By the 1960s the BBC was already using a treble boost curve followed by a sharp cutoff at 5 kHz on their AM transmitters to improve clarity on narrowband receivers while also reducing adjacent-channel interference.
-
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
Audio processing
- Thread starter michael hagerty
- Start date
M
MM797
Guest
Your radio stations played all of Nile Rodgers produced hits and you never heard a distorted bass guitar. You heard a bass that sat perfectly in the pocket even with your nasty on air processing. Sure the CLA-40 was a piece of shit for wide band radio processing but is was a happy accident for the dynamics of a bass guitar.
Whatever, one song, one effect. Mr. Bluesky from ELO hit a fire extinguisher with a hammer to get a bell effect. That doesn't mean fire extinguishers are some boon to the music industry. Fire extinguishers are meant to extinguish fires. Marti CL-40's are meant to occupy a landfil.
The most fascinating thing I have seen in the area of this discussion is a lot better than a fire extinguisher: in Trinidad I watched for quite a while while a steel oil drum was cut in half, and then the bottom "lid" was heated, cooled, heated, cooled over and over in multiple zones to create a steelpan instrument.
Steelpan - Wikipedia is a Wikipedia article that is fairly accurate.
For decades, there were many bars in the tourist and hotel areas of San Juan, Puerto Rico, where "Islanders" would play on just one set of steelpan instruments; they could really sound like an orchestra if played correctly... sort of the way a Guatemalan marimba, played by 5 to 7 musicians, can sound like a symphony in its special way.
I guess that a fire extinguisher container or even an oxygen tank could be tuned to create a unique sound.
As I come from the Orban Optimod 8100, paired with the Texar Audio Prisms (hat tip to the late Glen Clark) generation, I'd like to hear what all of you think of the cobalt blue encased Optimod 8200. I always wanted to get one back in the day, but it was never in the budget. Reviews I've seen on the 8200 are mixed.
Anyone here have one that's unplugged and collecting dust?
Anyone here have one that's unplugged and collecting dust?
I had a Level Devil in Ohio. When you were broadcasting a ball game it would yank the crowd noise up whenever the announcer paused. WSPD in Toledo used one and it brought up all the background hiss when audio was low. I eventually learned it sounded much better to just let it expand and only limit on very high peaks. Also you had to balance the two tubes in the compress stage regularly
yes, a Level Devil on WJDX-AM Jackson... early 70s
First station I worked at in the late 60s had one. I thought the station sounded pretty good. I suspect it had been hot-rodded somewhat.
I believe there was a tube that performed most of the magic in it that became unobtainium some time in the 70s.
Why did/does WCBS/WHSQ 880 sound like a helicopter pilot giving a traffic report? Compare that to KMOX, that sounds great on a 2" speaker.
The Gates Sta-Level was a great leveler that came with two speeds, slow and slower. Instructions for how to speed it up were in the manual. They could be driven really hard if you wished and definitely would pump and suck the audio! The magic tube in that processor and several others was the 6386 dual triode, also used in the Level Devil. The Gates sa-39 peak limiter was usually paired with the Sta-Level.
The "Max Brothers" (Audi and Volu) were breakthrough processors in the mid-60s. You could hot rod the Audimax, most commonly by changing one resistor. The Audimax had one tube, a Nuvistor (the number escapes me at the moment) that served the place of the 6386. Some people have replaced that tub with a FET. Can't vouch for whether that was an improvement or not.
They were wideband processors at their finest. And, with a CBS Dynamic Process Equalizer that tweaked the mid-range, you had a classic lineup. We had that setup at WROV in the early 70's and it sounded great. And loud! The DPE worked wonders on muddy songs ("Garden Party") and phone line remotes.
Whenever I hear certain tunes from that erathrough other processing setups they just don't sound right. Fun times!
The "Max Brothers" (Audi and Volu) were breakthrough processors in the mid-60s. You could hot rod the Audimax, most commonly by changing one resistor. The Audimax had one tube, a Nuvistor (the number escapes me at the moment) that served the place of the 6386. Some people have replaced that tub with a FET. Can't vouch for whether that was an improvement or not.
They were wideband processors at their finest. And, with a CBS Dynamic Process Equalizer that tweaked the mid-range, you had a classic lineup. We had that setup at WROV in the early 70's and it sounded great. And loud! The DPE worked wonders on muddy songs ("Garden Party") and phone line remotes.
Whenever I hear certain tunes from that erathrough other processing setups they just don't sound right. Fun times!
- Status