[grc] Sound Quality Issues

[Ken Freedman]

This most definitely sounds like a phase issue  the dead giveaway being
that the problem worsens when you put it into mono. Phase is when the
polarity of either the left or the right channel gets reversed so the left
and right channels either partially or completely cancel one another out.

Common sources of things being out of phase are miswired jacks and cables.
Sometimes records and CDs also get manufactured out of phase. You can
analyze phase in many audio editing programs such as Pro Tools or Adobe
Audition. I am not sure if Audacity will measure phase or not. We use an
oscilloscope to read phase at FMU.

-Ken


- Ken Freedman


~~~~~~~~~~
Audience Engine / WFMU
PO Box 2011
Jersey City, NJ 07303-2011

Contact Methods Ranked Best to Worst:

ken at audienceengine.net
ken at wfmu.org

@WFMU

http://wfmu.org

(201) 521-1416 ext 225
~~~~~~~~~~~




On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 5:26 PM, David Klann via grc <grc at maillist.peak.org>
wrote:

> Greetings Fellow Radio Geniuses!
>
> We're running into an audio quality issue here at WDRT 91.9fm in rural
> Western Wisconsin. I'm past the point of tearing my hair out in search
> of the root cause. I'll outline what I can here, and answer further
> questions as they come in. Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help
> diagnosing this.
>
> Some facts:
>
>  - The quality of *some* (not all) spoken-word audio recorded in our
> "Studio B" sounds like it was recorded with the person speaking through
> "a metal pipe while in a tunnel" (that's the best description we've been
> able to come up with)
>
>  - It *sometimes* depends on the radio people are listening to when it
> happens
>
>  - Music recorded in the same studio from any source (analog vinyl, CD,
> digital source, etc) sounds just fine
>
>  - One listener has noticed that it sounds "bad" when they listen with
> their home receiver set to "mono" mode, and when they switch to "stereo"
> mode it sounds fine
>
>  - The same audio sent to our Internet stream *usually* sounds "normal",
> but sometimes sounds "bad"
>
> This has been an otherwise productive exercise for us because we've
> learned of a few other misconfigurations in our audio chain. But this
> one continues to haunt.
>
> Again, I appreciate any thoughts you can share, and will provide more
> info as requested. If off list, I'll summarize the "fix" to the list
> when we figure this out.
>
> Thanks!
>
>   ~David Klann
>    WDRT, 91.9fm, Viroqua, WI
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> grc mailing list
> grc at maillist.peak.org
> http://maillist.peak.org/mailman/listinfo/grc
>
>