BARNARD wrote:
>
> BTW, following up on Joe Gracey's comments on the sound quality and nature
> of these files, I have a related question for Joe or others who know,
> regarding radio broadcast...
>
> That is: do radio broadcasts add compression to the recording being
> broadcast? In listening to various recordings on the radio, I've gotten
> this impression, but in technical terms I don't really understand what's
> going on.
>
> Thanks,
> --junior
No shit they do. In the worst cases they compress and even peak limit it
half to death, and they also use a lot of phase distortion and terrible
stuff to try to be louder than anybody else on the dial. In the best of
cases they just add a little touch of compression to make the station
louder and more even, level-wise. It is really weird to hear a mix you
slaved over for three days reduced to a flat, squashed dime-thin wash by
a radio station using too much processing.
In fact this is one reason that so much HNC sounds so funky on the air-
not only are they mixing the records on consoles with a compressor on
each track and a compressor over the two-mix output, but they compress
it again in mastering and then the radio stations compress it about ten
times more than any sane recording engineer would even consider doing
once they broadcast it. This creates a sort of dull, overly-bright,
boring final sound that really tires the ears in a subliminal fashion
that you don't even realize is happening.
On the other hand, in the great old days of Top 40 AM radio, of which I
was privileged to attend the funeral as a kid DJ, the records weren't
really compressed much if at all in recording or mastering, just peak
limited to keep the needle from bouncing around in the groove, so we ran
everything on the air through those old glorious tube compressors at a
pretty hefty rate of speed and that's why the radio sounded so By-God
cool in the sixties. Think of this: Jimmy Reed doing "Baby What You Want
Me to Do" over the tube radio in a red '57 Chevy (mine) coming out of a
huge-magnet 7X5 oval speaker mounted in the top of the dashboard at
about 150 decibels on a Texas summer eve. It sounded very, very good.
Can I get an amen?
--
Joe Gracey
President-For-Life, Jackalope Records
http://www.kimmierhodes.com
