WCPE's cue tones are now more reliable

If your radio station carried WCPE's Great Classical Music prior to January 2005, you may have experienced a problem with your legal ID playing at inappropriate times during the musical programming. This was the result of your cue detector reading a false tone in our program material. We have engineered a solution to this problem, and I think you'll find the operation of our cue tones to be much more reliable from now on.

Here's why some false cues occurred: Near the top of every hour, WCPE feeds a 35 Hz tone for two seconds on the left channel, to cue equipment at your site to play your legal ID. Because some musical works, especially organ and choral performances, contain audio energy in this frequency band, some cue detectors, especially older models, could be fooled.

To solve this problem without detracting from the bass content of our programming, we installed two laboratory-grade "brick wall" filters to remove audio content at 35 Hz while still maintaining a full-sounding bass component to our programming.

An engineering note: The manufacturer of the most popular cue detectors advised us that if we could suppress the 35 Hz content by 30 dB, there would be no further problem with anyone's sensor products. The measured performance of the Rockland/Waveteck filter system is such that 35 Hz is suppressed better than 38 dB (exceeding the cue detector manufacturer's recommendation) yet passes 50 Hz with less than 1 dB of attenuation.

We insert our cue after this filter. A digital synthesizer generates the tone with a gentle on- and off-ramp to make it almost inaudible. The frequency tolerance is one percent. The duration is two seconds, a quarter-second more if you count the ramps.

The manufacturer advised us that if anyone continued to receive false trips, the likely cause would be excessive level to the cue detector. Set the level as low as possible while assuring that legitimate cues are detected. If your unit allows, select one of these options: "slow -- one second" or "narrow -- 1/2 Hz" mode. Some units may monitor the right channel. Set these to the "Right = silent" and Left = tone" option.

With our new filtering solution, even an older model cue detector should give you reliable service. Please feel free to call WCPE if you have any problems at all. We want you to have a successful experience carrying WCPE's Great Classical Music.

For more information, contact John Graham at 1-800-556-5178

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