• 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

Loud or clean (processing)?

F

franksandhotdogs

My station is in a small market, but we're also by a larger market (it's not a major/large market, though). There's a few stations in my cluster along with a few competing stations, but our only CHR competition comes from the large market (my station reaches the larger market and theirs reaches here).  The local stations process for cleanliness, while the large market processes more for loudness.  CHR and/or radio geeks, what do you go for?  Crank it up and go for loudness like the big boys, or go for cleanliness like the other local stations?
 
Why can't ya have both? Loud AND Clean, which is what I prefer.

It's nice to hear a 'clean', almost un-processed sound for about 30 seconds, before I want a hot-kickin'-needles-not-movin' sound!

The 2 best-processed CHRs that I've heard with my own ears are WXSS/Milwaukee, and WNCI/Columbus. Both very loud, very full sound with a ton of thump and clean as can be.

I'm sure some engineering types can chime in with better answers than I gave. I get what you're saying, loudness many times does equal smashing the audio.

The difference is night and day in Atlanta. Star 94 is extremely agressive in processing, where Q100 is flat as can be.
 
rubberchicken said:
The 2 best-processed CHRs that I've heard with my own ears are WXSS/Milwaukee, and WNCI/Columbus. Both very loud, very full sound with a ton of thump and clean as can be.
Click to expand...

I agree with rubberchicken, but it should be noted that WNCI is blasting 150K watts from a top one of the tallest buildings in the midwest.
 
The two most over processed CHRs ive ever heard are WDJX Louisville,,, they have always been over processed since the 80s....Also, up in Grand Rapids,, both WSNX 104.5 and Hot Fm 105.3 are both really pegging the needle..

One of the more cleaner yet still fairly loud CHRs ive heard are 95 SX in Charleston South Carolina...
 
I love WXSS's processing, I heard it on my trip to Chicago last summer.  Nothing annoys me more than when I open a label-provided mp3 in Audition and see the smashed, nearly square at the tops, waves peaking wayyyyy above 0db.  We were pitching our music (2%) when the CHR competitor was pitching, though both of us are at normal speed now.

I want to make the other locals sound like they're the minor leagues, but there are listeners that hate the overprossed clipped and distorted sound (including myself).  We could easily bring up that "oh listeners don't care what it sounds like," but many of them do.  They want their music to sound good, especially with all the new technology in the last decade.  Especially the ones with $1K+ sound systems.

As the old WNCI liner goes, "175,000 watts of music pa-pa-power!" ;D
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom