded and play uncompressed
music from the studio, I'll put that station up against WLS and WGN in
that regards.  But it's impossible to clean up/undo the garbage fed us by
clients and syndicators.

This is a battle I'm presently waging and we've made some improvements
where we have control of the delery medium. However as long as the
bandwidth is defined by $$$ alone, there is only so much beating on that
horse which can be done before it dies.  I just hope we prevail before our
stations die.

MM

> Frank,
>
> Thanks for the positive feedback.  When we were all airing a Presidential
> speech it was interesting to dart around the AM dial to hear the same
> source with some dramatic differences.
>
> The WLS-AM C-Quam exciter is fed from an Omnia processor with 10 KHz LP
> and will be good for 50  Hz to 9.5 KHz response.   I like the idea of L+R
> feed for redundant audio.  Even if I disable the C-Quam I would leave L+R
> in place. The original WLS-AM studios in the 80's were stereo and that has
> continued over the years and has been treated as if it were a FM stereo
> station.  For a time we simulcast WLS-AM on FM sister station.  It was
> just a matter of patch cords and we were good to go.
>
> Warren Shulz
> WLS CGO