Ramadan stations

[Polecat]

This is what I meant to send I am sure the rock left 92.6 a few years ago

I didn't know that. Just assumed it was in a part of London I never go...like north of the River lol.

The full name of the station is The Rock 926, their idents say 926 yet they only broadcast on 88.8. I'm sure there's an entertaining explanation.

Likewise with Urban Jazz Radio who randomly refer to themselves either either Urban Jazz or Urban Jamz Radio.

Anyway, back on topic. Pleased to hear the Rock's back on.

[famefm]

I can only think of I reason and that someone from the management love the number 926?

[Polecat]

I thought it could be a strategy to fool Ofcom....

[famefm]

Just when I thought it was safe to say no Ramadan station was on near me a Hounslow Ramadan on 877 has just come on nearly a week late

[teckniqs]

I am sure The Rock was on both 92.6 and 87.8 at the same time about 8 months ago when I was in London at the end of the last Summer, but the audio was definitely different on both...

[Polecat]

I am sure The Rock was on both 92.6 and 87.8 at the same time about 8 months ago when I was in London at the end of the last Summer, but the audio was definitely different on both...

Oh yeah I remember you saying they were on both on another thread. Remember where you were when you heard them on 926?

[radionortheast]

I think there are both Ramadan stations on 87.7 and 87.9 here now, they are the only RSL'S I hear now, think alot of past RSL's the people went on to set up community stations so you don't hear them anymore.

[ehsanspicedigital]

I know i'm a bit late to the conversation but was just browsing the forum and saw these posts and would like to clear. I am the one running 87.7 In Bradford. Were running a 32 days SRSL to provide quality programming to the Asian community across Bradford, I'm also close friends with the one running 87.9 In Leeds, To my knowledge in kly they are running 88.1 and in Huddersfield 88.0. Were running the station on 87.7 with a sound craft series 10 along with a IDT Fm Sound design processor and a SBS FM 25 running at 9.8w. The reasoning for such an old processor is that even though i own an orban optimod 2200 and a DSPX FM which have presets both set by Neil, Our engineer, i cant seem to match the depth or bass that this unit can produce. If you've got any more questions regarding Ramadan Stations then i'm here to answer all your questions!

[ehsanspicedigital]

I know i'm a bit late to the conversation but was just browsing the forum and saw these posts and would like to clear. I am the one running 87.7 In Bradford. Were running a 32 days SRSL to provide quality programming to the Asian community across Bradford, I'm also close friends with the one running 87.9 In Leeds, To my knowledge in kly they are running 88.1 and in Huddersfield 88.0. Were running the station on 87.7 with a sound craft series 10 along with a IDT Fm Sound design processor and a SBS FM 25 running at 9.8w. The reasoning for such an old processor is that even though i own an orban optimod 2200 and a DSPX FM which have presets both set by Neil, Our engineer, i cant seem to match the depth or bass that this unit can produce. If you've got any more questions regarding Ramadan Stations then i'm here to answer all your questions!

[radionortheast]

I heard 88.0 last year, I just hear heart at the moment, I think Keighley used to be on 102.1, frequencies at the bottom are much better, what aerial are you using does it have to be a particular type? does 87.9 transmit from the same place as dance asian the signal is the same, 87.7 is weaker, Bradford is much further away

[ehsanspicedigital]

dab danceasiaradio and ramzan leeds 87.9 are transmitting from the same location. we’ve for the same rds on both leeds and bradford stations to when your moving between your radio automatically tunes the strongest signal. Keighley was off this year. when i spoke to the licence holder he said to me he doesn’t have the time to run it. in bradford and leeds we’ve got colinear antennas. we used to use dipoles but they didn’t have the right reception. here were quite above sea level some areas of pudsey halifax keighley are getting covered it’s well the main thing is bradford that’s what we’re licenced for. the DAB multiplexes that are opening are absolutely shit. i’ve got a commercial DSP licence but don’t want to go live on local multiplexes due to their problems. waiting for arqiva to reduce their price for SDL national

[radionortheast]

Shame for them they have lost their radio station, I heard the DJ on dance asian which I had on while trying to find the power supply that would work best with best with my radio talking about dab, how there was no crackles wanting people to get dab car adaptor, quite interesting. Fever has fm Dance Asia has dab, I wonder myself it there might be some rivalry, It does explain why Fever is nolonger on dab, they’ve gone back on something they view as superior, in this sense fm is viewed as superior. I do wonder myself what will happen in future, weather ramandan stations will still keep going on fm. I expect bauer to remove all stations from fm in the next few years, suppose there will be space for stations if they're still around to be on fm, a station to go back to fm from dab would be odd.
Don't know what to say about arqiva reducing prices, fun kids had to remove themselfs off lot of the dab transmitters because the prices were put up, suppose the regulator could have a cap or do something if it wants to encourage people over to stop using analogue transmitters.

[Albert H]

OFCOM and the broadcasters seem to think that DAB is a virtually infinite resource. They keep cramming more and more rubbish into each multiplex, reducing bandwidth of stations, so much now that many "music" stations are just 64 kb/s mono! They all sound utterly dreadful. Even the "quality" stations like BBC Radio 3 have had their bandwidth reduced.

Done properly, with reasonable bandwidths, DAB can sound reasonably good to a stationary receiver in an area of good signal strength. However, the choice of low power transmitters, crammed multiplexes, and inept site planning have largely crippled what could have been a fairly good service.

Unfortunately, the old transmitter engineers (like me) are retiring and all the accumulated years of knowledge and ability is being lost. The current crop of transmitter "engineers" are largely unqualified ex-cable TV installers. They're uniformly useless!

[radionortheast]

Yeah some of them also have very low volume, someone else were commented that it sounded like the audio was been send down a phone, mostly on the ssdab, many of the big stations suppose have never had that good audio quality, thats one of the complaints i've heard alot.

I do think it is a shame for radio 3, afew years I remember having a freeview box hooked up to my hifi, the sound of radio 3 was by far the best i’ve heard, shows it can done throught digital. It has also been the best sounding station on fm for as long as I can remember.

[Albert H]

All the BBC content - on FM as well as DAB has been digitally distributed since the late 70s! They used a custom-made PCM system with 16-bit words, but with just 13-bit audio (the other bits were used for control functions). The PCM system was developed to distribute stereo programme to the transmitter sites, and eliminate the problems that Post Office "Music Lines" could cause when trying to send stereo. The Post Office - in their infinite wisdom - could never seem to find identically routed pairs of lines from London to the transmitter sites, so the phasing of each channel could be somewhat arbitrary, leading to some weird stereo effects.

Their plan was to effectively combine Left and Right, and send it down a single line - they tried (and rejected) simple time division multiplexing, because this was wasteful of bandwidth and was still susceptible to noise pick-up. They decided to digitise, and as long as the bitstream arrived at the TX sites, it's condition didn't really matter - it could be squared up again, and demodulated back to a pair of audio channels to feed the transmitter.....

When the Post Office microwave network was commissioned in the late 70s, the BBC could use the full potential of the PCM system they'd developed, and the bitstream would carry all the national services, and would be separated out at the TX sites by the demodulators. I don't know if the system is still in use, but at the time of its development, it was world-leading. This was in the days when the BBC employed engineers and had a Designs Department.....

[jvok]

The BBC NICAM system is still in use afaik. Back in 2016 they replaced the original encoders in broadcasting house with brand new custom built ones, which must have cost a pretty penny so can't imagine they were planning to phase the system out anytime soon.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2016-01-3 ... ot-dot-dot