Virgin Media Community

[richlust]

I like to listen to the radio station radio X on virgin V6 box but some songs come out distorted. Had speakers changed over for new TV tested it no distortion but shortly after more distortion tried listening to the song on YouTube through the TV no problems with the sound. Tried listening to the radio X same song and distortion through speakers.

Engineer coming back tomorrow through the TV maker. I just don't understand why it's only that radio station channel 960 on virgin and the fault doesn't appear to be that of the TV but virgin quality itself

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

I doubt you will find a solution to this. Virgin gets all its radio feeds from the Astra satellite cluster which also provides the service for Sky & Freesat radio reception. They do not modify these signals in any way.

There have been many complaints about transmission quality, & most of this is down to Global Radio that owns RadioX & other well known stations like Heart & Capital. Global distribute these stations on a single digital mux (or multiplex) to all the delivery points that require them. To save money the streams for each service are compressed so they use as little data as possible. Therefore, most of the distortion you are hearing is over compression of the signal being provided for transmission. It affects some stations more than others. Classic FM for instance is far less compressed than Capital or Heart FM. We can’t go spoiling the classical music now can we! That would upset too many people. 😮

[richlust]

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Surely every song would be distorted the DJ voice is fine but only certain songs are how strange is that?!

[nodrogd · Accepted solution]

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@richlust wrote:

Thank you for taking the time to reply. Surely every song would be distorted the DJ voice is fine but only certain songs are how strange is that?!

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Yep! The data streams vary all the time. It’s only when they reach the level Global caps them at that you get problems.