So, I was going through my vast library of music this past week, and I noticed I had a good number of TOTH IDs in my system. So I thought: I wonder what everyone else has here...

For the radio geeks out there, kinda like myself, what Airchecks or IDs do you have in your collections?

Tons of Seattle, mainly KING, KJR, some KOL, and later KVI-FM, KYYX, KUBE, KPLZ and a lot of AM stuff from the 80's. Also many markets that I travelled to in the 80's and early 90's, including Portland, Chicago, New York, Boston, SF, LA. I've got so much stuff on cassettes in boxes I don't know what to do with it. But I can't throw them out!

I took all the ones I had on cassette, copied them onto my computer, did a filter on the entire thing, and then just cut up the portions into whatnot.

If you have the ability to get them onto your computer, do it.

Yes, that is my goal. But it is time-consuming. Perhaps worth it, though.

I've recorded ID's on KCIV, KBOI-FM, KSNN-FM, KBAR, KYET and many more I can't think of. This cassette tape was made in the summer of 1970 in the back seat of my parents car on our trip to the Tetons & Yellowstone.

I was using my old Norelco 22RR482 AM/FM Radio Recorder and caught "Kisn in Pocatello" introducing the song "Timothy" by The Buoys. This song wouldn't catch on nation wide until January 1971. I didn't know what I had caught until years later. Read some where it was originally released in 1970 and was a stiff.

I recall KISN having a full run with The Association's "Windy" before it hit nationally. Then, it started all over again.

I have mine, and that's it. boring.

As far as airchecks- A ton of KFRC in the 1979- 1983 era...grew up listening to the Big 610..one of the all time great CHR radio stations.

Used to dx KFRC from Seattle in the mid-70's. Wow they were good. Although KGW, also good, came in better most nights. Since I was listening at night, the names I remember out of KGW were Bob Anthony and Dave Hood. At KFRC, it was Marvelous Mark, Don Saint John, and Shana. What great jocks and great memories!

I look back and wonder why I was compelled to record these stations. The reason seems so clear today, they don't exist anymore!

You can argue about the best AM top40's, but for this west coaster, KFRC was the best in the 70's.
KGW and KING were clones, but KGW always seemed to have a little more "gravitas" to their sound, perhaps due to their signal strength and competitive position. Later, KYTE was also inspiring, but difficult to dx in Seattle.

KHJ did a great job, and when 10Q came on it was really magic in L.A., but didn't last long. We were coming to the end of the great AM top40's.

I may have shared this story before, but I remem ber one cold winter night picking up KFXD 580 Boise, KFRC 610 SF, KGW 620 Portland, KFI 640 LA, all playing top40 and all crystal clear. Plus CFUN in Vancouver as an added bonus! What a different AM era!

What a great decade for AM music radio, and without a doubt the reason I'm doing the craft today.

The KFRC air staff was always top notch:
Dr. Don Rose- mornings
Dave "The Duke" Sholin, Sue Hall - middays
Bill Lee, Bobby Ocean- afternoons
Marvelous Mark Mckay- evenings
Don Saint John, Mucho Morales- overnights...
I wonder if the above(alive)ever knew what an impact they were making on up and coming broadcasters or radio in general.

Boss radio, or its close clones ! Almost all gone.

Ah yes, while on a vacation to San Francisco about 3 years ago I made my 16 year old listen to the "Big 610" while it was still Programming Oldies between the Oakland A's ball games. Of course they were simulcasting with thier FM, as we were driving down I-80 between Sacto and Oakland.

KFRC still had boss sounding jocks on air then, sounding real good, so I told my son, now listen to this ! And then I also switched back and forth between the FM signal and the AM. Since he had been raised with his Dad on some kind of Oldies station or another,and in a minor market, he had some appreciation for the music and presentation. I think I had him convinced that the AM sound had a certain appeal over the FM with regard to the jingle package/liners, the music and the major market Boss jox presentation. He did hear the difference between S.F. and Kennewick,Wa. LOL.And he did hear the difference between his Dad's presention and some guy named "Joe Iko" who sounded a helluva lot like Bobby Ocean !

Well, he liked KFRC much better when we got to the Oakland-Alameda stadium for the ball game and the big 610 became the radio home of the Oakland A's for play by play. Welcome to the 21st century.

It's funny. I've been in or around radio since I was 14 years of age. And though I did some dx-ing off an on over the years I never saved any "jingles" or music beds. I have a handful of airchecks of myself but some of those are now in my lost with the need to be found file.

I have always wanted to do a chronological mix of all the stations I have worked for with just the call signs or image liner. Just mix them rapid fire.

Alas that still remains to be done.

I found this site a few years ago... Look around the site and find the videos with Dr. Don in action in the studio.

http://www.doctordonrose.com/index1.html

Amazing!

He was such a treasure...

I've got the old KISN jingles and news intros and some bits by Tom Murphy. Also the 1970s composite aircheck of y100 in Miami.

www.airchexx.com

hear what radio used to sound like and what radio is supposed to sound like

(current "PD's don't bother listening to this, its way beyond your capacity to understand)

Really? There are people who collect radio airchecks? For fun?

Now that storage space is cheap, "getting it into the computer" is a bit less problematic. Presuming you have cassettes: Set CoolEdit or Audition for timed record at a conservative (generous headroom) level in 32-bit float, sample at 96kHz, and dump them one each overnight from an auto-reverse deck, and save in PCM the next morning. Then when 4GB accumulates, burn a DVD-R.

Leave trimming, slicing, cleanup, normalizing, and downconverting for later--or even for someone else. At least in the meantime, the signal will be safely archived off the deteriorating tapes.

I've found getting a good archive off cassettes to be a challenge. I bought an alignment tape so I could adjust my decks' speed (there's a setscrew in the motor; the decks might well have run true to pitch, but I wasn't so sure about my computer's clock rate) and could restore the head adjustment after tweaking it for stubborn tapes.

Dolby mistracking presents the greatest challenge; there's a surprising amount of variation in consumer gear. I used to have three decks and would carefully select the one that worked best for each tape. I planned to modify one by adding a couple exterior pots to adjust the level going into the decoder, but it was beyond me technically.

So far I haven't found anything that can decode Dolby in software. (I suspected there might be a way to set the dynamics panel in CE to do it, but it either can't, or the specifics remain proprietary.) For archiving with a view toward restoration, I'd be tempted to digitize the audio raw (undecoded) in the hope a PC Dolby decoder becomes available someday so that each transfer can be properly tweaked.

Fortunately I haven't used Dolby in 25 years. To my ears it didn't even sound right for recording and playback on the same deck, which was supposedly adjusted for the particular tape brand.

When restoring a Dolbyized tape I'd rather leave the Dolby off and just e.q. the top-end a bit, erring on the side of an overly bright sound, instead of enduring the complete mess that Dolby B and C decoding creates.

Yep.

I notice it the most on higher end ambiance, and vocals where there is a lot of upper midrange content. These kind of sounds are very difficult to differentiate from general noise. Maybe a software solution would do a better job... sure seems like something somebody would have worked on by now. We've got nice and fast computers and good frequency / time domain math now.

Likely proprietary... So, start the project in a friendly country!

Re: Alignment tape.

I've always been confused about these. Back when I had a scope, I evaluated several of them. They differ!

Most of them do not differ by that much, but they do differ. I believe this difference is significant where Dolby playback is concerned.

If one did their recordings on different decks, possibly after aligning, before aligning, etc... then using the alignment tape really doesn't get you to the peak reproduction possible from any given recording. I'm not sure what an alignment tape gets you, other than to establish a nice baseline for future recordings.

Very small misalignments really play havoc with the Dolby. It's good at noise, even with a fairly significant misalignment. But it's horrible with the sounds I mentioned, if even a small bit off.

(it's noticeable anyway, but less so when things are dead on.)

I had a deck where I modified it to feature an alignment adjustment one could turn by hand. I basically mangled the door such that an extension would protrude outside enough for a knob to be fitted. Ugly, but very nice.

I then listened with good phones and turned the knob for a nice alignment to that particular cassette. (Boost the 12K for this)

If you've got a deck with a hole in the door, try playing one of the tapes, with Dolby on, and manually adjust the alignment. You will hit a really sweet spot, and it's a tight range where it occurs.

Use a big handled screwdriver and support it from below with your other hand, so you are applying almost no force inward along the axis of the screw. Both of those things will increase the precision your hand delivers, making the adjustment easy and harmless to the deck.

For the very best results, get a screwdriver with the flat tip. Not a flat screwdriver in general, but one where the peak of the Phillips head is not pointed sharp, but ground off somewhat. This will seat the screwdriver well into the screw, significantly reducing the amount of on-axis pressure required to turn the screw.

A file on an existing screwdriver works well too. All you lose is the ability to drive very small screws.

Most of the decks I've used have slide-off door covers that leave the cassette holder still in place, which gives me access to the alignment screw. I set my amp to mono, then adjust head alignment until phase distortion goes away.

Adjusting azimuth by ear while monitoring in mono can be quite effective. And unless you still use your deck for recording, you really don't need an alignment tape to get your deck back in alignment. For a playback deck the only alignment that matters is the playback alignment that matches the tape you're trying to play.

Hey Scott Young,

An old buddy/co-worker of yours Byron McCann wants to get an email address and contact you.

My profile has an email for me, if you are interested, I will send you byron's email back.

Al...........................................

i use to have a subscription to an aircheck service out of california. i have hundreds but my wife sold them at a garage sale.