Just tuned into 99.5 it sounds dreadful, on the quiet bits the audio half drops out. Also sounds like the bit rate has been dropped right back.
Probably the worst the audio has ever sounded.
A question for the technical people here @RFBurns, @matt86 @TheChase is it possible for the Move Fm / ARN tech to get the broadcast audio on move / 2LT as good as Cada?
I can ask him about it, I havenāt heard the Move FM audio of late & am out of area to receive it.
It might be running on the 4G/3G backup STL, so the input bitrate is very starved?
The NBN STL connection may have failed or been damaged again in the recent round of storms?
Is it only Move FM that sounds bad or 2LT as well?
2LT doesnāt have the audio suppression but they do have the very low bitrate audio as well.
What would be the typical bit rate a radio station would use for transmission , Starter etc?
Not for 2LT - years ago and a couple of owners ago it spent 2 weeks off air, then the company that owned it went into receivership. They didnāt have a tech but used a contractor who the owners refused to pay a retainer to and he was either interstate or overseas. By the time someone went there and got the bits to fix the transmitter it was off for 2 weeks. Obviously there was either no or a broken standby transmitter as well. Given the FM and AM both sound bad their issues may be more than just a STL too.
In the good old days if the ACMA received a complaint they would ask for the licence back if the owners didnāt have any listenable audio to transmit but I doubt that will happen now.
Depends on the technology been used from A to B.
Most stations would have a STL link or a tieline of sorts to get the audio to the transmitter. Failing that you can be efficient with the streaming technology and set up a fairly low bandwidth AAC stream and still sound good.
Starter uses a MP3 192Kbps stream as standard with alt MP3 320kbps and AAC 48kbps for most streams and iHeartRadio gets a AAC 128kbps which is more then most iHeartRadio stations send to the platform.
If only they could receive an off air signal of Move fm from Mt Lambie at Wentworth Falls, it would solve half the problem.
They probably have not upped the bitrate since moving from ADSL2+ to NBN.
Not with their current set up. Those repeaters are fed by codec over NBN and just have a basic compressor/limiter for processing in front of the txās. That ādampingā sound @TheChase mentioned is audio gating which is a simple compressor setting (intended to mute unwanted background noise). Iām not in Sydney to listen but it sounds like the bitrate on the codecs has dropped now too. I did hear the audio gating a week or two ago.
Was the 95.3 signal available at Wentworth Falls? Has this only become a problem since the compromised move to 107.9?
Surely this is just lazy engineering. The Wentworth Falls and Lithgow transmitters are 46kms apart with almost a clear line of site (just one small hill in the way) so it wouldnāt be that hard to setup a 2-hop STL link.
Even using an NBN or 4G connection they should be able to get even a web stream to play 2 stations at reasonable quality - thatās literally the same setup that everyone who streams radio has.
If theyāre getting bleed from the other station, that should be fixed regardless and should be no more of a problem at Wentworth Falls than it is at Lithgow.
Iāve spoken with the tech this morning, had a big conversation actually.
He said they have a Horizontal & Vertical Yagi pointed West to limit signal going into Sydney, thereās some new steelwork been put on the tower below the transmit antennas for the Mobile Telcos on site, but this was done about 6 months ago & shouldnāt be affecting anything.
He lives in the lower Blue Mountains & said the audio hasnāt changed recently, but what he thinks is happening is, on the Eastern side of the TX site the signal strength is really weak, & youāre getting interference in both stations from adjacent/co channel stations further East of the mountains around Sydney, he thinks some of the other stations on or around those frequencies have increased their power (above what they shouldāve) to cover local interference in their areas from 2LT/Move FM Wentworth Falls, he can hear that too.
Short hop enhancement from the weather weāve had over the past few weeks is also probably exacerbating that co/adjacent channel interference & affecting the sound of the audio you guys are hearing in Western Sydney?
He said you probably wonāt hear this issue & itāll sound better if you went West of the transmitter site?
He also mentioned the current transmit antennas are 3 element yagis, but ACMA want him to put up 4 element yagis now, to increase the front to back ratio & stop even more signal travelling East into Sydney, not only are there complaints about CADA & how it gets right across Sydney, but thereās been complaints about how much Move FM & 2LT from the translators get into Sydney, he said there are some places around Sydney where those can be received quite well, despite the tiny signal heading East.
He said heād love to put in a microwave link to the site but itās too expensive & difficult, the Microwave link to Mt Lambie is a 2 hop, it has to go backwards to the Lithgow DTV site first & the DTV site doesnāt have any backup power, heās put in a huge UPS to last a few hours, but has needed to take a generator up there himself to power the link after a mains supply fault or the supply company wants to do work so they just turn the power off.
He looks after Cada as well for ARN & knows the difference in the services, but is somewhat hand-tied as to what he can do & how good he can get the Lithgow translators, he also looks after 2OOO FM & I believe has the same program input setup for this station, albeit 2OOO FM has a fibre to Artarmon, but still the CODECS are the same?
I havenāt heard either Move FM or 2LT from Wentworth Falls of late so canāt comment on the audio & what might be the cause, but I donāt think a poor, low bitrate program input across the NBN/4G backup is the cause, nor any limiting/gating at the transmitter site?
I can understand what the tech is saying, however this issues of audio limiting is not because of inference.
I have family at Leura and stay there a bit and the same issue happens up there, however this issue is not present on 2LT or 107.9.
Iāve setup a temp stream from my SDR on 99.5 so folks can hear what Iām talking about http://10321.cloudrad.io:9054/fm
Totally agree with @TheChase Iāve been listening for the past 30 minutes at home on my SDR. Iām sure @matt86 thoughts on the cause more in keeping with actual problem.
Itās audio dropout (and dampening) on low level audio, bit like how a AF rather than RF squelch circuit might conceivably work. I could throw in word āThresholdā too re characteristics of fault.
@TheChase hoping you can leave that up for a while, Iām not in the best of environment to listen carefully to that at the moment, Iāll try if I get a chance tonight though.
It is possible the audio limiting sound is because of interference, I have to be very careful if Iām adjusting the Coast FM Gosford processing with Triple J Taree underneath, making sure that what Iām actually hearing off air is what it sounds like coming out of the processor, because even if Triple J isnāt strong enough to be heard or show itself behind Coast FM, itās there all the time, & sometimes does some funny things to how the audio sounds, which includes a limiting or audio ducking sound.
If everything lines up exactly between the 2 signals, theyāll cancel each other out & Iāll hear extremely low volume audio or nothing at all. Iāve been caught out a few times driving around listening & the audio cuts out or significantly drops in level & I think thereās a glitch in the play-out, but itās not.
Coast FM can sound different on the freeway near the TX site to what it does on the Eastern side of Gosford sometimes too, because of the Triple J audio underneath.
If Iām doing any audio processing adjustments over the summer period (especially when thereās enhanced tropo around), on Coast FM, I really have to be in the studio with my headphones plugged into the processor. If I do it remotely off air, I may be adjusting around interference & it might sound good, but in reality, whatās coming out of the processor & in a really good protected receive area it sounds shit.
Itās something a lot of people donāt realise until youāre dealing with it regularly.
I have experienced those characteristics may times on other frequencies & during dx fortuitous related propagation events (eg tropo/Es) so understand 100% what youāre saying.
In this case 99.5 is received here as quite a strong clean signal with no visually or audibly detectable multipath or interference from another other broadcaster on 99.5MHz as viewed (or heard with) on SDR spectrum/waterfall.
Check your spectrum plots carefully, Iām interested to know? The tech thinks itās more adjacent stations, (like 200KHz separation) interfering, thereās a number of those around that could be doing it?
Iām sorry, itās totally gone out of my mind now, but he said one of the stations is more troubled by this than the other, but I canāt for the life of me remember if he said 99.5 or 101.1 is the worst affected?
He did mention Sutherland & Chatswood, so Iām guessing by powers of deduction 99.5 is more affected than 101.1?
Sounds like an audio gate on lower level audio. My guess is that the input level on the STL is way down. I was having a listen just now, and sounds like theyāre taking the Regional Network feed from Hit Townsville in lieu of Carrie & Tommy, on account of them being away.
That said, itās not a fun listening experience with the audio dipping like that.
I am currently listening to 99.5 Move fm through my dx setup at Stanhope Gardens with a very strong local signal, and the audio clipping is quite bad.
I am not a broadcast engineer and I am pretty certain it is not 2NSB / 2SSR interfering with the signal. They are only half the strength of Move fm here.
My hunch is that it is a problem with the feed from Lithgow to Wentworth Falls causing the problem and not the adjacent community stations.
I am familiar with the two three element yagis on the tower., one horizontal and the other vertical. Why are we only hearing about so many complaints about Move / 2LT and Cada now??? These services have been on air for years at these powers. Why would the Sydney stations if it is them start trying it on now?
Move and 2LT are hardly a threat to the Sydney fm stations.
That is so ACMA with their no overspill approach requiring Move / 2LT to further reduce power to the east. Are they also considering changing Cadaās specs, a station that has been on air with the same specs since 1992??? Austereo took the original 2KA to court to stop the fm conversion, and lost.
I donāt understand now why it has become such a problem, none of this makes sense.
Re Microwave STL, I know it is too expensive and completely off the table.
But I would assume it would have to be 4 or more hops to get to Wentworth Falls from the Lithgow studios.
Step 1. Studio - Lithgow DTV site,
Step 2. Lithgow DTV Site to Mt Lambie
Step 3. Mt Lambie to Hassanās Lookout
Step 4 Hassanās Lookout to Mt Tomah tower.
Step 5 Mt Tomah to Wentworth Falls.
This is just a guess it may not work because of distance and terrain.
Could they just feed 99.5 off air from 107.9?
They should get a good enough signal at Katoomba to do that.
And maybe an ISDN line for 2LT?