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national dutch broadcastprocessing day

Gotta wonder about some of these posts. Seems there is vague info regarding how these shootouts were done, or how the stuff was adjusted. How are we to know if each unit was setup properly and judged in a fair manner? Without better insight, it would be easy to make some of the claims that appeared in this thread.

Also, to my understanding, European Broadcasters process a bit differently than here in the USA.
 
To Phil:

"You did state that the 8100 was a favourite with the public and that must tell you something. IIf all you want to do is play the loudness war then fine, if you want a more natural, warm sound then sorry, I'll stick with my 8100 - XT2."

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I've heard stations go to their backup 8100's during a failure or maintenence and sound better than the big dollar digi-boxes normally run.. That should also tell you something. Only problem is that the old 8100's are aging and usually need a thorough re-capping in order to function at their best. Not too many are willing to go to those great lengths to restore them. In today's corporate world, it simply makes more sense to replace them with something newer.

You can still hear tons of 8200's on the 75 and 160 meter bands. Some of the "audio hams" are running them and they sound great!

To Zeke:

"Also, to my understanding, European Broadcasters process a bit differently than here in the USA."

Yes. A 50 microsecond pre-emphasis curve versus 70 here in the US.

-A
 
Alan Fletcher said:
To Zeke:

"Also, to my understanding, European Broadcasters process a bit differently than here in the USA."

Yes. A 50 microsecond pre-emphasis curve versus 70 here in the US.

-A
Click to expand...

Well, you're close, it's actually 75µs here in the USA! :)

My comment was not about preemphasis. I've been to Europe, as a consultant, and they generally process a bit lighter than here. France, and the UK might be exceptions though.
 
1) Does the difference in Pre-emphasis really make a difference at the reciever?

2) I'm playing with an 8200 at the moment for a contemporary station. (a hand-me-down from the metro's when they upgraded to 8500's). Would you like to hear where I'm up to? I welcome any suggestions / ideas / tricks.

Post your e-mail and I'll send you some audio

Regards
Stace
 
stace said:
1) Does the difference in Pre-emphasis really make a difference at the reciever?
Click to expand...

No, but it does in the processor. The pre-emphasis curve for 50 µs has 14dB of gain at 15.5kHz, while pre-emphasis curve for 75 µs has almost 17.5dB of gain at 15.5Hz. 75 µs pre-emphasis makes processor work harder than with 50 µs pre-emphasis...

2) I'm playing with an 8200 at the moment for a contemporary station. (a hand-me-down from the metro's when they upgraded to 8500's). Would you like to hear where I'm up to? I welcome any suggestions / ideas / tricks.
Click to expand...

I would. My e-mail is [email protected]


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Zeke: Sorry about the typo.

Stace: Preemphasis is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. It works like this: The high frequencies are boosted at the TX plant, and then reduced at the receiver. This is done in an attempt to increase signal-to-noise ratio. However, it is done at the expense of deviation as the signal is that much hotter at the transmitter. It's kinda like NTSC standards in Television transmissions. It's a standard that was set in place many many years ago and one we are now stuck with although there are much better options today. It's because although we have better options now, a change would obsolete all the receivers the market is now flooded with. Try to change it now and all you end up with is a bad compromise... think IBOC.

Thinking about standards, the only one I can think of that performs reasonably well is the RIAA per-emph curve used for vinyl records. That has stood the test of time pretty well, IMO.

-A
 
CalifZeke said:
Also, to my understanding, European Broadcasters process a bit differently than here in the USA.
Click to expand...

If we put the pre-emphasis difference aside, I'd say that there's probably as much difference in processing in various parts of Europe as it is in various parts of USA. I heard that processing in New York is especially aggressive, however I haven't been able to hear an actual recording of that. Which brings me to a suggestion - I think it would be interesting to hear how radio stations sound in different countries. Would anybody be interested in making such recordings for us to listen? If there are enough people interested, perhaps I'd be able to provide some ftp/web space for that...

Seven years ago there was a processing list (that unfortunately died) and people there uploaded some recordings of their own stations or just stations they like, where they live. It was very interesting to hear that. I must say some clips were awful (I mean, the processing was awful)... Listening to a recording of Virgin radio in London, I remember I didn't belive someone would actually brutally mutilate their audio to that extent. No 's' on female vocals could pass without severe distortion and the overall sound was extremely clipped as well. However, most of the clips and processing was very nice and it was fun to listen and learn about the philosophy behind that sound and equipment used.

I must add that processing designers were worried about people drawing conclusions on specific brands based on these clips and it's a valid point. We all know that it's very easy to make a bad sound with any processor and that a processor sounds only as good as you adjust it, so it would not be smart or fair to judge processor brands on these clips. I'd suggest we focus more on processing itself, tastes in processing and different takes on processing. There was also a concern with how mp3 influences recordings, but this was a time of very low Internet speeds. I'd think that today people could use high bitrates MP3/AAC or even WAVs and it wouldn't be a problem for most.

So, what do you think?


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Goran,

I'd be willing to tag some recordings off the air here in Southern Connecticut. I think a 192 Lame encode should give a reasonable representation. I can also pull most of the NYC stations from here as well as long island.

I can put them up on usendit.com.

Email me at [email protected] and let me know what stations you would be interested in...

-A
 
I'll record some soon.

We're having trouble with the Nexgen soundcards locking up on the breakfast host...he's fuming.

Standby
 
Goran Tomas said:
I must add that processing designers were worried about people drawing conclusions on specific brands based on these clips and it's a valid point. We all know that it's very easy to make a bad sound with any processor and that a processor sounds only as good as you adjust it, so it would not be smart or fair to judge processor brands on these clips. I'd suggest we focus more on processing itself, tastes in processing and different takes on processing. There was also a concern with how mp3 influences recordings, but this was a time of very low Internet speeds. I'd think that today people could use high bitrates MP3/AAC or even WAVs and it wouldn't be a problem for most.
Click to expand...

Would appear that the same claim could be made about the results of this processing day, and for the reasons you mention.
 
Alan Fletcher said:
Goran,

I'd be willing to tag some recordings off the air here in Southern Connecticut. I think a 192 Lame encode should give a reasonable representation. I can also pull most of the NYC stations from here as well as long island.

I can put them up on usendit.com.

Email me at [email protected] and let me know what stations you would be interested in...

-A
Click to expand...

Group,

Be careful here. Even high bitrates can skew the sound of off-air recordings, as well as the device used to gather the audio. Hopefully, no one is using any garden variety PC sound cards to record off-air, or processed audio. Those are notorious for "less than" audio quality.

-Frank Foti
 
Not me, Frank. Protools 192 HD Accel boxes, balanced lines throughout.

I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on the recordings I've posted. I can put up full PCM .wav files if you're interested. In the interest of quick downloading I thought 192 Fraunhoffer would be fine.

-A
 
Alan Fletcher said:
Not me, Frank. Protools 192 HD Accel boxes, balanced lines throughout.

I'd be very curious to hear your thoughts on the recordings I've posted. I can put up full PCM .wav files if you're interested. In the interest of quick downloading I thought 192 Fraunhoffer would be fine.

-A
Click to expand...

Alan,

Here's the challenge as I see (hear) it. Processing is very market dependent. What plays great in City-A, might appear obnoxious in City-B. Here's a quick story to illustrate my point.

In 1987, during my days at Z-100 (NYC), the owner (Malrite) decided to launch a CHR in Philly...Eagle 106. The new PD for Eagle wanted to replicate the Z-100 sound...EXACTLY. So, I went out and got all of the EXACT same gear, modified it the same way, and even A/B'd it, on-air, on Z-100. Once it sounded *exactly* the same, put it in my car, drove to Philly and installed it.

Popped it on the air, only to have the same PD come running into the engineering room, screaming that the processing was too over the top. What he did not consider is that his ears had become tuned to the references in Philly, which were different from NYC. So, when we kicked the Z-100 (It goes to 11) processing on-air in Philly, it sounded like it went to "17". In a word, it was L-O-U-D!!

The fix was to back everything down a few notches and he was happy as pie.

So, the samples you have, may or may, not sound good to me, or others, as our ears are tuned to the local areas where we live. When I'm in another market, it takes me a few hours to get a grip on what the market "benchmarks" are for processing.

All the more reason that the observations I've been reading about from the Netherlands do not say all that much, as they are relative to what those guys wanted to hear for that market.

-Frank Foti
 
Alan Fletcher said:
Can someone suggest a file sharing site that isn't full of crap?
Click to expand...

Let me give it a shoot at 'serving the community' ;) I've set up a little web server, hopefully it will work OK. I also hope the bandwidth available will be sufficient for everyone. Here's the address:

http://fserver.redirectme.net

To avoid unwanted guest you'll have to login with username 'processing' and password 'clips'. When you enter, go to the 'Processing clips' folder and download the files you want to hear. For upload, there's a button in the upper right corner.

As Frank mentions, it would be best to use high quality sound card for recording and use high bitrate for coding mp3 files (perhaps 256 kbps?). Also, some codecs overshoot and clip internally with highly processed audio, so it would be better to normalize your files to -3dB, rather than 0dBfs.

If you want, you can upload a txt file along with the mp3 audio with a description of which station is recorded, from where is it and perhaps what processing is used.

Looking forward to listening to your clips! :)


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
Processing

The WZMX clip sounds real good, not too clipped, sounds like Omnia's Phat Bass. The processing sounds almost the same as WJMN (JAMN 94-5) here in Boston. I think WJMN is running an Omnia 06 as well as it's sister station Kiss 108 (WXKS-FM).
 
I have put up my second clip,from WBLI on Long Island, NY, on Goran's host. There are both 192 mp3 and full PCM .wav files available there. More to come from varying formats around the tri-state area, so please keep checking back...

Here's the link again: http://fserver.redirectme.net

User: Processing
Password: clips

Excellent work, Goran. We can have alot of fun with this :)

-A
 
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