AnalogPlanet Radio

Analogplanet radio begins Monday August 3rd at noon. For now it will be a one hour, live show every Monday at noon on WFDU, the radio station of Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The reality is somewhat more complicated than that simple announcement, however. The station is in the process of a serious service upgrade that will include live Internet streaming as well as two new over the air HD radio channels.

The first stage of the upgrade is supposed to begin tomorrow, Tuesday, July 28th so that by next Monday August 3rd, the first analogplanet show will stream live at wfdu.fm. Good news if you can't listen then: the show will be archived and available for streaming for two weeks after the live broadcast by clicking on the "listen" button.

Meanwhile, the work is being completed to have the two new HD radio channels go live over the next few weeks so listeners in the New York metropolitan area who own HD radios in their cars or at home can listen live, The station broadcasts from the old General Armstrong tower in Alpine, NJ, with which many of you radio buffs will be well familiar. Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, had a long running feud with RCA's David Sarnoff, so he made sure to build his tower so it could be seen from Sarnoff's offices in Rockefeller Center. But that's another story!

This story is about the radio show. It will be a free-form music show, with all of the music sourced from vinyl, though it will be digitally recorded at home. At first it will be downconverter from 96/24 to CD just to make production easier but eventually the plan is to have 96/24 files played back via computer using a USB DAC into the station's board.

They say radio is like bicycle riding: even after years of not riding, when you hop on it all comes back. Last week I did a "test" show and it did all come back. I was able to use the board with few issues (there were a few minor issues, but in terms of my on-air stuff, it was all there and exhilarating. The chief engineer eavesdropped on some of it and he said it sounded great.

So tune in next Monday for "live" or stream it at your convenience from the website. It will be all vinyl and vinyl is most of what I will be talking about.