Listener's Guide - 1999 - The Listeners Guide

designer has not thought of, in the sole pursuit of locking the whole thing up. A resetusually means a loss of memory settings, so best leave alone.15) Never be afraid to detune an AM station slightly into one or the other sidebands toget best fidelity. The downside is a display which reads irritatingly off channel with say,the World Service coming up on 12097 for example, but you can't have everything.16) In cases of extreme interference an AM station can be treated as two sidebandstations "back-to-back" and tuned in very carefully in either LSB or USB, picking off thesideband with the least interference. Be a gas at parties by telling your host this is theExalted Carrier Selectable Sideband mode or ECSS. She will spontaneously reply that thenew generation of receivers offer even higher fidelity by phase-locked detection in thismode and make mental note to save on Christmas cards next year.17) All AM broadcasters are now using some form of audio processing to improve thesignal-to-atmospheric noise and interference-ratio. There was a time when the quality ofthe sound from your radio was determined by how much you were prepared to pay for it.Now, in world radio, audibility is the key. And, to be honest, it can sound dreadful.No, the problem lies in the audio processing that has slowly changed the sound balancesince Abba were in the charts.It started with wide-band compression. The BBC lead the field with a limiter that gentlyreduced the dynamic range of all audio frequencies present by the same amount, givingan overall impression of loudness enough to counter reasonable domestic noise. Thencame the active systems. A bank of filters carve up the audio into anything up to sixpass-bands. These are then compressed at different rates preset by the broadcaster, thereconstituted audio then going for transmission. In pop radio, some DJs can set their ownprocessing at the desk leading to "double compression" effects which, as they have nomusical analogy, can lead to listener fatigue simply due to the saturation of the sound.Engineers say processing is here to stay. Radio marketing men will tell you that he whoshouts loudest gets the largest audience and so gets to keep the grant-in-aid. That's fineup to a point but with the CD and Digital Audio Mass Storage setting new standards forsource programming and radios improving markedly with each generation - this must bethe time for the broadcasters to reassess their use of processing to allow the final level offidelity to align with the listeners level of investment in equipment. In other words, you'llget what you pay for. With so much choice now in radio, isn't it time to move thetechnical goalposts?18) Broadcasters can change their schedules up to four times a year in the running battlewith the ionosphere. Lower frequencies are preferred in the Winter, moving up a band ortwo to get the best coverage in the Summer.19) Your favourite station is just dying to hear from you. If you let them know you areout there hanging on their every word, they will put you on the mailing list forprogramme information and the latest frequency releases.Dying to hear from you?Yes. If a station can't prove to its government that it has an audience by analysis of itslistener correspondence then that station ends up in our Where Are They Now? feature,coming soon...20) Lower frequencies are better at night, higher ones better in the hours of daylight.21) DX, the real long distance stuff, can be heard at dawn and dusk.22) Advertising copywriters will remember the "If you see SID, tell him" campaign forBritish Gas. If you hope to tell him via short-wave radio, then he won't hear you. In ourfield, SID is a Sudden Ionospheric Disturbance and it can take out the entire spectrumfor short periods of time. Go as low as you can in frequency to steer around him, but noionosphere means no reflected signals and radio silence. You may hear a faint BBCcontinuity announcer apologising for this effect. Only Bush House would apologize for anAct of God....23) With this in mind, get to know the kind of signal meter readings you would expectfrom your favourite stations under good conditions. By reviewing who is strong and whois not, you can soon get the feel of what areas of the world are open to you at the timesit is possible to listen.24) With an outbreak of something near world peace, jamming is less of a problem thesedays. However, there seem to be nations that will always be professionally peeved anddon't want you to hear what someone else is saying. If all the tuning tips so farsuggested in your fatwa-free Guide have not worked, then try the station another time.The jamming may be getting to you on a different path and may fade to leave clearreception. The same rule can fade the station you want, but this is life's rich pageant.