The KAAY "Sound"

I’ve seen many comments about the “sound” of KAAY. We worked hard on getting the sound just right, and we had some audio processing tools that let us tweak the audio to just the right sweet spot we wanted. We monkeyed with adjusting the sound all the time, and Wayne Moss was an expert at dialing in the sound!



KAAY used reverb in the background, and when the announcers were talking you could hear a slight “echo” behind their voice. That was one of the secrets. It was a steel plate reverb unit, and we could control very precisely how much reverb could be heard on the air. Echo was turned off during the farm and religious programming blocks.



We also used a stock Ford Philco car radio to see if we had the right sound. Back then, the Philco car radios had the best sound, but the DELCO car radios could pick up stations from farther away. It was a trade-off, but we always used a Ford Philco when doing listening tests. Yeah, they were subjective, but the Philco car radios were consistently the best sounding!


Thanks Dave,
You're right on!
Prior to Wayne Moss and back to the beginning of KAAY there was always echo on the jocks. AND, if the jock forgot to turn it off it was behind the preachers too. I think later the echo unit was moved to the transmitter so the jocks couldn't forget or play pranks with it. I have written many posts about reverb. To read those just enter the word "reverb" in the window in the upper left and click on the search this blog button.