# Bad radio reception **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 12, 2003, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389 "2003-06-12T17:34:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Malaflam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cdc98d/32.png) [@Malaflam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malaflam)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/1 "2003-06-12T17:34:51Z")
This is a tricky one. My friend and his band were playing on the radio, a local college station. Well I thought, I’ll record it on my computer. So I went from my reciever headphone out to my computer and it sounded great. I even tried recording it and everthing looked good to go. Well time for the show and I hit record. The girl who hosts the show gives her little preshow speech and says…“take it away”. The show switches to the bands mics and the sound goes to hell. Its staticy and distorted. I run around trying to mess with the antenna and nothing happens. I run out to my car and turn on the radio and it sounds fine. My roomates radio sounds good too. So it has something to do with my reciever in my room. Periodically through out the show the host girl chimes in and her audio is perfect. How can this be possible? The transmission is obviously not screwed up because I could hear it fine in my car but I know that my reciever is working because I can hear the radio fine the rest of the time. I’m confused…and pissed I didn’t get to record the show. Actually I did but boy does it sound bad. Any suggestions? ---
**Author:** ![Trigonal\_Planar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/0ea827/32.png) [@Trigonal\_Planar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trigonal_Planar)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/2 "2003-06-12T18:46:37Z")
Are you sure it wasn’t just the band that sounded bad? No, I don’t mean their music, but the reception quality of the band’s pick-ups may have been pretty awful. ---
**Author:** ![Malaflam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cdc98d/32.png) [@Malaflam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malaflam)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 7:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/3 "2003-06-12T19:03:13Z")
It sounded perfect in my car and on my roomates little radio. Just not on mine. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/4 "2003-06-12T19:04:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Trigonal Planar \* > \*\*Are you sure it wasn’t just the band that sounded bad? > > No, I don’t mean their music, but the reception quality of the band’s pick-ups may have been pretty awful. \*\* No, that’s not it. Buried in the OP was the mention that his roommate’s radio and his car radio sounded fine. I’m guessing it may have to do with the level of modulation. It’s possible the band’s mics were overmodulating and causing the distortion in your receiver, but not on your roommate’s radio or your car radio. It’s the only reason I can think of at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Lagged2Death](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ac8455/32.png) [@Lagged2Death](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lagged2Death)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/5 "2003-06-12T21:35:29Z")
I’ve heard radios do somewhat similar things on marginal radio stations, usually on stereo receivers that have automatic stereo/mono switching. The radio has to decide if an incoming signal is strong enough to attempt to receive in stereo or not. Sometimes a station’s signal is annoyingly close to the cutoff, and the receiver will flip into static-laden stereo for the loud parts of the program and back to much-quieter mono for the quieter parts. A stereo receiver will usually have a “stereo” or “auto” light that lights when listening in stereo mode and goes off when listening in mono. Like I said, though, it’s a wild guess. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/6 "2003-06-12T21:53:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lagged2Death \* > \*\*I’ve heard radios do somewhat similar things on marginal radio stations, usually on stereo receivers that have automatic stereo/mono switching. > > The radio has to decide if an incoming signal is strong enough to attempt to receive in stereo or not. Sometimes a station’s signal is annoyingly close to the cutoff, and the receiver will flip into static-laden stereo for the loud parts of the program and back to much-quieter mono for the quieter parts. A stereo receiver will usually have a “stereo” or “auto” light that lights when listening in stereo mode and goes off when listening in mono. > > Like I said, though, it’s a wild guess. \*\* [FYI] That stereo light has no idea if the broadcast is in stereo or or mono. What it, or rather the circuit that drives it, does is to listen for the 19 kHz pilot tone which tells it there is a 38 kHz stereo subcarrier present, on which the second channel is impressed. [/FYI] ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/7 "2003-06-12T21:53:32Z")
> [@](#): > > The radio has to decide if an incoming signal is strong enough to attempt to receive in stereo or not. This is a good point. FM radio broadcasts don’t send Right and Left signals, they send R+L and R-L. For mono receivers, only the R+L is played. If the static and distortion are only in the stereo (R-L) part of the recording, the mono part may be OK, and the recording could be salvagable. Do you have access to something that can play back your recording as mono to check this? ---
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/8 "2003-06-12T21:59:21Z")
I should mention I’ve made recordings from the radio where the hiss in the stereo channel was much worse than in the mono channel. If it turns out to be the case all the noise is in the stereo part, and if you can record it on to your computer and burn it to a CD, let me know, and I’ll step you through how to make a mono recordig from it. ---
**Author:** ![Malaflam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cdc98d/32.png) [@Malaflam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malaflam)\ **Post date:** [June 12, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/9 "2003-06-12T23:05:11Z")
I just checked the wave file and its bad on both channels are bad. I tried mixing it down to a mono track and that was bad too. It was bad audio coming in so I dont think it has any hope. But I like the idea of maybe messing with the stereo or mono tuning. Of course too little too late I’ll have to wait till next Wednesday when they have another live show to test it out. Thanks for the ideas. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2003, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bad-radio-reception/181389/10 "2003-06-13T17:26:15Z")
Note: if R+L is clean and R-L is noisy, the the outputs from the receiver, R and L, will probably be noisy. You would have to add R+L back together to get a clean-ish signal.