Radio compression

  • Thread starter Thread starter ecktronic
  • Start date Start date
ecktronic

ecktronic

Mixing and Mastering.
I was listening to the radio today and came up with an idea.
I was thinking why doesnt someone bring out a plug-in that emulates radio compression.
This way you can slap the plug-in on your master out when mixing and try and get the mix sounding as good as it can with the radio compression on it.
Then take the plug-in off and bounce the mix.

You could also use the plug-in when mastering.

Anyone think this is a good idea?

Eck
 
just throw a couple compressor plugins at something like 40:1 each and you'll get your radio compression.
 
Not everyone would agree that radio compression is as good as it sounds.
It drives me nuts to hear sustained sounds being ducked by the bass drum.
Maybe I thought this was cool when I was using, but now it just sounds artificial. Just MHO

chazba
 
Mastering to sound right under radio compression means mastering to sound wrong when not under radio compression.

G.
 
yeah, what Glen said...
don't worry about how it's going to sound on the radio. The CDs are the ones that sell in the stores, the consumer expects the radio to sound crappy. Otherwise we'd all pay for uncompressed, satellite radio.

I've never worked in radio, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're storing MP3s of the songs now too. But I could be wrong.
 
bennychico11 said:
...I've never worked in radio, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're storing MP3s of the songs now too. But I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
I juat finished a radio gig out here in the hollar and yes CD's are ripped and stored in the automation servers at 56/128Kbps...commercials are mastered by pushing 16bit wave files into the red for loudness adjustment. I still can't turn on the radio around here...mp3 artifacts dripping off of a majority of the stations on the dial here... :(
 
bennychico11 said:
yeah, what Glen said...
don't worry about how it's going to sound on the radio. The CDs are the ones that sell in the stores, the consumer expects the radio to sound crappy. Otherwise we'd all pay for uncompressed, satellite radio.

I've never worked in radio, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're storing MP3s of the songs now too. But I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
That's exactly what they're doing, Benny.

I've been getting a bit of radio play over the last few weeks for a song I wrote for the Detroit Tigers. None of the radio stations who've contacted me for use of the song, have asked I send them a CD. Only requested an MP3 version of the song....

I have a friend who used to work at a country radio station a few months back. They used Cool Edit Pro to assemble an mp3 list, and edit in commercials etc. The DJ (if you can even call them that) simply paused the program to take phone calls and talk on air, then hit play and sat back while Cool Edit played the session for 2 or 3 songs.

Sad, really.
 
huh, interesting....but like I said, not surprising.
All my radio commercials I send over on MP3s, and at least try and make them 192...I wonder if they convert them even lower than that.

so basically, ecktronic....
don't worry about how it's going to sound on the radio. The quality is going to suffer no matter what you do. Concentrate on the final red book CD you're going to make instead.
 
First of all, radio sounds like shit.
Second of all, if you made your song sound like it was on the radio, if you played it on the radio, it would sound even worse. You can never add quality to a signal, you can only take it away.

Radio station don't all sound alike, which particular butcher job would you like to emulate?

You would need a compressor, limiter, multi-band compressor, multi-band limiter, phase rotator, stereo expander, etc...
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
Mastering to sound right under radio compression means mastering to sound wrong when not under radio compression.

G.
Click to expand...
Yeah the point is the mix is solely for radio play. You would do another (proper) mix for album release

Eck
 
Farview said:
First of all, radio sounds like shit.
Second of all, if you made your song sound like it was on the radio, if you played it on the radio, it would sound even worse. You can never add quality to a signal, you can only take it away.

Radio station don't all sound alike, which particular butcher job would you like to emulate?

You would need a compressor, limiter, multi-band compressor, multi-band limiter, phase rotator, stereo expander, etc...
Click to expand...
lol Good point.

Was just a spur of the moment idae I had really cause the radio sounded so fekin horrible to listen to. Im not looking forward to when our music gets on the radio. I just hope the mixes can stand up to MP3 mashing and radio compression!

Eck
 
The mixes that you hear on the radio are the same ones you get on CD. If you just mix your stuff to standard commercial quality, you won't sound any worse on the radio than anything else does.

I use to send unmastered mixes to radio stations, that worked for a while. Now, they use so much compression that there is just no way to keep them from mangling your stuff.
 
honestly, the average person probably doesn't even notice that what they hear on the radio is not what they hear on the cd. or at least, doesn't care.
 
IF people started making better sounding music with reasonable volume levels, the radio would probably respond with longer lasting hits - hits from the early to mix 90s sound better on the radio compared to anything made after 1999, and old GnR sounds even better than either.
 
to whoever mentioned it, I have satellite radio and the compression is effing awful. they have their own mp3 type of format I guess...it seems like a variable bit rate which tends to lose almost if not all of the stereo and dynamic information. it doesn't sound as obnoxious as FM but its still really bad. the bass can really thump on the hip hop stations though. so at least there is some amount of headroom retained.
 
pre-emphasis/ de-emphasis

As I understand to prepare for transmission, most audio is run through a filter call a pre-emphasis network to make it easier to transmit, then in the receiver is run through a de-emphasis network to "restore" it because radio is limited in frequency bandwidth and so that they can squeeze more into a small envelope without interfering with other transmitted material. You may notice that on NTSC stereo television sound they use DBX encode/ decode (Im not sure which type) but it seems to work OK.
Mike
:cool:
 
mjhamil said:
As I understand to prepare for transmission, most audio is run through a filter call a pre-emphasis network to make it easier to transmit, then in the receiver is run through a de-emphasis network to "restore" it because radio is limited in frequency bandwidth and so that they can squeeze more into a small envelope without interfering with other transmitted material. You may notice that on NTSC stereo television sound they use DBX encode/ decode (Im not sure which type) but it seems to work OK.
Mike
:cool:
Click to expand...
My undertsanding of that aspect of it - Jay or someone can correct me if I'm wrong - pre-emphasis and de-emphasis on an FM broadcast is very similar to the Dolby B noise reduction circuit used on consumer cassete tape recorders. The idea is that the high frequencies are pre-emphasized (i.e. boosted before broadcast) by a few dB per octave past about 3 or 4 kHz or so. Then the receiver de-emphasizes (i.e. cuts the HFs by the same equalization curve in inverse) the signal to return it to the normal frequency levels. In the process of de-emphisizing, any HF hiss and aliasing added to the signal in the rest of the transmission path post-pre-emphasis is therefore knocked down by the de-emphasis.

I don't believe that has anything to do directly with constraining FM bandwidth. Each channel of an FM stereo broad has a bandwidth of 15 kHz; that spec in itself is self-limiting; it's impossible to get 20-20k out of FM simply because FM bandwidth is worse than that of your average quality cassette recorder.

And what we're really talking about here isn't bandwidth limitations so much as it is dynamic range limitations; the fact that most FM broadcasts are so squashed in dynamic range as to take the life out of the recordings.

EDIT: Oh, BTW, that reminds me...
@ ecktronic: Take a look at MultiMAX 3 if you want software that claims to do what you describe.

G.
 
lol!
What a site.
I must go and get that. Sounds brilliant! :p

Cheers.
Eck
 
Just to add to the curiosity file...

When I worked at my college radio station, we used a program for Mac OS X called MegaSeg. Great program for anyone running a radio station, radio webcast, or DJing events, which I think it is primarily designed for. Of course, we also had CDs, but a majority of the music was on the computer, either MP3, or AAC (I hope, and think... so much better than MP3).
 
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