Re: Reading Services/WNMH

[Keith Barry <barry@meol.mass.edu>]

>Out here in Western New England, the Radio Reading Service is heard on
>Northfield-Mt. Hermon's WNMH (91.5 Northfield), mostly reading articles from
>periodicals. The audio quality of these broadcasts is terrible...sounds like
>they were sitting inside a tin can when they made the tape. Kind of like the
>NWS broadcasts on the WX band quality-wise.


    You are right - the quality isn't that great. At the TIC studios in
Marshfield, broadcasting from the WATD facilities, a switch from 12" reel
tapes to hard-disk audio was just made. The books are stored on regular old
cassette tapes and are transferred onto the automation systems, which, up
until about a year ago, was a large stack of donated reel-to-reel machines
from the 70s all connected with timers and "monster cable". The tape
machines are actually old donated ones from th late 80s - 2 head Onkyo and
JVC machines. Headphones are Radio Shack Nova 60 sets which sound like crap.
The already-horrible-sounding audio is broadcast from WATD's sideband (I
think) frequency, which is the kind used for Muzak and such. By that time,
the audio is close to terrible. 
                                                                            
            Keith Barry 

------------------------------