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What songs do you use to test out your processor?

When I'd do adjustments I'd try to do it after 1 AM. I had a "music sweep" that I'd play that included ten songs selected from the highest testing songs on our playlist and which included male, female and group vocals and a range of instruments that reflected the station format.

If I had to, I'd play it over the next half hour, and until I was satisfied. Then we'd run it the next day in a mid-day hour where our in-house panel (young, older, male, female) would listen and we'd adjust anything that they did not like... particularly the women who could tell us guys if we had it too "screechy" or shrill.

Keep in mind that processing can involve several devices to achieve AGC leveling as well as compression and peak limiting. When you have multiple devices, the wrong settings can make the individual units attack each other. And with digital processing, we can get issues where the original audio was done at a different sample rate... so there are multiple factors involved here.

I don't recommend using one single song; use an array. And have a variety of people evaluate the settings, as today having one male engineer who may not even be in the station target demo do the evaluating is dangerous.

I don't do engineering any more, so this is a very broad observation and not intended to be specific with today's gear. Let's hear from Greg Strickland who is actively involved in processing for stations today!
 
Phil Harmonic said:
...back in the early 70s....at WJDX-AM Jackson, Mississippi, we'd check the air chain bass response with... "I'll Take You There" by The Staple Singers...
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That would have been back when Houston Jones was the chief engineer at WJDX. I came on much later, but the old RCA transmitter from that era was still there. It had been modified to improve modulation over the years.
 
Here's the way I set one up from scratch:
1. Play white noise at 0VU console level and set broadband AGC at -8 to -10db gain reduction.
2. Play pink noise at 0VU console level and set multiband compressors at -5db flat across the board.
3. Load a factory preset for a format that seems close to the station, mainly including multiband attack and release profiles along with some basic EQ.
4. Play normal station programming at console levels while listening to a good tuner with no EQ, or even better, the station modulation monitor via good-quality headphones. Being able to switch headphones between straight program/pre-processing and over the air is a bonus to hear how much colorization or loss of dynamic range may be occurring.
5. Assuming at least fifteen minutes of programming sounds reasonable with no obvious pumping, breathing, or strange-sounding effects, call it a night and go home. Listen on your way in via a mono clock radio, your vehicle radio, home stereo, portable radio, or essentially any radio you would typically use. Come in the next day and listen for another contiguous fifteen minutes switching between program and air. Make only very slight changes before walking away and checking again no sooner than two hours from the prior listen.
Don't waste time by playing music or things that are not in the playlist. You'll just waste time and set the processing to something that doesn't apply, which more than often than not, sets you into nothing more than a tail-chase.
6. Over the following month make very slight adjustments, one at a time. Do not make wholesale changes or risk having to start over. Your PD or GM won't like that, and will likely think you're an idiot. Don't prove them correct.
 
192khz said:
What songs do you use to test out your processor?

Check for distortions all that kind of stuff.

Thanks!
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Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance with Somebody

That songs is really hard to process for some processors. The processors the local radio stations use almost always struggle with that song. That's probably why they play it once in a blue moon.
 
radiodeviation7 said:
Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance with Somebody

That songs is really hard to process for some processors. The processors the local radio stations use almost always struggle with that song. That's probably why they play it once in a blue moon.
Click to expand...
That's because a lot of compression and reverb was used in the master to make the sound 'big'. Now run a heavily processed song through heavy processing and what you do get? Few dynamics and lots of harmonic distortion.
 
Pop ballads with a female vocalist are generally the worst for causing clipping distortion.

One processor killer is Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You". They used something like an Aphex Aural Exciter to add a glassy sheen to her voice, and all those extra harmonics wreak havoc with the pre-emphasis curve and HF clipping.
 
kevtronics said:
Pop ballads with a female vocalist are generally the worst for causing clipping distortion.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Many local radio stations here still use either analog or discontinued digital audio processors.

The analog processors always pump and distort a lot. During "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" these effects are extremely obvious. They either overmodulate or constantly duck the audio, depending on the settings.

The digital processors on the other hand, just aggressively clip the overshoot with the clipper and that sounds just as bad. The waveform is full of square waves.
 
radiodeviation7 said:
The digital processors on the other hand, just aggressively clip the overshoot with the clipper and that sounds just as bad. The waveform is full of square waves.
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That's just the old-school radio thinking: Let's take a digital audio processor that stands the best chance of low noticeable distortion and reproducing dynamic range while still protecting the modulation levels, and make it sound like over-driven older analog processing.
Makes perfect sense. No, not really.
 
Kelly A said:
That's just the old-school radio thinking: Let's take a digital audio processor that stands the best chance of low noticeable distortion and reproducing dynamic range while still protecting the modulation levels, and make it sound like over-driven older analog processing.
Makes perfect sense. No, not really.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I don't know, do they not hear the distortion? How can someone think that kind of sound quality is acceptable?
 
radiodeviation7 said:
Exactly. I don't know, do they not hear the distortion? How can someone think that kind of sound quality is acceptable?
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My take is they've forgotten, or aren't paying attention, that their listeners don't find aggressive processing trashing their favorite music appealing. It's all about duplicating the loudness wars days, which of course, are long gone. Like a lot of this thinking; it's all about what's going on at the competition, not the audience's perception.
 
Back in the mid 1970's when a lot of FM stations were still running the old CBS Audiomax / Volumemax you could easily tell if it was set up correctly by playing Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" from the 45 the record company sent out.

A very successful Sales Manager insisted on all the music to be on cart. His logic was commercials needed to sould as good as the music. A part-timer might "miss" a distorted commercial but would notice the music sounding funky. I always had an AGC feeding the cart recorder so everything was relatively the same level. Every Monday morning every cart machine was tested in the audition channel with an alignment cart.

Of course you don't need any of this with PC based automation now.

I agree totally with Kelly about being glad the loudness wars are a thing of the past. Some of the CD's had crappy almost square wave output guaranteed to cause listening headaches and tune out to start with.

Surprisingly some of the FM HD 2 translators, that actually use an HD receiver have decent sound.
 
Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" will really test your AGC. It's a rock song with both a classical melody, and classical music dynamics.

It's halfway through this half-hour aircheck of my Part 15 AM Stereo station:

amstereo.flac

drive.google.com drive.google.com

Program source: www.softrockradio.net
Processing: CRL Amigo AM
Transmitter: Panasonic multi-system AM Stereo signal generator in C-Quam mode
Modulation level: +120% / -95%
Receiver: Denon TU-680NAB
 
secondchoice said:
Back in the mid 1970's when a lot of FM stations were still running the old CBS Audiomax / Volumemax you could easily tell if it was set up correctly by playing Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life" from the 45 the record company sent out.
Click to expand...
What did it sound like if the pair wasn't set up correctly? I'm curious!
 
I guess I'll get to find out.... we';re installing an Omnia volt soon to "replace" the internal processing on the BW transmitter we use
 
DavidEduardo said:
Many of the "cheap" cart machines did everything the more costly ones did. They did not have forged aluminum front panels and decks... just stamped sheet metal. They did not have an automatic capstan lift... you had to engage with a lever!
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Just be glad you never had a Sparta cart machine. Those things would latch onto a cart and would not let go. I would rather have had the mechanical capstan lift that you described.
 
secondchoice said:
The flute part in the right channel (or left we discovered wevl had a turntable the was wired backwards because of this song) would be all you could hear and lower the volume of the entire song for a half a second.
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Ahh, interesting - thanks for explaining! I have a pair of the 60s AM units along with a 70s FM stereo Volumax. Will have to play around with this 45 through them and see what it does.
 
After some preliminary setups, I like using Foreplay/Longtime by Boston. Lots of highs, bass, loud passages, and near silence. I was yelled at a couple times for 'breaking format' by can't-see-the-bigger-picture PDs, but they never complained about the results.
 
Plate Blocker said:
After some preliminary setups, I like using Foreplay/Longtime by Boston. Lots of highs, bass, loud passages, and near silence. I was yelled at a couple times for 'breaking format' by can't-see-the-bigger-picture PDs, but they never complained about the results.
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Except no dynamic range during most of the cut. Lots of electric guitar. I guess if the goal is to smash the crap out of your audio, Boston would be a reasonable choice.
 
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