• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

What songs do you use to test out your processor?

I find it's better to use a song that you are extremely familiar with. This way you can properly judge what you are hearing and make adjustments accordingly.

Over the years, I have found that string music and classical compositions are often preferred.
 
The Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane" was used in quite a few processing tests due to its very pronounced S's tending to cause severe high-frequency ducking and/or clipping distortion. It's an outlier, recorded over a decade before the combination of digital recording and the CD "Loudness War" started creating lots of music that didn't play nice with the pre-emphasis used in broadcast processing.

But in general you should set your processing to sound best with the music your station is most likely to play, not worst-case-scenarios like that.
 

edit: found a better sounding version

I've read this song is a good test - to see if the treble volume drops on the bass notes.

I've never used an audio processor (other than sometimes trying to fool a cassette recorder automatic level control).


Kirk Bayne
 
Last edited:
The first time I became aware of these issues, I was about 13, listening to Des Moines' KIOA, our big Top 40 station, playing the Moody Blues' Question. Every possible background noise in the station's audio chain - especially rumble - got sucked up into the quiet parts of the tune. It was so notable that I remember it to this day. No gating, huh?
 
I remember back in the late 70's when disco was popular, some AM stations that were not paying extra to the phone company for balanced pairs and all you heard was a distorted thud, especially if they had really old agcs. I always wondered why a station with good cash flow would run a twenty or thirty years old audio chain. The equipment was depreciated out. You could have better equipment or you could give more money to the tax man. Don't get me started about cheap cart machines.
 
secondchoice said:
Don't get me started about cheap cart machines.
Click to expand...
Many of the "cheap" cart machines did everything the more costly ones did. They did not have forged aluminum front panels and decks... just stamped sheet metal. They did not have an automatic capstan lift... you had to engage with a lever!

But the mechanics were simple, and replacement parts like the lift arm could be made in the station shop in an emergency. The electronics were also simple and serviceable even with parts from the local electronics supply house.

At one point, I had about 35 or so Tapecasters running in my stations. They were so easy to use that in my big cluster studio where we had 5 stations I had one or two tested and ready ones on a shelf and any of the jocks could take out a unit that failed and plug in the spare in just a few minutes.
 
Saw an ad the other day that Telos Omnia 11 now features a sub-harmonic synthesizer option. Why on God's green earth would someone want to create sub harmonics which, depending on the station, can cause problems with composite STL's, older exciters, and modulates at frequencies that most listeners can't hear. In other words, wasted modulation for synthesized audio content?
 
The New Chico said:
That song actually would knock us off the air. I have no idea why, but I remember our engineer saying he could solve it for not a ton of money. OR we could remove it from the playlist. SO, of course...
Click to expand...

Not sure if this is related to that specific song, but with aggressive level action on some cuts on LPs and enough level on the control speakers, there was acoustic feedback from the speakers via the album back through the stylus.

We just had to make sure to keep the monitor levels down on some cuts.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom