Category: Radio

Happiness Is…

Happiness is accomplishing a known goal. That’s a Scientology definition, a tidbit I picked up the summer in college when living on Cape Cod. The Falmouth public library had a large collection of Scientology books. No, I’m not a Scientologist.

That happened to be the Jaws movie summer. Seeing it in Falmouth was funny, because people who were extras in the movie, and their relatives, were in the audience. They weren’t shy about letting everybody know when they, or someone they knew, appeared on the screen.

But I digress. The happiness context here is this. Just as I brought this installation of WordPress back from near death, and got my Sony 300-disc CD changer working again, last weekend I worked on my Logitech Media Server network until it had been returned to full functionality. The solution was to get the Squeezebox Radios off their native WiFi implementations by using Ethernet-to-WiFi adapters.

It’s been suggested to me the radios were dropping off the network because of interference from a WiFi 6 signal somewhere within range. Even if that’s what happened, there’s no explanation why the adapters don’t have the problem. Also it was suspiciously coincidental with changes that I noticed had been made to the mysqueezebox cloud service that required an update to the LMS software running in the house.

Anyway, I’m happy now that everything is working again. There’s an Android app for controlling the network players that I started using this morning. Why hadn’t I looked for it before? Because I tried one a long time ago on the first generation of the Roku streaming player, and it was terrible. I assumed they would all be awful, but I sure was wrong about that. Squeezer is an excellent app, and it’s free.

Next up? Seeing if I can put LMS on the Raspberry Pi 3 that tastewar gave me.

Out of Phase, Out of Time

There’s no escape from folded mono sound. This morning, Boss Radio 66 played the Rolling Stones’ “Out of Time”, a song that’s used very effectively in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.

The song was taken from the indifferently produced Metamorphosis album that ABKCO put out in ’75. Stereo elements were added to the original mono track that was given the worst sound treatment ever devised, re-channeled stereo.

As heard on the mono speaker of my Logitech Squeezebox Radio in the kitchen, the sound had the distant, hollow effect that’s typical of fake stereo when out-of-phase channels cancel each other out. On YouTube, the official copy of the recording is called the “Strings Version.”

L+R=M

Stereo records were introduced in 1958. In November, 1968 the White Album was released with both stereo and mono mixes. There is only a stereo mix of Abbey Road, released just ten months later. The end of true mono mixes for popular music had begun.

Ten years later, when I was working in radio, the DJ promo singles that came to the station had a stereo side for FM…

… and a mono side for AM. (The picture sleeve had a strawberry scent!)

Hitting the mono switch (a feature sadly now lacking from receivers and amps) when playing the stereo side of this record produces the same sound as playing the mono side.* Folded mono had been heard for years, with stereo recordings played on mono FM radios, and stereo records played on mono record players.

Early stereo records had this warning.

The problem with most mono cartridges of the time was the stylus only moved sideways. The vertical modulations in the stereo grooves would not only be missed, they could be damaged by the heavy downward pressure of a stylus that wasn’t able to move up and down.

This notice appeared on later records, when mono cartridge styluses (nobody says “stylii” anymore, do they?) were made to be compatible with stereo records.

But folded mono sound can have issues, especially if there are phasing differences between the channels. I heard this effect last Monday night on Big Planet Noise. Bob Irwin played a mono 45 DJ copy of a song. In high school, when the song was new, I heard it in stereo on WBCN, listening with my Pioneer SX-440 receiver and SE-20 headphones.

There’s a lot of intentional out-of-phase sound between the channels, and I would switch the SELECTOR knob to FM MONO to hear what it did. The effect I heard 50 years ago was pretty much the same as I heard Monday night. This is the song.

Windows has a mono switch under the Ease of Access audio settings. Put on headphones, switch to mono, and you’ll hear most of what I heard, but not all. I suspect the misguided Haeco-CSG process was applied, which was a case of the cure being far worse than the problem it attempted to solve.

* The Haeco-CSG audio process was developed at A&M Records. Thankfully, by the mid-70’s it was no longer being used for mono DJ promo records.

That Thing She Does!

Debbie Daughtry and friend

Last weekend I was on a Watch Party that Debbie Daughtry was hosting, showing Tom Hanks’ delightfully note-perfect movie that I also love, That Thing You Do! There was a technical glitch, but I figured out a workaround and had a lot of fun. Debbie sounds like she’s up to trying another watch party, and the movie I recommended won’t surprise anyone who knows me.

Today the full story has been revealed about Debbie, Boss Radio 66, and how Tom Hanks came into the radio picture.

“Debbie sends me the playlist and I do a dive on the web for salient and fascinating information,” Tom tells PEOPLE of how he prepares for his sets.

https://people.com/movies/tom-hanks-dj-boss-radio-66-brooklyn-oldies-station-debbie-daughtry-exclusive/

Boss Radio 66 is just the first of several collaborations between Tom and Debbie to come, including a country music and American Standards station soon to follow on TuneIn.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/radio-producer-brooklyn-ended-tom-153400227.html

Here are a couple of movie trailers that were put on YouTube by Johnathon Schaech, who plays Jimmy in the movie. Johnathan apologized to Debbie because he wanted to join the watch party, but then was unable to attend.

Look fast for a young Charlize Theron in this one!

Look fast for an old Ortofon SPU phono cartridge in this one!