1 minute 20 second excerpt from Coast 2 Coast AM's 2 AM PST hour (11/14/2022) on KFI as captured from an SDR receiver:
Spectralgram:
Can anybody identify this terrible sounding watermarking technology?
I'm under the impression that Voltair is the only ratings watermark enhancement processor in common use. That being said, at 25-Seven Voltair Watermark Monitor & Processor | Telos Alliance, its makers ask "Can competitors or Nielsen tell if I’m using Voltair?", followed by answering themselves with, "By design, Voltair leaves no fingerprints, as most audio processors don’t. So we don’t think so." This leads me to believe that it's impossible for anyone to actually hear it. And yet there it is, sounding vaguely reminiscent of the "ice cream truck" filter present in CoolEdit's old Notch Filter transform.
Is this stuff truly Voltair? Or is it something else? Is it being modified against the technology creators' wishes to make it this audibly obvious, or is this really how it's designed to sound? I cannot understand how even the most deaf of listeners aren't being driven away in numbers greater than whatever gains they're making by inserting the watermarking loudly enough to trigger every last PPM device possible. It sounds like the entire station is being run through a miniature physical echo chamber with dampered strips of zangy-sounding sheet metal and springs vibrating to the music and speech. You can even see the watermarking in this audio clip's spectralgraph, looking like Freddie Kruger's personal claw marks (for all 10 fingers no less) scratching their way along in the time domain over its entire length. When I first noticed this sound appearing on numerous stations, I actually thought my tuner's caps and other components were croaking, and that they were producing some bizarre form of ringing.
Incredible.
Spectralgram:
Can anybody identify this terrible sounding watermarking technology?
I'm under the impression that Voltair is the only ratings watermark enhancement processor in common use. That being said, at 25-Seven Voltair Watermark Monitor & Processor | Telos Alliance, its makers ask "Can competitors or Nielsen tell if I’m using Voltair?", followed by answering themselves with, "By design, Voltair leaves no fingerprints, as most audio processors don’t. So we don’t think so." This leads me to believe that it's impossible for anyone to actually hear it. And yet there it is, sounding vaguely reminiscent of the "ice cream truck" filter present in CoolEdit's old Notch Filter transform.
Is this stuff truly Voltair? Or is it something else? Is it being modified against the technology creators' wishes to make it this audibly obvious, or is this really how it's designed to sound? I cannot understand how even the most deaf of listeners aren't being driven away in numbers greater than whatever gains they're making by inserting the watermarking loudly enough to trigger every last PPM device possible. It sounds like the entire station is being run through a miniature physical echo chamber with dampered strips of zangy-sounding sheet metal and springs vibrating to the music and speech. You can even see the watermarking in this audio clip's spectralgraph, looking like Freddie Kruger's personal claw marks (for all 10 fingers no less) scratching their way along in the time domain over its entire length. When I first noticed this sound appearing on numerous stations, I actually thought my tuner's caps and other components were croaking, and that they were producing some bizarre form of ringing.
Incredible.
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