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Pirate Radio sound

G

gr229

I'm no radio engineer or never been employed with a radio network..(except student @ knhc way way way back) But I do know a little about sound processing and board operations from working with live bands and such.

The Whore ???on 101.9 sounds ok could use improvement. More power ;D
The guy on one of the Islands around here is ok sounds kinda flat..(also 101.9)
This person also on 101.9 in the Beacon Hill? area playing punk nice selection of music but you sound awful :'(
Haven't heard the one from West Seattle lately. Use to play old school r&b...and No not me!!!! But that one sounded like a web broadcast. ???

There are free DSP and low cost DSP audio processors on the internet. Many engineer will say DSP's are no good for commercial radio. (also mp3's) True.maybe, but they are better than nothing at all. I hear some major commercial radio all they use is DSP's.....Don't know if that's true. Cost cutting???
This beats paying hundreds for used and thousands for new processing equipment.

Things like stereo pilot, tilt , pilot/rds volume, phasing, and so on..It's not plug and play.
An audio engineer told me if you don't have the testing equipment to check your audio is to use car a radio to achieve better sound ??? yea my thought too!! SAY WHAT!! Home systems manipulate the audio signal too much for you to get the true sound..I guess if you can make a cheap radio sound good your doing ok ???
I don't understand that part too much..But I do know that you lose a lot of dynamics when it goes through the transmitter and you have to compensate for that.(radio 101)

I like the community aspect of the pirate,,something that the big guys have lost. But it has to be listenable or nobody will get involved. With all the talent and cost cutting going on it makes me wonder if the big guys are listening to what's going on? Here's an idea..30 miles to the north and south are two great city's that get no recognition from Seattle based radio...ok 104.9 is to the south & 92.9 to the north but at best just a rim shot here. (Seattle) So how big should the community be? answer: wherever the most money?.Strange though nobody making any money.

The American people are great at being rebellious towards corporate monopolies; that has become of radio.
PIRATE ON MY BROTHERS & SISTERS ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

As for me I've given up on pirate..Why? if you ask. Like buying a boat you want to get a bigger and bigger and bigger boat and it"s getting to be too much $$$$$

Just my 1\2 cent opinion.
 
gr229 said:
I'm no radio engineer or never been employed with a radio network..(except student @ knhc way way way back) But I do know a little about sound processing and board operations from working with live bands and such.

The Whore ???on 101.9 sounds ok could use improvement. More power ;D
The guy on one of the Islands around here is ok sounds kinda flat..(also 101.9)
This person also on 101.9 in the Beacon Hill? area playing punk nice selection of music but you sound awful :'(
Haven't heard the one from West Seattle lately. Use to play old school r&b...and No not me!!!! But that one sounded like a web broadcast. ???

There are free DSP and low cost DSP audio processors on the internet. Many engineer will say DSP's are no good for commercial radio. (also mp3's) True.maybe, but they are better than nothing at all. I hear some major commercial radio all they use is DSP's.....Don't know if that's true. Cost cutting???
This beats paying hundreds for used and thousands for new processing equipment.

Things like stereo pilot, tilt , pilot/rds volume, phasing, and so on..It's not plug and play.
An audio engineer told me if you don't have the testing equipment to check your audio is to use car a radio to achieve better sound ??? yea my thought too!! SAY WHAT!! Home systems manipulate the audio signal too much for you to get the true sound..I guess if you can make a cheap radio sound good your doing ok ???
I don't understand that part too much..But I do know that you lose a lot of dynamics when it goes through the transmitter and you have to compensate for that.(radio 101)

I like the community aspect of the pirate,,something that the big guys have lost. But it has to be listenable or nobody will get involved. With all the talent and cost cutting going on it makes me wonder if the big guys are listening to what's going on? Here's an idea..30 miles to the north and south are two great city's that get no recognition from Seattle based radio...ok 104.9 is to the south & 92.9 to the north but at best just a rim shot here. (Seattle) So how big should the community be? answer: wherever the most money?.Strange though nobody making any money.

The American people are great at being rebellious towards corporate monopolies; that has become of radio.
PIRATE ON MY BROTHERS & SISTERS ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

As for me I've given up on pirate..Why? if you ask. Like buying a boat you want to get a bigger and bigger and bigger boat and it"s getting to be too much $$$$$

Just my 1\2 cent opinion.
Click to expand...

There are some pirates that sound light years better than a few commercial stations out there with sound processors they picked up at Guitar Center.

Some pirates on the other paw are so overmodulated, they sound like....ummm,.....forget it. I just can't tell if what they're playing is a Michael Buble or Atari Teenage Riot song. But then again, that Country Gold Network sound from the '90s (especially via KWYZ Everett) was completely inexcusable. Or a gangsta rap pirate with so much extra bass, most subwoofers couldn't handle it.

But most can match or better most any other station on the dial in fidelity. It depends on the source of programming, operator and their experience (or lack thereof.) While most stations depend totally on MP2s/3s (or alternate compressed format) these days, how they're encoded plays a part too. A 96k MP3 sounds awful compared to a 320k.

The dynamic range of the mastering of commercially released CDs these days also has a LOT to bear. Most these days are almost unlistenable because of the tight compression and limited dynamic range to sound good in the iPod Age.

Dynamic range and less distortion is incredibly important on FM and a lot of people seem to have forgotten that. That's what made FM what it is. The sonic aural joy of it.
 
Radio 33 here in, um, Seattle plays local and independent music almost exclusively, along with public service announcements, the audio from moveon.org commercials, etc. We have been off the air for a long period of time due to power supply and transmitter issues. What hasn't failed us, aside from needing some new filter capacitors, is our audio processing chain. We run MP3's and AAC files (switching over to AAC whenever possible, encoding at 192 KHz for improved audio quality) and run the audio through a Gates Sta-Level compressor and then an RCA BA-146 limiter. This gets us a mono sound that is compressed and limited, yet clean and easy to listen to for long periods of time, as it is carefully adjusted to allow for a good compression to dynamic range ratio. We frequency hop a bit, and carefully adjust the final output level for each frequency- what the transmitter can handle seems to vary for each frequency. We rely on a Kenwood KT-8300 with a "deviation meter" to make this final adjustment. With the compression and limiting used, we put out a punchy, professional sound yet stay within the bandwidth so as not to interfere with other signals. Our only real problem with the sound is a bit of hum from the aforementioned filter caps (on the Sta-Level, I think).

Since this is a "sound" thread, any thoughts on our approach to processing?
 
I know of one station that used a Behringer 9024 Processor and it kicked butt. They don't make them any more, used ones are cheap at $150. A weak power supply was the most common failure for that unit.
 
Over on the Engineering board there's an app called Breakaway that's been getting a lot of attention. It's offered in three versions starting at $29 up to the full-blown Optimod replacement for $199. http://claessonedwards.com/index.php
 
Breakaway Broadcast is good but pricey $199 for a dsp?? But it does have a tilt l/r analog and digital input adjustments a separate download though(free) that you can use with other DSP's..Free trial has every 60 mins. a ad to buy. It gives the Omnia and Orban a good run though darn close. But lacks fine tuning. There is some but not enough for me. And $199 for a Winamp plugin!?!..Not me!! I may not understand it completely.

I would try Stereotool www.stereotool.com/?1236016128. a little closer to the above mentioned.
3.40 ver. it has a rds encoder stereo pilot adjustment.It's a winamp plug and a stand alone version. (2 sound cards or vac) and a crapy transmitter adjustment plus 2 more pages of tuning. Works with SAM4 and others.
This one goes way beyond Winamps capabilities. At least 176000hz or higher capable soundcard for all that.

***If features are enabled on the free (non-registered) version, a message ('This sound is processed by Stereo Tool') is played once every 12 hours.
By the way these were tested on a onboard realtek hd audio card :D.

One other thing, If you use Winamp get rid of it..no good for broadcast.I won't get into it now but just do some research on that.



Thanks to the moderator for your patience...

*** see website
 
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