AA 1.5 volume decrease question

[activestatic]

My CHR station is griping about the sound of their station and they think it is how they are ripping their music with AA 1.5. The CHR guys claim that our country and hip hop stations sound good and have some nice thump to their sound. I have been here 5 years and each I have been here there has been a new MD in place. There are definite inconsistencies with their sound but no one wants to man up and and re-dub in their music.

Here is my question: How do I reduce the over all volume of audio ripped directly off a CD that is too hot other than using Amplify/Fade and doing a -3/6db decrease in sound? This tends to just squash all the over driven audio to within the -3/6db ceiling. There is still some slight modulation in sound but it is very flat and reminds me of looking at a wave form for a dial tone. Is there a way to bring down overall volume without it being overdriven?

P.S. The CHR station pitches up it's music 2% and our Hip Hip station doesn't. The CHR guys like the sound of the Hip Hop. They share many of the same songs but independently dub in their songs.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[VODood]

My CHR station is griping about the sound of their station and they think it is how they are ripping their music with AA 1.5. The CHR guys claim that our country and hip hop stations sound good and have some nice thump to their sound. I have been here 5 years and each I have been here there has been a new MD in place. There are definite inconsistencies with their sound but no one wants to man up and and re-dub in their music.

Here is my question: How do I reduce the over all volume of audio ripped directly off a CD that is too hot other than using Amplify/Fade and doing a -3/6db decrease in sound? This tends to just squash all the over driven audio to within the -3/6db ceiling. There is still some slight modulation in sound but it is very flat and reminds me of looking at a wave form for a dial tone. Is there a way to bring down overall volume without it being overdriven?

P.S. The CHR station pitches up it's music 2% and our Hip Hip station doesn't. The CHR guys like the sound of the Hip Hop. They share many of the same songs but independently dub in their songs.

Thanks in advance!!!

Ripping the audio shouldn't overmodulate it. Most rippers rip at a "normalized" volume, no??

Perhaps the hip hop station is processed differently and that's why the station sounds better/different?

Personally, I wouldn't rip with Adobe. I prefer Windows Media 11 for ripping.

 

[Sgeirk]

This is a very difficult question to answer. The issue at hand could be one of several items. First, how does the music sound in program (without on-air processing).

Adobe's ripper is just fine, however, for 100% fail-safe ripping, I would suggest EAC, exact audio copy.

In response to the earlier poster, unless the software is set to rip in a certain fashion, the resulting audio file will appear and playback at whatever level it was mastered and burned to the CD.

Are you using data compression (mpeg) on the station in question, and not on the others?

If this is a current-based station, and your MD is getting the music from Promo Only, the choice "HD" should be made, otherwise the files you download are lossy.

Most MD's are not well-versed in making sure the audio they place in a system is of real broadcast quality.

Most MD's, if asked, will tell you that if you take an MP3 and convert it to a *.wav file that the file is uncompressed. :

Anyway, the processing, STL, console levels, or even SOUNDCARD could also be at fault. It could be a headroom issue. It's easy to overdrive. I've seen an STL xmtr power supply gunk up a stations air sound, I've also seen exciters and xmtr's AM'ing cause a "funkification" of the signal.

The very first thing I would do is listen in program then replace every piece of audio on the station with clean, linear wav files. They're $1.29 a piece from TM Century, save them to an external HD and re-do the music start to finish. Been there, done that. And it's worth the work...it makes a difference, provided everything after the hard drive is 100%. Garbage in, garbage out.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

 

[therealvoice]

Ripping Audio with Adobe seems like it should work fine, I've certainly done my share of ripping with it, though it's never been a huge part of my job anywhere. I'm wondering if the problem may be the file format you're exporting/saving the files in, or the software you're using to import it into your on-air system. There are frequently two or more formats you can choose from when importing, so make sure you're using the higher quality one. I've seen Engineers, or previous unschooled employees, selecting the default to be the lower quality choice, as they didn't know better, or to preserve hard drive space. One thing to look into is whether or not your system can rip the music directly. It can be a bit slow, but there are less hops for the music to take from point a to point b and so, hopefully, fewer quality issues.

 

[activestatic]

First of all, I would like to say thanks to everyone who has replied. I appreciate all the great insight I have gained every time I posted a question on this message board. This is by far the most professional and courteous radio message board around the world wide web.

Here is the process I use on the rare occaission that I do receive a spot on CD.

1.) I rip audio directly from the CD using AA 1.5. Then I clean it up for time and sound.

2.) I save it as a Windows PCM .wav file. (Audio Vault is our automation system) AV does not like to eat MP3's or any other type of .wav file.

3.) I drop the file into an import folder and it gets dragged into automation.

The CHR music guys do the same thing. They like using AA to pitch up their music 2% and create their own fade on songs that drag on forever. None of the other stations pitch their music, they just do a straight rip and follow the procedure listed above. Their music sounds fine. I am beggining to think that using the Pitch shift in AA is the culprit for our CHR Station. I think that since they are so finnicky with their sound, they will need to dub it in old school on a CD player with a pitch control built into it.

Thanks!!!

 

[Sgeirk]

It's really best just to leave wav files alone.

Does AudioVault not have pitch control? NexGen and SS32 allow for certain categories to play "pitched up."