SCA won’t like it, but can they do anything about it?
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Been on the road a fair bit in the last few weeks, so thought it was worth making a few observations about the “new” Star FM.
Very smart call to set up at Taminick Gap rather than Mount Stanley - 92.1 is clearly audible from as far west as Colbinabbin on a car radio, so is very much the de facto third commercial FM station in Shepparton (notwithstanding the pockets of town that can get good reception from either Edge Deni or Wang).
The problem? It sounds atrocious.
There is no STL listed for Taminick Gap, so I’m assuming the site is codec-fed, and the processing is far too harsh - I get mid-2000s downloading MP3s from the internet vibes. Edge Wangaratta doesn’t have this issue; flicking between the two of them is like night and day in terms of audio quality.
The same issues exist for repeaters that are (presumably) fed off-air, like 90.1 Myrtleford - still kicking on in glorious mono - and 91.3 Bright, my car receiver struggling to lock onto its stereo pilot (if there’s even one there)?
On the plus side, 99.1 Mount Buffalo now has a stereo pilot, and to my ear sounds a lot better (there is an STL listed for this site). Around Bright itself, there is absolutely zero reason to change across to 91.3 over 99.1… especially when the latter is much nicer to the ear!
Meanwhile, 93.7 has been activated for Edge in Bright, with the dubious honour of…
a) duplicating the 102.1 signal in most of the valleys, and
b) managing to get out further than Star from the same site.
Back to Star… while the music does need some tweaking (reminding me at times of Edge’s “Real Music” days towards the end of independent ownership, with some appalling song transitions to boot), full credit to Ace’s programming team for finding a format hole, and to Ace’s engineering team for managing to fill every possible frequency between, say, Cobram and Dinner Plain with an Edge or Star.
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There is an IP licenced to a different site at Taminick Gap. I assume this is just administrative and both the FM and STL are on the same tower.
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Nice summary, thank you.
Was on 92.1MHz earlier from Bright, the change in frequency due to activation of Star 92.1 Taminick Gap.
That’s the new addition. Perhaps the stereo pilot carrier set too low? An SDR would help determine that. 
I’m guessing no RDS for the two commercial outlets in Bright…
Hopefully ACE can invest some hours in tech work to improve the audio for Bright if the bean counters have the desire to do so.
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AFAIK 92.1 was never activated (or if it was, has been off-air for a long time before Ace acquired the stations).
No clue sorry! Need to get my hands on a TEF…
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Karen Prater
10:00 to 14:00 Star 92.1 Wangaratta
15:00 to 18:00 Gippsland Gold 1242
17:00 to 21:00 Smooth 91.5 & 95.3
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Probably all voice tracked and recorded within an hour.
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I thought we would have seen more rebranding by now?
There’s some more FM conversions in the pipeline for Ace so maybe they’re waiting for them to go ahead first.
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Is 3HA to FM one of them?
Is 3wm in Horsham one of them?
I wonder why this exists, but it’s not the direction they are taking the station branding:
It seems way over designed for a logo just for a show that’s barely seen.
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Where is that from? I like the MIXX logo.
Their website - it’s the breakfast show logo. Predates the change to the Edge FM logo afaik.,
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By the looks of things Karen Prater works for both Ace Radio and Nova Entertainment
If Karen Prater can work for both Ace and Nova. I would like to see more shared announcers between the 2 companies then. Maybe Chrissie Swan can do a shift on Magic 1278 while working on Nova then
But not in the same market(s)?
Karen is a freelance announcer/producer who contracts to various radio networks. I believe she has also done work for some overseas networks.
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yes
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Yes both Horsham and Hamilton are listed on the ACMA site as planned for conversion
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