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Strange audio clip issue AVFlex

E

engine the evaneer

Currently flummoxed by an issue, wondering if anyone has seen this before?

For some reason, one certain client's ads that they send to us end up dropping snippets of their audio for a brief moment only on-air.

Here's what I know:

The file is sent to us as an mp3.
Our creative department drops the ad in IN REAL TIME (plays out of a board directly into automation playback).
Said ad plays back perfectly on production machine.
Said ad always fails to play back clean on-air.
This only happens to ads sent to us by this client.

I was at first suspicious our creative department was just importing the file directly into AVFlex, but nope, they're playing it in realtime in the studio and recording it in the old fashioned way.

Any thoughts on what it could be???
 
Added info: The dropout is not just on air, our operators listen in Program and the dropout happens there, so it is what the Flex system is playing out somehow...
 
Please explain dropout. I get calls that our transmitter is down when we have dead air. I also get calls we have dead air when our transmitter is down.

It would be funny if the entire product is out of phase and plays back in mono mode as nothing. A real time stereo dub wouldn't fix this, just move the fault further down the line. If this isn't it then the problem might likely be in house in your place.

Network ad might be okay but the tag is not there, out of phase. More info must be supplied.
 
The ad will start, then have a blip of silence for maybe .5 seconds, then continue playing for 10 seconds, then have a blip of silence again. Doesn't seem like a mono/phase issue, although this did cross my mind...
 
Put the source mp3 file up somewhere and I will test it on my vault.

Also, is your audio local or on a fileserver? Have you checked your console log for errors on the playout machine...
 
chriscollins said:
Put the source mp3 file up somewhere and I will test it on my vault.
Click to expand...
I will be glad to check it on one of mine as well. Which version of the AV suite are you running? If you use the AVFixup operation "Fix MPEG" on that folder does it flag that file?
 
AV reporting no errors on the cut. We are running 10.034, a build from last January, we use AXIA drivers for our playout decks.

We did an in-depth test this morning and found a VERY interesting result. We played the ad on all 5 of our FM stations. We had someone monitoring in-studio, from a car tuner, and on our in-house paging/monitoring system. Interestingly, the audio-drop outs were ONLY heard on the studio tuners which are identical between the 5 stations, and only on the stations that had a digital processor (optimod 8200 on 2 and an 8600 on 1). The studio air-monitor tuners are denon TU-1500-RD, and it is the ONLY radio we've heard the problem on.

So that narrows it down a bit and calms our fears that the client will pull the ads since we've heard the problem nowhere else such as in our car/at home listening, but still confuses us. We are suspecting some kind of cascading effect and the digital processing along with the tuner "puts it over the edge." Perhaps the source material has a peak or a bass-intermod that causes it? I don't know the science of the transmission/tuner enough to know how this could happen.
 
Turn on the 30hz HPF and see if it still exists. I was able to unlock some tuners with bass before I did that on my 8300 digital box.
 
Interesting times we live in!

Back in the day, this is something that would happen on the FM transmitter. Nowadays the AFC loops in todays exciters are rock solid, and unphased by deep bass frequencies. As a result, the problem is now passed to the radios. If they do not have rock solid AFC loops, the **tuner's** audio could potentially sound excessively distorted in the presence of sub-sonic bass energy, or simply drop-out, or glitch on such material.

I've unlocked many tuners with my processor designs. ;-D

Anyway, The previous poster is correct. Turn on your High Pass filter. It is there to filter out this sub-sonic material.

-C
 
You were both EXACTLY correct, the 30 Hz HPF was set to "OFF" on all three of our digital processors, I put it in the circuit and ran the test ad and it no longer cuts out on those receivers. Fascinating stuff, thanks for the input everyone, I think we can safely say "case closed" and "I learn something new everyday".

As a side note, it was our GM that suggested we test on various radios (a suggestion which made both me and the chief rolls our eyes, but turned out to be not so crazy after all). His concern, of course, was not technical, it was merely practical...if our listeners in a car can hear it, we're fine. Including other radios in the test led us to verify your suspicions scientifically :~)
 
engine the evaneer said:
You were both EXACTLY correct, the 30 Hz HPF was set to "OFF" on all three of our digital processors, I put it in the circuit and ran the test ad and it no longer cuts out on those receivers. Fascinating stuff, thanks for the input everyone, I think we can safely say "case closed" and "I learn something new everyday".

As a side note, it was our GM that suggested we test on various radios (a suggestion which made both me and the chief rolls our eyes, but turned out to be not so crazy after all). His concern, of course, was not technical, it was merely practical...if our listeners in a car can hear it, we're fine. Including other radios in the test led us to verify your suspicions scientifically :~)
Click to expand...

Glad to have helped. It is standard practice for me to turn on the HPF on all digital boxes. I first noticed it about 2 years ago, when I observed the tuner in my control room unlocking in the same place on a song everytime I played it.
 
engine the evaneer said:
You were both EXACTLY correct, the 30 Hz HPF was set to "OFF" on all three of our digital processors, I put it in the circuit and ran the test ad and it no longer cuts out on those receivers. Fascinating stuff, thanks for the input everyone, I think we can safely say "case closed" and "I learn something new everyday".

As a side note, it was our GM that suggested we test on various radios (a suggestion which made both me and the chief rolls our eyes, but turned out to be not so crazy after all). His concern, of course, was not technical, it was merely practical...if our listeners in a car can hear it, we're fine. Including other radios in the test led us to verify your suspicions scientifically :~)
Click to expand...

Not a problem!

As today's Contemporary music & inattention to these details from the providers of our material continues to slide downwards, the broadcasters are being challenged with more and more things that were not much of an issue before. Unless you go back to the turntable days, and a heavy handed jock would set a cup of coffee down next to the turntable too hard, and knock the transmitter off for a few seconds from the sub-sonic rumble of that event. ;-)

The drive for deeper and deeper bass in new music makes things challenging too...

-C

-C
 
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