Mixing For Radio Broadcast

[paresh]

I'm doing a piece with dialog, sound effects & music for radio. Do I mix it the same as any other work I do & the radio station adds their compression (or whatever they do)? Or do I have to do something different? Thanks!

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Just do what you need to do to make the piece sound good to you like always; let the radio station(s) worry about their end of it.

G.

[LeeRosario]

generally when you prep files for radio you assume there's an element of heavy compression (either wideband of multiband), phase rotation, stereo enhancement, EQing, high frequency limiting and/or some form of peak limiting. That's the usual nature of the processors used to transmit radio signals.

Any given radio station may receive such a wide variety of material that you kind of end up with the need to hypercompress them all to achieve a constant level for broadcast. The processors are set to work over a variety of different media, so you have to keep that in mind.

The station does what it can for the mix, but they aren't mastering engineers. You sort of have to set up the mix in a way that it delivers the goods first.

Qualities of a radio ready mix may be things like having your centered/most important (like vocals and leads) information boosted higher than you would for a home playback system and/or narrowing the width of your mix.

The important thing is that the message translates clearly on radio. It's not so much about a perfect sonic blend. It's about getting the message across.

Editing will be another factor. Make sure you ask how long the track can be and that the content is morally acceptable for that particular station.

Also, remember that since the track will be so compressed, it'll bring out your background stuff (reverb, FX, you name it). So you may mix a little dry for that situation.

In terms of mastering, the general rule of thumb is to avoid the extra stage of compression as well as any additional sweeteners that you may normally add for a mobile media kind of production.

Just listen for a track you like on the radio and compare that to the original album itself.

[bennychico11]

it sounds like this is just a commercial, yeah?

I agree with Glen. I find that really, no matter what the levels are, they all tend to get compressed to hell and come out the same through my radio. I've sent out extremely loud and what someone may consider too soft....and they sound fine.
So just mix like you always do.
When you get into TV is when it gets a little stranger. The only thing I really recommend is check for mono compatibility. There are still a lot of mono radios out there.

[gtrman_66]

Yeah, what's been said here already, just mix it to sound good as you can.

About the only thing I can add is, if you're doing spoken dialog over a bed of music, sound fx etc, a good rule of thumb I found that worked for me was to set the dialog somewhere around 6db or so above the bed. In other words, if your spl meter is showing you 80db with the bed only and hops up to 85-87 db or so when the dialog is added in, you're in the ballpark. Use yor ears first and foremost of course, but the goal is for the client's spoken advertising script to be heard and understood above the bed.

When I was doing a lot of radio spots per day, this "quick and dirty" check came in handy.