How many radio stations play songs with false endings to them in LA

[yeoldeschool]

At WQII in San Juan, I had an "audio processor" which was a panel with knobs and dials and meters. It was labeled by frequency band and lots of "db" stuff. It was connected to nothing. But several of the jocks thought that they would sound better with their own settings... The real processing was locked behind a very dark plastic dropp-down panel. I had the key.

A wise move. Many CEs/PDs/GMs did that in the days before passcode-protected digital processor menus. Anyone who unknowingly adjusts dummy controls and hears "the results" is simply proving they're unqualified to adjust the real things.

(I remember a Beach Boys documentary revealing that they built their father a phony gain riding control to keep his opinions about loudness off the master tapes.)

 

[JackindaBox]

Beach Boys - Good Vibrations is now considered oldies. The main person who did the songs had some mental health issues sadly though he was a genius in writing their songs including Little Saint Nick which was a Christmas song. I don’t think they originally wrote Santa Claus Is Coming To Town or Frosty The Snowman but I do think he did write The Man With All The Toys which is now a classic during the holidays.

 

[yeoldeschool]

Ah, and did you ever see the processing rack at KRTH? A full height rack with a heavily tinted glass door with a lock on it. The access behind the rack was in a locked access passageway.

KRTH's processing under Lynn Duke (CE) throughout the 1990s was one of my all-time favorites. I frankly considered it miraculous. It sounded luxuriously wide, had deep, resonant bass, clear but never strident presence, smooth, glistening highs, with a very generous helping of pillowy, non-TSL-killing spectral richness (multiband compression), all driving a final clipper/limiter that was aggressive but clean, giving the summed monoband output of the multiband sections a very healthy amount of exciting density that still left room for bass transients. There even seemed to be an intentional but never overdone (or prone to misfiring) "sprinkling" of spectral gain intermodulation added for effect, as if to subtly re-create a tiny taste of the bouncy pumping '50s/'60s monoband processors exhibited when they were hit with sudden loud wideband bursts of energy (like a simultaneous crash of kick, snare, and cymbal).

But what made KRTH's processing especially magical to me was its ability to maintain that wonderful sound across such a wide variety of source materials. From an audiophile perspective, oldies is the hardest genre to listen to. One song would get mastered as well as Sinatra's engineers recorded his personal stuff. The next hit, perhaps one even more popular, would sound like it was recorded in a back alley studio with flat tubes and equipment so outdated that the masters sounded like home demos. The audio processing that Lynn Duke oversaw at KRTH not only made well-mastered records sound divine, it somehow rejuvenated absolute turds with zero bass, no sparkle or air, and honking, agonizingly dense/screechy/saturated mids to the point where they were actually comfortable if not enjoyable to hear.

What always sucks about these audio geniuses' processing chains is that they eventually vanish into the ether, never to ever be heard again, when formats inevitably change. Sometimes, I feel so spoiled by how half the oldies on KRTH sounded back in the day thanks to its wonderful custom processing that I can't enjoy them "raw" without it! The excitement and euphoria all that processing added to the best sounding songs, and the comfort it lent to hearing the worst, just isn't there when heard right off the CDs.

Sometimes, I wish these engineers would start side hustles catering to collectors and processing enthusiasts, where once their processing extravaganzas get put out to pasture following format changes, they sell digital downloads of all the songs their stations once played, processed with the exact hardware chains and settings they implemented at those stations. I know that sounds impossible, but I believe I see a way it could be done. Imagine doing it using the same licensing models DJs use to sell remixes. If someone can get the multitrack for a Pet Shop Boys song, move a few track elements around and add effects, and then sell it on iTunes or Amazon as "The John Smith Midnight Remix" or "The Ambient Dub," why couldn't a processing wizard make an enjoyable side business out of tracking down all the best-sounding releases of each oldie on his former station's playlist (so as to start with the best possible source material), run it through a total re-build of said station's old processing chain, and then sell the result as something like "Johnny Rivers - Poor Side of Town (The Audio Duke's Big Earth Mix)"? A lot of music from the '50s through the end of the '80s processing wars became familiar to its fans primarily in heavily processed form on radio. I still remember, as a kid, how disappointed I often was any time I went to buy a record, and discovered that it sounded nowhere near as wide, rich, and energizing on vinyl as it sounded coming from my favorite FMs. (Higher fidelity, yes. As intoxicating? No!) So I'd think there must be a potential audience of people who would enjoy having the option of still being able to hear things "enhanced," just as they remember the originally. And yes, I'd assume that DJs selling remixes usually have to turn 90% of their proceeds over to the labels, only getting to keep small cuts for themselves. But at least using this venue to make "processing remixes" would create a legal pathway for engineering wizards who truly love good processing to share their talent -- done to entire libraries worth of music for those who appreciate it. And in this day and age of digital downloads, with disc stamping and distribution expenses eliminated from the picture, there is no target audience too small or niche to be beyond catering too. At the very least, for oldies in particular, given the enormous number of songs that sound bad by modern standards, I for one would leap at the chance to buy downloadable versions that sounded just like they used to on KRTH, once upon a time.

 

[TheBigA]

The euphoria all that processing added to the best sounding songs, and the comfort it lent to hearing the worst, isn't there right off the CD.

Because listening to the radio is not the same experience as listening off a CD. The environment is different. That's a very basic thing. I'm aware that some record producers took their raw mixes of songs to radio stations at 2AM, asked the DJ to play the song through station processing, so the producer could hear how his mix would sound in their cars through that processing. Such a thing is not done today.

I believe I see a way it could be done. Imagine doing it using the same licensing models DJs use to sell remixes.

Hmmm. That only benefits the owners of that music if the remixes get played on streaming services or social media. Record labels and artists don't benefit directly from those remixes on broadcast radio. The close relationship that once existed between radio & records was basically destroyed when record labels were no longer owned by American companies with ties to broadcasting (which was the case with RCA, Columbia, and Warners). Now it's more of an adversarial relationship, at least from the higher reaches of the labels. The trust isn't there anymore.

 

[yeoldeschool]

I believe I see a way it could be done. Imagine doing it using the same licensing models DJs use to sell remixes.

Hmmm. That only benefits the owners of that music if the remixes get played on streaming services or social media. Record labels and artists don't benefit directly from those remixes on broadcast radio.

That would be fine in this case, as "processing remixes" would only be of interest to users of streaming and music download services. One thing you absolutely never do is chain entire airchains together. In other words, radio audio processing needs clean, uncompressed, high fidelity source material to sound good. Playing audio through an air chain already processed by another complete air chain would kill the sound. So for these kinds of "remixes," there would be no interest from the radio industry simply because of their nature. These remixes would purely be for niche audiences of collectors and audio enthusiasts.

 

[TheBigA]

That would be fine in this case, as "processing remixes" would only be of interest to users of streaming and music download services. O

I'm not aware that any of that "processing" is being done for streaming services. At least not in the same way as it was done in broadcasting. Today, people do audio processing in their workstations using plugins. In the golden age, engineers used outboard gear. In fact, in recording studios, all processing was done using outboard gear into the early 2000s. The top record producers of the day kept their outboard processing gear loaded in a rack that they would wheel into whatever studio they worked in. The sound would be as unique to those producers as a processing rig is to guitar players. Now everything is more proprietary, with inboard plugins that are pre-installed.

These remixes would purely be for niche audiences of collectors and audio enthusiasts.

Then the record labels and other owners of the content have no interest.

 

[yeoldeschool]

I'm not aware that any of that "processing" is being done for streaming services. At least not in the same way as it was done in broadcasting.

I think you skimmed my original post too quickly and missed the intent. Re-read it more carefully. I was not proposing that streaming services be processed. I proposed that the legal/licensing venues that permit the phenomenon of DJs selling special remix versions of songs be used to also allow processing gurus to sell special processed versions of songs. And as far as sales viability goes:

Then the record labels and other owners of the content have no interest.

They are interested in making money. That said, the online economy has eliminated the barriers to entry that CD production and distribution costs once presented for small-time players. Obscure DJs can sell remixes through online stores like Amazon and iTunes that only net perhaps a thousand sales. This setting would also be perfect for my idea. Remember how popular the Processing Clips thread was here over a decade ago? (https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/processing-clips.491867/) It would only take a thousand or so processing freaks and collectors worldwide to generate enough sales to drum up nice "hat tip" money to any engineers showing off their processing passions by selling their "processing remixes/remasters" online.

 

[TheBigA]

Obscure DJs can sell remixes through online stores like Amazon and iTunes that only net perhaps a thousand sales.

Obscure DJs are not the ones getting access to stems of songs. The labels want influencers who reach millions of people. Not thousands. There isn't enough money in thousands when it's so easy to reach millions.

Also, I suspect you're also talking about oldies or older recordings, and not currents. AFAIK The licensing of stems is primarily being done with currents. When you go back before ProTools, access to the tracks becomes more cumbersome.

 

[yeoldeschool]

Obscure DJs are not the ones getting access to stems of songs. The labels want influencers who reach millions of people. Not thousands. There isn't enough money in thousands when it's so easy to reach millions.

Radio type audio processing is done to album versions of songs, not their stems. Stems' unobtanium to niche remixers wouldn't matter to processing people because processing people wouldn't be working off stems.

 

[TheBigA]

Radio type audio processing is done to album versions of songs, not their stems. Stems' unobtanium to niche remixers wouldn't matter to processing people because processing people wouldn't be working off stems.

Who are you talking about? Radio processing people or obscure DJs? Neither will get access to the raw tracks without permission. I don't see radio processing people having an interest in remixing music. Their interest is the overall sound of their station.

 

[radiofan2023]

This idea is as DOA as an oldies station that just plays hot mono mixes of songs

 

[michael hagerty]

A quick note: Lynn Duke did not rely on the processing to “fix” poorly-recorded records at KRTH. Once they migrated from CD to hard drive, each track was obsessed over. Lynn was known to have gone back to vinyl for some tracks, then meticulously removed any trace of surface noise.

Hours could be spent on a track before it was finally uploaded into the system. The processing, brilliant as it was, was dealing with source material that had been optimized for it.

In other words, stuff nobody else was going to do then, much less now.

 

[TheBigA]

In other words, stuff nobody else was going to do then, much less now.

Maybe. It depends on the situation. Most stations today are not playing music from eras when technical quality was an issue.

That was not the case for classic hits stations 30 years ago.

 

[CTListener]

Maybe. It depends on the situation. Most stations today are not playing music from eras when technical quality was an issue.

That was not the case for classic hits stations 30 years ago.

But it precluded the existence of what would today be called classic hits stations in the '50s. The songs on such stations' playlists would have been from the '20s and '30s, and no radio station in 1955 was going to be playing 78s from 1925 or 1935, no matter how nostalgic their 25-54 listeners might have been for those records.

 

[yeoldeschool]

This is a combined reply for:

Who are you talking about? Radio processing people or obscure DJs? Neither will get access to the raw tracks without permission. I don't see radio processing people having an interest in remixing music. Their interest is the overall sound of their station.

And:

This idea is as DOA as an oldies station that just plays hot mono mixes of songs

Roadblocks put up by licensing limitations aside, I don't agree. Hot mono mixes sound bad. Nobody wants to listen to 100% overdriven mono for hours on end when regular hi-fi stereo LP versions could be played instead. By comparison, Lynn Duke's (and other processing wizards') processing sounds wonderful instead of bad. People do love listening to 100% stereo-widened, highly enriched versions of their favorite songs for hours on end. The act of doing this is called FM radio TSL and it happens every day worldwide, 24/7. There are even popular maxims in our lexicon like "it always sounds better on the radio" because of that processing [whether the public knows about Optimods and Aural Exciters or not].

That said, on account of how good expertly done processing can make certain genres sound (i.e. oldies), there are tons of music enthusiasts and processing aficionados all over the world who would love to be members of some secret, unlisted Discord or private web forum somewhere, where processing wizards, whose talents can no longer be heard on-air due to certain formats going extinct, continue showcasing their sonic wizardly to crowds of individuals who appreciate if not utterly love them. I mean, speaking for myself, if there were a private forum out there inhabited by audio gurus with passions for tracking down the best sounding releases of each song in a notoriously acoustically hit-and-miss genre like oldies, and for then processing those songs with all kinds of highly customized "it always sounds better on the radio" "magic boxes," well ... let's just say that I might consider sacrificing a pinky to be personally invited to be a member. The problem is, on account of the copyright laws of our country, it's very difficult for a private music sharing group like that to exist unless it stays small and under the radar. When groups that share music (regardless of why) get too big, they start getting called piracy groups, and you start experiencing the joys of C&D orders or lawsuits. This is why -- and it's the only reason why -- I envisioned the legal phenomenon of there already being established licensing pathways for DJs/remixers to re-release others' intellectual property, on no other grounds than that those DJs "tweaked it around," as a means by which a worldwide community of collectors and processing enthusiasts could merely exist at a larger scale than "sketchy smoke-filled back alley audio speakeasy."

I hope I'm making sense now. I was never saying that any of these processed versions would have mass appeal. I was never asserting that the general public would want to hear such versions over the official album releases. I'm not and was not implying that any of this would make any of the engineers involved any significant amount of money. My sole reason for bringing up this "re-releases by remixers" "loophole" in established music licensing procedure was simply to trial balloon a possible means by which audio processing enthusiasts and collectors could have a sharing community at any scale larger than "secret club." If my sense of optimism about this being able to work legally is too childlike and naive for this world, so be it. But I don't think I'm wrong about there being lots of people in this world who would enjoy having and being part of a community like that. Bringing this idea up was just me trying to imagine some novel, innovative way of making that possible, at scale. Because there's simply something irresistible, and wonderfully magical, about the art of taking music people dearly love and have very nostalgic, deeply emotional connections to, and beautifully enhancing it to remove all of the unfortunate technical shortcomings it's known for thanks to the simple coincidence of the era it was recorded in. Every radio PD on earth (and definitely on KRTH ) who ever ran a competent oldies station clearly understood this logic. All I'm trying to say here is, now that society can't have that sound between 88 and 108 MHz anymore because of demographics, why can't those who love that sound find a way to have it online -- especially since online, something doesn't even need to be hugely popular in the first place to be considered viable. Here on the internet, niches abound and can stand shoulder to shoulder with pop culture.

One last thought. Speaking of remixes, lots of people in the 1960s and 1970s would've laughed at the first person to propose the idea of remixes themselves. "What? You want to get my multitracks out of the vaults and mute a few tracks, add a few of your own, and re-release it in record stores? Why? Who on earth would ever buy strangeness that?" And yet look at what happened in the 1980s, and especially at how things work now! The minute a new hit drops, there's no end to the producers and DJs clamoring to put out their own remixes of it. Or how about the phenomenon of sampling. "You want to take a four-second audio clip out of my classic hit and play it in an infinite A-B loop while you bark spoken word poetry all over the top of it? How could that possibly entertain anyone or have artistic value?" Well, that in turn became an entire radio format, and an entire section at every urban record store. Look, folks. I don't seriously think "processed versions" would turn into a big phenomenon the way remixes and rap did. I just think it's healthy to have an open mind about strange new ideas as there's no way of ever telling how successful they will be. Muzak-like beautiful music covers of pop songs, for instance, were never big sellers to the general public in record stores either. But they sure still had plenty of appeal to target niche audiences. I might also point out that plastering "DIGITALLY REMASTERED" on old albums is a great way of re-selling inventory to fans of various groups if not the general public broadly. So I can certainly see an audience of processing enthusiasts and collectors expanding out into a broader, larger audience of general fans who simply prefer getting the "ultra-sweetened" versions of all their favorite songs. Especially when they're songs that hail from an era of poor technical quality.

Okay, that's all. My sincere apologies for the length of this. It simply felt to me that my idea wasn't being understood. This is my attempt to clarify myself better. If it's still a dud among you guys, I won't bother pushing the matter any further.

 

[yeoldeschool]

A quick note: Lynn Duke did not rely on the processing to “fix” poorly-recorded records at KRTH. Once they migrated from CD to hard drive, each track was obsessed over. Lynn was known to have gone back to vinyl for some tracks, then meticulously removed any trace of surface noise.

Hours could be spent on a track before it was finally uploaded into the system. The processing, brilliant as it was, was dealing with source material that had been optimized for it.

In other words, stuff nobody else was going to do then, much less now.

That's fascinating, Michael. Do you have any knowledge of the list of things Lynn would do as part of "obsessing over" each cut? Was he simply ripping (or digitizing) each song into .WAV format and then spending hours with various functions in Syntrillium CoolEdit Pro like its 30 band equalizer? Or could he have been going as far as additionally running many of those songs through a variety of "pre-processing" boxes (i.e. situated between the turntable/CD player and his A/D) to do things that no software DAW was capable of at the time (like perhaps a pre-pass through a StereoMaxx or 222A, so that the one in the official airchain would have more to work with)?

What I would give to have a clone of Lynn's master HDD of all those .WAV files. Oldies is really the only genre of music out there that I have a very strong audio processing obsession with. I grew up in the 1980s listening to my parents' music on KRLA, KODJ, and mainly KRTH, and so "highly sweetened and enhanced" is the way I first experienced virtually all of it. That's why I'm so fascinated by this subject when it comes to this kind of music, and why I wish there were a way to keep hearing it with that magical sound now that all the oldies stations have sailed off into the ether.

 

[TheBigA]

Roadblocks put up by licensing limitations aside, I don't agree. Hot mono mixes sound bad. Nobody wants to listen to 100% overdriven mono for hours on end when regular hi-fi stereo LP versions could be played instead.

When you say "nobody," do you have any statistics with that? Here's my view: There once was a huge market for high quality audio. It was a multi-billion dollar business, built around component stereo systems, audio retail, installation, and service. That business went bye-bye at the start of the 21st century. You'd be surprised how many people are just fine with mono remixes and listening to them on earbuds or 5-inch speakers. That's where the mainstream is now.

So yes, you're right that it's a niche audience. There is no business for it. As you say, no mass appeal. It's you and a handful of hobbyists. The "tweaking" as you say that the DJs are doing aren't about improving audio quality. In some cases, it's making it worse, by speeding up the original, or re-editing solos to extend the length of the song an extra few minutes. And those low quality remixes are reaching millions. That's the reality. That's what the mass market wants. Not better quality.

But one thing you should know is that the recording industry IS investing in additional remastering of its popular works for Dolby Atmos and all those audiophile technologies. They know there's a limited audience for it. But it's being done by the people in the recording business. I was at a seminar for Dolby Atmos last year, and they laid it all out.

 

[yeoldeschool]

When you say "nobody," do you have any statistics with that?

No. I guess I was falling into the trap of engaging in projection. It's easy to do when thinking about things that were once common sense but no longer are. Mia culpa.

Here's my view: There once was a huge market for high quality audio. It was a multi-billion dollar business, built around component stereo systems, audio retail, installation, and service. That business went bye-bye at the start of the 21st century. You'd be surprised how many people are just fine with mono remixes and listening to them on earbuds or 5-inch speakers. That's where the mainstream is now.

It's hard to imagine the average listener being fine with outright mono, in at least cases where they're using earbuds. But with the large numbers of people using brittle-sounding, closely spaced smartphone, tablet, and laptop speaker arrangements today, the notion that some sources are getting away with some mono wouldn't shock me much, I suppose. It would certainly help explain why clipped, hypercompressed mastering jobs and extremely low bitrate lossy compression from sources like IBOC, SiriusXM, and in the world of radio station internet streaming doesn't generate more complaints than it does.

(It still amazes me that broadcasters continue spending big bucks on top shelf "O" processors whose primary sales points are their prowess in eliminating every last quarter decibel of distortion for any given loudless level, only for those same broadcasters to turn around and make their outputs unlistenable with over-amped Voltair processing and by choosing 32-64 kbit/s codec bitrates for their online streams. Especially in the latter case, it's as if they don't realize the internet has transformed almost entirely since the dial-up era. Video streaming has stretched out everyone's data pipes like a giant shoehorn. With everybody streaming multi-megabit video for hours every day on their home and mobile internet connections, offering 256 kbit/s AAC-LC streams would scarcely register on the technological and economic radar. And by combining bitrates that high with quality codecs like AAC-LC and excellent professional encoders that push them to their sonic limits, broadcast radio internet streams could be competitive with CDs and iTunes downloads, and absolutely put analog (and especially IBOC) FM to shame. But somehow everyone seems to be stuck in the mindset of keeping their streams U.S. Robotics-compatible.)

So yes, you're right that it's a niche audience. There is no business for it. As you say, no mass appeal. It's you and a handful of hobbyists. The "tweaking" as you say that the DJs are doing aren't about improving audio quality. In some cases, it's making it worse, by speeding up the original, or re-editing solos to extend the length of the song an extra few minutes. And those low quality remixes are reaching millions. That's the reality. That's what the mass market wants. Not better quality.

While I recognize the truths in what you're saying, I still believe that the number of people out there who continue caring about quality isn't in any way negligible. To assume so is very fatalistic. They may be a minority compared with the mainstream itself, but it's a large enough minority to still matter. This is especially so in the internet era, where past standards for potential sales volumes vs. justifying production/distribution costs no longer hold. Even offline, it is actually possible now to find countless releases that otherwise would've never seen the light of day thanks to phenomena like MOD DVDs.

Furthermore, to borrow a phrase from Alexander Hamilton, there's also the issue of allowing the masses, whom are the asses, to place caps on the quality of life for the rest of us. I really don't care if Cletus doesn't want a hi-fi system and is content with his iPhone's piezoelectric speaker. One has to realize that the masses are mostly followers who go wherever thought leaders and innovators take them. I can guarantee you that if the pioneers who started the high fidelity revolution in the '50s never did so, the masses themselves would have never cried out for anything better than their all American five cathedral radios. If enough people of discriminating taste push something novel and exceptional up to a certain popularity threshold, the lemmings tend to lock onto whatever that thing happens to be without much deep concern or true understanding for why it's good; they flood into it simply to keep up with the Joneses. How many completely average families in the 1970s had homes filled with receivers like the ones you see in

not because they fully appreciated their acoustic qualities, but simply because everyone else they knew was buying them, they were "in," and because they're what the retail chains were pushing at the time? So, in my opinion, it's never a good thing in matters like this to allow pessimism over what the herd wants (or is capable of appreciating) to dominate and restrain your thinking as far as dreaming up new and novel possibilities. A much better approach is to look at whether there's at least a viable niche market that would appreciate it, and simply let nature take its course as far as whether greater numbers of people take notice (to the extent of the idea possibly going mainstream). No, I still don't think my idea for uber-sweetened releases by FM processing gurus would go mainstream. But I believe it's something that would have the potential to start off among a small group of enthusiasts and expand to at least "very large niche" proportions.

P.S. Apropos of that video link, check out its full channel at Just Audio. It's a business that specializes in finding old vintage hi-fi gear (eBay, estate sales, and what have you), and having bench techs restore it to its full glory, selling it on to the portion of the listening public that still cares about decent quality listening equipment. Great way to go back in time and build yourself an old fashioned home high fidelity system.

 

[TheBigA]

It would certainly help explain why clipped, hypercompressed mastering jobs and extremely low bitrate lossy compression from sources like IBOC, SiriusXM, and in the world of radio station internet streaming doesn't generate more complaints than it does.

Consider that 30 million people PAY to receive Sirius. Some of them complain about the audio quality but the programming matters more than the bitrate. That's the driving force these days. Content is king, so they tell me.

I still believe that the number of people out there who continue caring about quality isn't in any way negligible.

Have you been to an AES meeting? They are your people. People SAY they care about quality. What they DO is often very different.

 

[CTListener]

Audiophiles have always been outliers.