The post Broadcast Outage – BPR News 88.5 WMQS appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

Since then our broadcast in Murphy, NC on 88.5 WMQS has went offline due to a transmitter equipment failure. We expect to have this broadcast back online Monday (3/7) afternoon.

We have lost power at our Brevard transmitter site. As a result, 101.5 BPR News and 90.5 BPR Classic are off air. We hope to have power restored soon but cannot give an exact timeframe.

Due to the weather in the area we may have other outages. You can report them here.

The post Broadcast Outage – Brevard 101.5 BPR News, 90.5 BPR Classic appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

The post 88.1 WCQS Temporary Power Decrease appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

I left the station and headed down Tunnel Road. While the color coding isn’t the easiest to read, you can see that, for the most part, both 107.9 and 88.1 stay above the 30 dBu mark. It is worth noting that the signal strengths collected were from an antenna mounted on the top of my car. This is helpful to gauge where there are dips in signal strength, but does not consider how signals perform inside a building. Depending on the materials and construction style, along with many other factors, received signal strength can be much lower inside a building.  

I then looked at the maps that logged multipath interference:  

Color coding for the multipath maps (lower is better):

This is where things get tricky. When FM radio waves come into contact with terrain they are not completely absorbed. Some energy is absorbed but the rest is reflected and scattered back into space. This is what I believe is contributing to many reception issues in this area. When those bounced radio waves reach a receiver you can get what’s called multipath interference. These bounced signals arrive out of phase (at various times) with the main broadcast, and depending on how strong the primary signal is, how strong the bounced signal is, and the receiver you are using, it can range from a slight degradation in listening quality to completely wiping out the audio. Most receivers seem to start having noticeable issues when you get over 10-20% multipath interference.  

Multipath interference can vary wildly within a few feet, and even while stationary in some situations. How it impacts your exact listening setup also greatly depends on your building construction, antenna, and receiver. Some receivers are better able to filter out those reflected signals, and an omnidirectional antenna would be more susceptible than a directional one.  

My theory is that both 88.1 and 107.9 are funneling through the cut in the ridge for 240 and scattering off the face just north of the 240 – Tunnel Rd intersection complex. This is introducing a lot of possibilities for multipath interference until you get to the very southern end of the area by Swannanoa River Road. 

There’s unfortunately nothing we can do as a broadcaster to mitigate multipath interference. I can offer some of our usual suggestions to improve reception in less than ideal areas. Outside antennas will always give you the best chance and picking up the strongest and cleanest signal. Adding an external antenna to your radio would be the next best thing. To go along with that, keep radios near windows or as close to the exterior of home as possible. Experimenting with antenna positioning can often yield good results — sometimes not extending telescoping antennas to their full length works better for some frequencies, or rotating them 90 degrees to horizontal works better in some cases. As always, keeping power cords away from antennas is preferable. 

For frequency lists, coverage maps, and more details on BPR’s Big Switch visit bpr.org/bigswitch. If you have additional questions about this blog post or your reception, email tech@bpr.org. 

The post Signal Study of the Kenilworth area of Asheville appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

On June 24th, BPR offered our listeners a live broadcast of opening night from the Brevard Music Center (BMC). It was the first time a BMC opening night has ever been broadcast live, and the first live broadcast from BMC in over a decade. Led by BMC Resident Conductor Ken Lam, the program featured Mussorgsky’s showpiece “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Respighi’s tone poem “Fountains of Rome,” and guest artist, pianist Conrad Tao, performing Rachmaninoff’s “Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.” The Blue Ridge Public Radio broadcast was hosted by Anastasia Marie.

Preparation for Event 

The decision to go ahead with this live broadcast from the Brevard Music Center meant that BPR was able to make a (possibly long overdue) purchase of a Comrex BRIC-Link II and a Comrex Access NX. This is an IP codec, allowing the station to get live, studio-quality audio from remote locations. It can send high quality 2-way audio connection. In this instance, we only sent the audio from Brevard to the station. We intend to set up a 2-way connection for future broadcasts.

The BPR Tech Team permanently installed the Comrex BRIC-Link II unit at the station, and on our first test run, took the portable unit to Brevard Music Center. In future, this will allow BPR to go to a location and take audio either from a mixing board (as is the case at the Brevard Music Center) or use a microphone to do live reporting from the field.

Test run: more than a week out from the scheduled live broadcast date, the BRR Operations and Tech teams split up, 2 to Brevard and 2 at the station. The BPR team onsite in Brevard meet with staff from BMC, including their IT Manager and Audio Engineer. This trial run accomplished 3 main things:

• Setting up and testing network conditions for stable uninterrupted audio – checking delay.
• Setting up a webcam from the audio booth at BMC (suction cup and gaff tape), allowing us to stream video of the stage to the station, via a Zoom call.
• Level check to see how the live music level output played through the Comrex at the station.

The BPR team at Brevard also completed a side quest to record a promo with Mark Weinstein, the GM of Brevard Music Center. The audio was recorded on a Sony PCM-D10 Hi-Res Linear PCM-Recorder.

The test went smoothly. It was super fun meeting the Brevard staff face to face; the beginning of a relationship we hope to continue. Based on the success of this test, we expected no audio issues with the live broadcast.

Event 

By the time the house opened at 6:31pm on the night of the event, the BPR team was set up in the sound booth at the Brevard Music Center, with both audio and video feeds sending to the studio in Asheville.

AT 7pm, The BPR broadcast went live. At the station, Host Anastasia Marie aired prepared interviews and pieces from Conrad Tao’s albums, along with her live commentary of the scene in Brevard, supported by Director of Content, Catherine Comp, and members of the Tech and Ops Teams.

In Brevard, the BPR team headed down to the Maestro tent for refreshments before the show, and checked in at the BPR tent, where Morning Edition Host, Helen Chickering, Abby Bishop from Membership and Elise Mckinnon from Business Sponsorship greeted fans of the station stopping by to say hello.

The pre-show speech began just a few minutes late, not bad for live theatre! The BPR host let our radio listeners know what was happening on stage until the concert began.

Once the performance started, it was mostly a matter of monitoring levels and network connection for the rest of the broadcast. The team back at the station kept an eye on the Comrex dashboard to ensure that the delay between devices was high enough to catch and correct any audio artifacts before they went on air, while the team at BMC monitored the outgoing audio and sent back communications to the station (via a Zoom group chat) about show timing updates. The broadcast itself went very smoothly with no audio or connectivity issues. We got positive feedback from our listeners and overall considered the night a success.

Lessons Learned

No problems arose with the audio broadcast, but the video feed was somewhat blurry and overexposed, making it difficult for the host to identify who was walking on or off stage. Brevard Music Center actually records video of all their shows, and for the future, we intend to feed this higher quality video back to the station in place of our webcam setup.

We also want to utilize the two-way connection capabilities of the Comrex to send the station’s output back to the team on-site. The Brevard team only had access to the public livestream, which had a significant delay of about 40 seconds. With a direct live audio connection, the on-site team will be able to monitor the station audio as it happens.

The post BPR’s Live Broadcast from Brevard Music Center June 24th appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

Internet is down at this site at of 1:15PM today, 3/17/22. We have technicians scheduled to come restore service tomorrow.

90.5 WYQS

Our STL (studio to transmitter link) to the broadcast site for 90.5 WYQS BPR News is experiencing drops in connection, possible interference, or equipment failure. We are in route to site to investigate issue. Will provide updates as we learn more.

Update 3/15/22: We have put in a temporary work around that has been reliable since late this morning and hope will hold until we can address the root cause of issue. We plan to be on site this Thursday 3/17/2022 to install replacement needed to address the issue.

Update 3/17/22: We made progress improving our receive signal for audio today on our primary STL (Studio to Transmitter Link). We where not able to repair our backup STL link, we have tower crews scheduled for March 29th to repair this.

The post 90.5 WYQS BPR News & 103.1 Hendersonville Broadcast Interruptions appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

We are monitoring the impact of Winter Storm Izzy across our coverage area. If the storm continues as forecast we expect power outages to effect several sites.  We will work to restore service as quickly as possible, however the safety of our staff is our highest priority. Access roads to many of our sites are usually in much worse condition than public roads in the same area.

We will update this page if and when we know a station is impacted.

• BPR Tech Team

The post Winter Storm Izzy And Likely Broadcast Disruptions appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

Some listeners in the area might be able to receive our new 90.5 WZQS BPR News as an alternative. BPR News is also available on our website, mobile app and other internet enabled devices.

We will update this post with more details as we work to address this issue.

The post 99.1 BPR News, Bryson City – Broadcast Interruptions appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

The post 103.3 BPR Classic Highlands- Off Air appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.

As always, you can stream our station from our website, smart speaker, or other sources.

-BPR Tech Team

The post Brief broadcast interruption for 103.1 BPR News, Hendersonville appeared first on BPR Tech Blog.