| jackthebear wrote on Sun, 27 February 2005 21:45 |
The whole term "radio ready" is a whole lotta BS!!
It is a marketing buzz expression and total myth.
Tell me how can an ME predict how a station is going to sound given the fact there are differences between AM and FM, between stations and even in different parts of your town on the same station???? You telling me they can tailor the sound to suit?
Compressing a compressed signal produces a multiplicative result,
eg a 5:1 compressed signal going through a 10:1 smashing turns out to be 50:1!!!!
Music made pre-cd days sounds just as loud as the other hypercompressed garbage out there and in fact better.
Cheers,
|
This is the summary for Bob Orban and Frank Fotti's "What Happens To My Music On The Radio" article. This is from a draft though written in May 2001, the title may have been changed when the final article was released.
"Summary
Hypercompressed material does not sound louder on the air. It sounds more distorted, making the radio sound broken in the most extreme cases. It sounds small, busy, and flat. It does not feel good to the listener when turned up, so he or she hears it as background music. Hypercompression, when combined with “major-market” levels of broadcast processing, sucks the drama and life from music. In more extreme cases, it sounds overtly distorted and is likely to cause tuneouts by adults, particularly women.
We recommend that record companies service stations with radio mixes. These can have all of the equalization, slow compression, and other effects that producers and mastering engineers use artistically to achieve a desired “sound.” What these radio mixes should not have is fast digital limiting and clipping. Leave the short-term envelopes unsquashed. Let the broadcast processor do its work. The result will be just as loud on-air as hypercompressed material, but will have far more punch, clarity, and life."
Tony, a year before this article was written and noticing that songs were sounding worse on the air, I set up some tests with an old friend of mine, the PD for 6 of the local radio stations in my area. He played various compression setting songs that I provided and a few from the different catalogs at the various genre stations that were in rotation on the playlists. Examples that I provided ranged from heavy compression, lightly compressed and no compression versions of songs, while I recorded them at my studio for A/B playback comparison for a blind panel of listeners and peak and RMS analysis of the before and after broadcast versions. The songs with no compression sounded cleaner and louder than the slightly compressed ones and the heavily compressed ones were terrible sounding in comparison. From my personal tests, I find Fotti and Orban to be spot on with their recommendations.
Now, this was 4 years ago since the article and 5 years since my broadcast tests. Songs are even more compressed these days and have less RMS than the hypercompressed versions that I used in my tests. Bob designed the Opti-mod's and other broadcast gear that is very popular in the broadcast facilities in the US, he knows his gear and he knows how hypercompressed material is effected being broadcasted through the chain. Besides pre-emphasis that DC was talking about used by radio stations, there are other factors involving phase rotators and AGC compressors that can't react efficiently on hypercompressed material.
Check out the article. Brad used to have a copy on his website, not sure if he still does, but if you can't locate one I can forward a copy of the draft to you.
