Subject:question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Posted by: CDM

Date:11/13/2002 6:29:19 PM

I know this is a very vague and general question but...
does anyone know what basic compression ratio and eq curve FM and AM radio use for broadcast?

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: rraud

Date:11/13/2002 7:26:17 PM

It varies by station. Multible levels of comp/limiters are used not to mention EQs and exciters.
AM has a limited band-width. About 100-10khz. AM stereo has all but disapeared.

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:11/14/2002 9:50:40 AM

Charles, After getting beat up by people like Pipeline,JoeD, Angelic Records, Audioman, Arnar, and SonicErik. I will refer your question to them and see if ANY of them can give you some CORRECT helpful advice. I highly doubt it since most of these users only ASK for advice, but never give ANY helpful advice, yet they can criticize me for the way I present my advice to people that always start crap with me.

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: Arnar

Date:11/14/2002 10:37:20 AM

you are right, its a very vague question

I have no idea....

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: RikTheRik

Date:11/14/2002 11:44:53 AM

According to what I heard, most big radios keep secret all their processing equipment in order to keep their own particular sound.
FM broadcast is characterized by low dynamics, low stereo separation and loss in lows and highs.
For EQ, I heard radios are keen on multiband and mastering compression.
Sometimes they are even using two stages of compression.
By hearing I would say about EQ that FM broadcast acts like a low pass compressor about 4-6 Khz and AM about 1-2 Khz.
There are some settings on Sofo plugs for FM/AM Broadcast.

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: JoeD

Date:11/14/2002 11:52:38 AM

Yes. It varies by station.

and...if you're smart, you won't play the game to try and tailor your audio to this.

Spoken word, narration/dialgue withor without music: apply appropriate amount of compression with as much gain as possible without extreme affect of sound quality.

Music (mastering): I still choose to keep compression at a low, allowing dynamics of the music to remain intact (especially jazz, acou. music, classical, soundtrack works, etc.). Rock/pop/etc sometimes will get higher compression ratios/increased gain on output.

Radio is going to squash and re-manipulate it anyways (another reason radio blows..besides the fact there's barely anything on it worth listening to except maybe for talk radio...barring any local college radio ;)

But try to tailor your stuff to it?..nuh-uh...going about it the wrong way.
Just master appropriately (or have it mastered at a reputable mastering house) to your monitoring system (or mastering house monitoring systems).

JoeD

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: bgc

Date:11/14/2002 4:08:08 PM

Hi Charles,
Unfortunately the answer it that it varies from station to station. However, there are some generalities. Nearly every (all?) radio stations put their signal through an Orban (or similar) compressor (orban.com). These are multiband compressors that have presets from "not too bad" to "squash it all down" and they vary from station to station and genre (rock, talk, etc). Remember that in broadcasting compression is used to protect against overmodulation and so is intended to allow the loudest signal to get through without causing overmodulating. With FM, the signal amplitude translates into frequency bandwidth in the carrier so you need to control the peaks to prevent modulating outside the safe/allotted bandwidth. In AM if you overmodulation the side bands start to get crunched and bring it's own set of problems.

Some folks from Orban have left recently and started their own new company called Octiv. They actually have written software that implements multiband compression techniques that runs as an app on the PC (octive.com). If you're looking to emulate broadcast style compression in your studio, this may be a solution for you as it comes from folks who were in the broadcast biz (sorry, I haven't tried the app.)

For equalization, this varies too, but I believe (from memory) AM is pretty much limited to 10kHz and FM is usually limited to about 14 or 15 kHz which has as much to do with the bandwidth of the channels they rent from the phone company as anything.

There, that's about what I know. Not willing to live or die by what I recall but hopefully it helps.
bgc

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: CDM

Date:11/15/2002 10:10:02 AM

thanks for all the responses, guys. I'm asking because I record a one-hour public radio show with music and back-announceand I never get to hear what it actually sounds like on the aire. It doesn't play in the New York area. My client gets to hear it every once in a while and this last time said it sounded tinny. So I was wondering if radio boosts on the way out and cuts bass. I know they squash the hell out of everything, so I try not to do that for them. I hate compensating for something someone else is going to do. Just like JoeD said.

anyway, I was just asking to see if there was something I run the program through just to hear what it might sound like.

thanks!

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: dansolo

Date:11/16/2002 9:02:19 PM

just do what you do. don't limit dynamics just beacuse you think you have to. the only thing i do is send my raido stuff over a frequency generator and listen to my clock raido and check for silabance(misspelled). it's low frequency that will trigger any stations eq's and compressors. make it as smooth as possible.
dansolo

Subject:RE: question about radio.. rednroll, anyone?

Reply by: RiRo

Date:11/21/2002 11:30:48 PM

OK, here goes.

Now that I know what you are doing, the best way to get to hear what the radio station is doing to your sound is to ask the station to do an "Air Check" tape of the broadcast. This comes straight off the station monitor, and will let you listen to a tape (CD?) that is recorded from the studio on-air monitor. As far as why it sounded tinny, could be any of a million reasons. Processing is not standard at all in radio. Most quality radio broadcast processors come with a key lock system to keep idiots from fiddling with the knobs. This is because everyone knows what they like, but can only guess what the audience likes. The idiot with the key is usually the top idiot, and knows as little or less than the rest of the idiots, but he has the key and usually the bigger paycheck. I've seen everything from Orban Opti-mods to BE sonic maximizers in line. I've seen compressors, limitors, eq, reverb... nearly anything that has an input and output stuck somewhere before the transmitter. We even had a de-sucker (It was a color-organ that actually did nothing to the sound, but had lots of flickering lights) in line at one place. When someone said the station sucked, we would say... by golly, you're right, and we would turn on the de-sucker. Trying to guess from a million miles away why it sounded bad is a useless excercise. Get the air check, listen to it, and then get someone at the station to explain the path from their mailbox to the transmitter. I worked at a station that would only play carts (a type of tape) on the air, so everything had to be re-recorded before broadcast. If the station uses a computer to run the show, it may be like a Phantom, which has a weird audio format that requires re-recording. So the problem could be way before the final broadcast processor chain. It may help to get the file into a format the station "likes" rather than a convenient audio CD. I know that sounds silly, but I work at a station that can only play a CD live. If it has to be automated, it gets played in a Sony CD player into an Autogram board, through a limiter, to the computer, which converts it to a kooky format that only some crackhead at Dolby Systems understands. However, it can take a minidisk and play it directly on the air. So find out what it sounds like by getting the Air Check, find out what steps the station takes to get it on the air, and work with them to put together something that works for them and for your client. It will most likely be a pain for you, but that is why you get the big bucks!

RiRo