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Processing - how loud?

Y

yeoldeschool

With countless Optimod 8500 and Omnia 6ex boxen on the loose, I'm curious: what is the average total dB RMS power being pumped out by aggressively-processed major market stations these days? What about the average for "normally" processed major market stations? And those in small and medium markets?

I'm curious because it's difficult quantifying loudness off-air without pristine tuners, sound cards, and emaculate FM reception. SNR, multipath cancellation/distortion, and the coloration and phase non-linearities added by consumer-grade radios and sound cards do their parts in disguising the tight peak control modern processors achieve. (I'd also assume that because L+R is generally louder than L-R, the use of composite clipping at the origination point can cause further increases in peak-to-average ratios, at least in stereo FM reception. Tell me if I'm wrong...)

Anyway, I recently found Orban's 8400 FM vs. IBOC audio clips, and the loudest (Clip 1 FM) appears to have an average L/R total RMS power of -4.86 dB when normalized. And that's with a factory preset. ;)
 
yeoldeschool said:
Anyway, I recently found Orban's 8400 FM vs. IBOC audio clips, and the loudest (Clip 1 FM) appears to have an average L/R total RMS power of -4.86 dB when normalized. And that's with a factory preset. ;)
Click to expand...

You'd have to average this over long peroid of time and with different types of music/audio, to get a meaningful value. This way, it will heavily depend on the music.

FWIW, most processors on fileserver.redirectme.net that were recorded with the Tina Arena song give around 9-10 dB peak-to-RMS ratio. But that is for that song only...


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
It would be very hard to quantify this. Processing is a subjective art in the first place, and the algorithms of each box will react differently to every song that's put through them according to the original mastering dynamics of the track. I don't think you could actually come up with any meaningful numbers (unless every station you survey is running their audio absolutely smashed).

Personally, I think the "louder is better" mindset is outmoded, especially in the age of digital radio. The days of radio tuners with vernier tuning scales and flywheel-weighted knobs is long past - people don't find stations by spinning a wheel anymore. If they use the "scan" key on their car radio, there's usually a second or more of muting between station locks anyway, so any moderate loudness difference will be psychoacoustically erased by the silence anyway. Time to back off the compression and let the audio breathe a little!

That's my free opinion, and worth exactly what you paid for it ;D

- Doc
 
DoctorWu said:
Personally, I think the "louder is better" mindset is outmoded, especially in the age of digital radio. The days of radio tuners with vernier tuning scales and flywheel-weighted knobs is long past - people don't find stations by spinning a wheel anymore. If they use the "scan" key on their car radio, there's usually a second or more of muting between station locks anyway, so any moderate loudness difference will be psychoacoustically erased by the silence anyway. Time to back off the compression and let the audio breathe a little!
Click to expand...

I REALLY hope you're right. For the sake of us all.

But I am afraid that the "louder is better" mind-set is not going to suddenly change with the transition to digital. I really hope it does. But I'm afraid it won't...

Frank Foti made, in my opinion, an excellent service for the broadcasters when he pushed the requirement into US HD Radio (IBOC) standard that there is a 5 dB difference between analog and digital channel, in favor of digital. This is the one thing that can really make a difference in keeping digital less processed. Although some stations are choosing (or don't know better) to let their digital run wild and cause an irritating jump in volume when switched to digital. But they are few, I hear.

Keeping digital less processed is important not only for the sake of the more dynamic range and less fatiguing sound. I've done a little blind listening test that I'm presenting now here in Graz, Austria, that shows that the perceptually coded audio drops in quality increasingly as more aggressive dynamics processing is applied. In every digital audio broadcasting system there is out there, dynamic processing is followed with a perceptual coding that we have to account for. And it seems, to borrow a phrase, that overly aggressive processing and coding don't mix well. Our test showed that higher audio quality is achieved with less processed audio. If anyone is interested, I'll put the results on a web when I get back.


Regards,
Goran Tomas
 
I also agree that “less is more”. Over processed audio becomes fatiguing very quickly. I’d rather have “natural” over “loud” anyday.

Sadly though, I agree with Goran that these loudness wars are not going to vanish overnight. I would suspect that many engineers and programmers in the business today, are quite accustomed to loudness, to the point they aren’t willing to live without it on the HD side.

R
 
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