How would you define "Radio quality"?

[KRH1]

The term "Radio quality" gets bandied around a lot, but rarely defined. How would you define it?

High fidelity?
Stable signal?
Equalization parameters?
Mixing technique?
Mastering technique?
All of the above?
More?

Side question: Is "Radio quality" really possible in an amateur home studio?

Thanks in advance.

 

[James Argo]

The term "Radio quality" how would you define it?

In Audio quality term : 11Khz 8 bit mono signal.

Is "Radio quality" really possible in an amateur home studio?

Yup. Event with ancient 486SX PC with 8 bit sound card...

BUT...

If you're talking about how good your CD's quality should be , so it's playable in local radio station, almost everyone use CD quality standard (44.1 Khz, 16 bit, stereo). How good the mix however is vary & subjective.

 

[Audio_Drivel]

overcompressed, glossy, shitty, and sterile.

that'll get you on the radio for sure!

 

[Henri Devill]

Side question: Is "Radio quality" really possible in an amateur home studio?

Thanks in advance.

Yes it is..


Don

 

[Cyrokk]

I define radio quality as a good sounding song placed behind compressors and eqs to make it sound more marketable to the masses. The more enjoyable, the better the chance that the listener will buy the CD, keep the station playing in his car,
and patron the advertisers that basically pay for the station.

The masses currently like music that is totally in your face with no dynamics. They hate volume swells and believe that acoustic passages should be just as loud as electric passages. The masses do not particularly care for good song writing, and every ten years, the masses will open up a small window of opportunity to let fresh, creative talent in the house. At any other time, the music has to blend nicely in the background because it makes for the soundtrack to their pathetic lives.

However, when someone in a recording forum such as this refers to "radio quality", I step outside the literal term and assume they mean "professional CD quality", which I believe can be done at home, but will take large amounts of energy, patience, preserverance, humility, trial and error, and knowledge, as well as a visit to a mastering engineer near you.

Cy

 

[Seanmorse79]

...not much I can add to that. That's the most chocked-full-O-truth 3-paragraphs I've seen in a while

 

[KRH1]

Yeah. I was thinking that since broadcasters tend to compress everything anyway, if someone says "Radio quality" they really mean heavily compressed or at least something that compresses well when broadcast.

It just bugs me because people yammer about radio quality(especially when telling you how demos *must* sound) but to my ear, that could mean a lot of things.

 

[crosstudio]

An artist took a song that i co-wrote and produced and presented it to a DJ. The song was mixed but not mastered. The DJ said it was a pretty good tune but needed work.

I took the same song and mastered it using the Waves C4 and L1 plug-ins in SEKD's Samplitude Master.

He took the same song back to the DJ who said that if the first song had the same quality he would have played it on the radio. [edit] He played the song that night at the club and people loved it, so [/edit] He played the mastered version the next weekend during his mix show. The song played for a couple more weeks and got the artist a couple of decent shows on the east coast.

the lesson i learned was three fold

1) if they want it squashed, then squash it.

2) even if they like it, you still gotta pay to play.

3) if you pay, you'll make your money back at the shows selling CDs afterward

.... so in conclusion radio quality means taking a song that you like... that plays great in your studio monitors... and squashing it like a water bug... in a professional manner.

 

[six]

and don't forget to mix those distorted guitars WAY DOWN!

you can take the weirdest Iron Maiden song, turn the volume of the guitars down and radios will play it...

... but if you take an O-Town song & add some loud guitars it will be "too hard" to play it on the radio.