At one cluster, we have one main production guy for an AM and FM. He is in his mid 30's and is a smart guy. But on a number of occasions, I have educated him on sound. For instance, he has a set of JBL's sitting right in front of him, in his production studio. The model is a two way with no adjustments for mids or highs. One day, while troubleshooting something in his studio, I noticed major frequency loss in the mids. I said to the guy, "how can you stand listening to that?" Well since he was so used to those speakers, I simply bought an EQ and re-tailored the frequency response of the speaker, bringing back in the mids that were missing. I used some Tom Petty (since Tom's vocal range is the same that was lower in the mix) material to demonstrate to the Production guy how much lower the mids were compared to the lows and highs. I asked him "do you now realize what part of the audio spectrum was missing?" More and more he would understand what good audio sounded like.
I don't know if everyone else can instantly hear phase reverse like me, but one day, I walked into the guy's studio, as he wanted me to hear a piece of production he did. I told him let me sit in his position, to hear exactly what he is hearing. I sat down and said immediately, "why are these speakers out of phase!?" I also said, how did they get this way? I reversed the phase on one speaker and sat down to listen to his production again. I said how long have you been listening to these that way? I sat him down and asked him "do you hear a difference?" He did. Little things like that go a long way in my opinion. Now he calls me into to his studio when he hears hums, buzzes and RFI and asks me, should those be there, and I am OK with that.
I am sometimes amazed at what passes as quality audio these days on FM. Here is one other example. There is a radio station, that isn't owned by the company I work for, but is semi-local, and I listen to it on occasion, sometimes with headphones, at home. I hadn't listened to them in awhile, but all of a sudden started listening to them on a regular basis. I noticed over a period of 2 or 3 months that their audio would go to mono for 2 or 3 commercials or songs, then back to stereo for 1 or 2 songs, then back to mono for 1 song, and so on and so forth. There was never a fixed pattern though. Since I was usually busy, I didn't give it much thought. After about 3 months I thought something is definitely wrong here, as I had noticed on many occasions, my stereo light never went out when the mono material would play. I am on their fringe, but still have very good signal strength. One day I called up their morning guy and asked him what the board setup was, and did he have the capability to put anything in mono. I used to have some Auditronics series 800 consoles, which I loved, even though, right off the factory line, they started popping/frying a particular chip every 2 months or so. Each module channel was very flexible. If I remember, you had a L and R button to form stereo. Both had to be pushed to feed each channel to air. If for instance, the L button was disengaged, the R would feed both stereo channels, and now you only had half of the normal stereo audio on the air. So many times I would be driving down the street listening to our station, call up the jock and say "just by chance, are one of the L or R buttons up on that fader?" As always was the case, one was. So many times, copy would fall on one of the switches, disengaging it, and it may sit there like that an entire weekend or week. That board had a lot of buttons on it, but I still loved them, with 3 stereo busses, and 2 mono busses. We purchased 2 of the last 3 off the line before Auditronics was sold to Wheatstone. Getting back to my other story, I called this morning show guy on this other station I was listening to, and asked him about his board setup. He said, as far as he could tell, nothing was in mono, but to send him an email the next time I heard it. Well 2 commercials later, the email went out. After a number of emails between him and I, and now sometimes the GM, turns out, 4 or 5 months ago, they installed a new computer in the Production studio, which by mistake, was wired mono. In that amount of time, whatever audio was being transferred to their automation system (songs and commercials), was all being transferred via mono, and other than redubbing all of it, was going to stay mono, until it was slowly corrected over time. What surprised me was how many people work at that station (I really have no idea), and no one could hear that problem, except some guy out in the fringe? Sometimes it's all very much an educational process.
I don't know if everyone else can instantly hear phase reverse like me, but one day, I walked into the guy's studio, as he wanted me to hear a piece of production he did. I told him let me sit in his position, to hear exactly what he is hearing. I sat down and said immediately, "why are these speakers out of phase!?" I also said, how did they get this way? I reversed the phase on one speaker and sat down to listen to his production again. I said how long have you been listening to these that way? I sat him down and asked him "do you hear a difference?" He did. Little things like that go a long way in my opinion. Now he calls me into to his studio when he hears hums, buzzes and RFI and asks me, should those be there, and I am OK with that.
I am sometimes amazed at what passes as quality audio these days on FM. Here is one other example. There is a radio station, that isn't owned by the company I work for, but is semi-local, and I listen to it on occasion, sometimes with headphones, at home. I hadn't listened to them in awhile, but all of a sudden started listening to them on a regular basis. I noticed over a period of 2 or 3 months that their audio would go to mono for 2 or 3 commercials or songs, then back to stereo for 1 or 2 songs, then back to mono for 1 song, and so on and so forth. There was never a fixed pattern though. Since I was usually busy, I didn't give it much thought. After about 3 months I thought something is definitely wrong here, as I had noticed on many occasions, my stereo light never went out when the mono material would play. I am on their fringe, but still have very good signal strength. One day I called up their morning guy and asked him what the board setup was, and did he have the capability to put anything in mono. I used to have some Auditronics series 800 consoles, which I loved, even though, right off the factory line, they started popping/frying a particular chip every 2 months or so. Each module channel was very flexible. If I remember, you had a L and R button to form stereo. Both had to be pushed to feed each channel to air. If for instance, the L button was disengaged, the R would feed both stereo channels, and now you only had half of the normal stereo audio on the air. So many times I would be driving down the street listening to our station, call up the jock and say "just by chance, are one of the L or R buttons up on that fader?" As always was the case, one was. So many times, copy would fall on one of the switches, disengaging it, and it may sit there like that an entire weekend or week. That board had a lot of buttons on it, but I still loved them, with 3 stereo busses, and 2 mono busses. We purchased 2 of the last 3 off the line before Auditronics was sold to Wheatstone. Getting back to my other story, I called this morning show guy on this other station I was listening to, and asked him about his board setup. He said, as far as he could tell, nothing was in mono, but to send him an email the next time I heard it. Well 2 commercials later, the email went out. After a number of emails between him and I, and now sometimes the GM, turns out, 4 or 5 months ago, they installed a new computer in the Production studio, which by mistake, was wired mono. In that amount of time, whatever audio was being transferred to their automation system (songs and commercials), was all being transferred via mono, and other than redubbing all of it, was going to stay mono, until it was slowly corrected over time. What surprised me was how many people work at that station (I really have no idea), and no one could hear that problem, except some guy out in the fringe? Sometimes it's all very much an educational process.
