WKRZ Audio Processing circa 1982-83?

[dannyscott101]

I still have airchecks recorded from WKRZ in its early days... I sent one to Jeff Walker around their 20th anniversary.

Does anyone know what the on-air processing was?

It was absolutely the HEAVIEST processing I had ever heard to this day on FM! I used to love that sound, and it was mostly responsible for the 'processing fetish' that I still have to this day. (Doesn't everyone need an Optimod in their dining room?)

I used to assume that it was an Optimod 8000, until my knowledge and use of Optimods made me aware that they were designed NOT to be able to produce rock-crushing sound like this... Was it perhaps a hot-rodded version of the Audimax/Volumax combo?

I was most definitely not a multiband sound

 

[pdjames]

Hello Danny Scott:

The processing at that time was multiband of a sort..brute force is a good way to describe it! It was a time long before Orbans or such fancy devices were on the market. We got the idea from the way large, multi amped speaker systems worked.

We had six eq's and six limiter compressors. (DBX)

The six eq's were tuned, three to a side (left and right channel) to either cut or boost low, medium and high frequencies and put before the limiters, which were adjusted to react according to the band they were working on. As I recall and bear in mind this was more than 30 years ago, we set the low freqs with a load of compression and just hammered them out, less so on the mid's and a lot less on the high end. The result was rock steady bass, mids' that cut through and high end that sizzled but didn't splatter.

This was stl'd to the xmttr and fed into a composite clipper set on "Stun". If you looked at the mod monitor you could draw a line on the meter and it rarely deviated from 100%. (or whatever number you want to believe we modulated at. Heh.) Still it sounded better than anything at the time on FM IMHO.

Oh yes, the icing on the "compression" cake? A "SHURE" Level Loc...also set on stun, on the mic channel. If you listened in headphones you could hear the earth rotate.

It took a long time to get to get the settings right.

Later on many of the DBX units survived and were in use at the Entercom studios when I left the building two years ago. Oddly enough I have no idea what became of the Level Loc...to my mind one of the best mic compressors ever built..it had two controls, input and a "range control"- as I recall it made more compression the farther right you turned it. Guess which way it was set?

Thanks for asking...if I dig around I might have pictures of it in the rack...it was quite impressive!

Jim Rising

 

[kfitz]

I came to Scranton in Oct 1981...and yeah....that processing really sounded outstanding!

KF

 

[dannyscott101]

Hello Danny Scott:

The processing at that time was multiband of a sort..brute force is a good way to describe it! It was a time long before Orbans or such fancy devices were on the market. We got the idea from the way large, multi amped speaker systems worked.

We had six eq's and six limiter compressors. (DBX)

The six eq's were tuned, three to a side (left and right channel) to either cut or boost low, medium and high frequencies and put before the limiters, which were adjusted to react according to the band they were working on. As I recall and bear in mind this was more than 30 years ago, we set the low freqs with a load of compression and just hammered them out, less so on the mid's and a lot less on the high end. The result was rock steady bass, mids' that cut through and high end that sizzled but didn't splatter.

This was stl'd to the xmttr and fed into a composite clipper set on "Stun". If you looked at the mod monitor you could draw a line on the meter and it rarely deviated from 100%. (or whatever number you want to believe we modulated at. Heh.) Still it sounded better than anything at the time on FM IMHO.

Oh yes, the icing on the "compression" cake? A "SHURE" Level Loc...also set on stun, on the mic channel. If you listened in headphones you could hear the earth rotate.

It took a long time to get to get the settings right.

Later on many of the DBX units survived and were in use at the Entercom studios when I left the building two years ago. Oddly enough I have no idea what became of the Level Loc...to my mind one of the best mic compressors ever built..it had two controls, input and a "range control"- as I recall it made more compression the farther right you turned it. Guess which way it was set?

Thanks for asking...if I dig around I might have pictures of it in the rack...it was quite impressive!

Jim Rising

Wow... that sounds like some of the later versions of my 'home' processing!

In my early 'home' system I had happened upon some of the Orban theory without really knowing it. I had the signal going through 2 Wollensak 1/4" reel decks (one for each channel) set in their 'AUTO' recording level mode. The signal coming from the output DID go through the AGC while recording. This, of course, required the machines to be in RECORD mode and RUNNING the entire time! (tapeless!) The signal then went through a Kenwood cassette machine with a built-in limiter that was pretty fast! I had tried to use the fast limiter alone, but it would punch holes when hit with large amounts of gain reduction. I found that taming the signal with the very slow AGC on the 'Wollys' made the perfect compression system!

When I was done with the whole thing and didn't think it had enough gusto I would take and play it a second pass through the whole thing! Ouch!!!

Ahhhh.... the days!

By the way, I've more recently listened to those KRZ airchecks and wondered how I could have liked that sound so much!

As they used to say about WABC back in the day, "Even DEAD AIR was 100% modulation"

 

[pell guy]

Those facts about KRZ processing in the 80s are very interesting,I am not an engineer ,but am always interested in the
" sound" of radio stations. I seem to remember the old KRZ using reverb too. am I correct??
nice change of pace for this discussion board.

 

[warmland]

Hello Danny Scott:

The processing at that time was multiband of a sort..brute force is a good way to describe it! It was a time long before Orbans or such fancy devices were on the market. We got the idea from the way large, multi amped speaker systems worked.

We had six eq's and six limiter compressors. (DBX)
Jim Rising

Jim, WKRZ (AM) sounded pretty good also when it to went oldies back in 80 or 81. From what I recall Jerry Padden was hired to work there by then AM PD Chris O'Brien from WARM. Whatever happend to both guys?

 

[mikemoran1]

I was on the air the night Tommy got around to installing the composite clipper. It isn't often that listeners notice the difference in processing, but I got calls in the middle of the night - literally asking if we were louder. Jim - didn't we have a Volumax unit behind the board back in the Odd Fellows building? Those were classic "thrown together" studios. I hope you're well PDJames. I miss hearing you!

"Mike Morn" KRZ class of '80-'81

 

[Vince Sweeney]

...and this all reminds me of the very first time I heard an off-air skim of myself at WARM. You know how it goes - the first thing you ask when you start at any radio station is "Uhhh, how do I, uhhhh, how do I make an aircheck?" It's the equivalent of walking in the front door of a place and immediately asking, "Where's the back door?"

We had several ways to aircheck, including a cassette skimmer keyed to the board mic, so it was probably my first week (second day?) on the job when I popped in a blank and had at it.

Listening to that skim blew my hair back. I thought, "Who the hell is that?" WARM's processing could make most anyone sound great, even me!.

By contrast, should you run a tape off of WARM's board feed, holy cow, it was awful, really, really bad. Lots of warts and pimples were covered by their processing.

 

[pdjames]

I'll try to address everyone here:

Pell guy-There was a reverb but we only used it on the oldies show "Saturday night live at the Oldies' of which I was the first host. It still enjoys huge ratings behind the steady hand of Shadoe Steele. The reverb was this incredibly bad sounding spring reverb with one channel much louder than the other. If I forgot to take it off line when I left I had to turn around and go back-this was before cell phones. Now KRZ runs everything through a digital reverb set very low.

Warmland: The oldies format on "1340" didn't last too long. Chris O'Brien went from there to a station on the Jersey coast as far as I recall. Jerry Padden remained with KRZ and eventually became PD. He is now in Allentown on a country station. 1340 had the WORST signal I ever had the displeasure of working with. I think the ground system was plowed up by the installation of a parking lot. The Xmttr was in Kingston and at low power it barely made it to South Franklin street in WB. We did have the Dourrough three band audio processor on it at some time, so the audio was good..Soft, but good.

Mike Moran: Howdy! Thanks for the kind words. Of the many stories I could tell about those "Thrown Together" studios was the horrifying discovery that we were right channel mono to both channels for the first few hours. Beatles without the vocals. A programming triumph! The Volumax unit was heavily modified by my engineer back in Springfield so it was lightning fast. I have seen these units go on ebay for big bucks.

and Vince my buddy:

I NEVER thought I sounded as good as I did when I was on AM. The first time I heard myself on FM I thought I had been neutered! There was a natural compression on even the worst processed AM's that just made you sound like THOR in the "Cans". With good to great processing you sounded (to yourself anyway) like you had a voice deeper than whale poo. You would be very disenchanted with working on the air now, Vince. Because of HD you now cannot listen off the air due to the delay. Modern announcers will never know the pleasure of hearing yourself thru the full bore processing. Truth be told many modern announcers don't even know if they are on the air or not. This is not a criticism...just the way it works now. Anyway most of the work I did in the last few years was voice tracking. Very little use for headphones....

Thanks for letting me wander down memory lane.

Jim

 

[dannyscott101]

Those facts about KRZ processing in the 80s are very interesting,I am not an engineer ,but am always interested in the
" sound" of radio stations. I seem to remember the old KRZ using reverb too. am I correct??
nice change of pace for this discussion board.

Even though I was WRONG about the multiband part (the processing did have a very 'wideband' sound to it) I do remember listening to hours of stuff recorded off-air and played back on my Sony Walkman II, and as much as the jocks sounded VERY 'BALLSY', there was no reverb added at the time.

I think the perception of added reverb came from the aggressive processing enhancing the subtle reverb that was already in the songs. Examples of the time were Joan Jett's "I Love Rock & Roll" and Laura Branigan's "Self Control", where the reverb would be quickly sucked up to full modulation before the attack that followed.

Listening to these songs right off the LP or 45 after hearing them on KRZ made them sound "dry" and almost boring!

I think that I thought the processing was wideband because there was so much "bass pullback" effect on heavy bass material. Now that I know more about multiband, I must say that I do remember that the bass was very consistent and strong in every song... a definite product of processing multiband!

Based on the description of using EQs to separate the frequencies, there would really be no "coupling" between the frequency bands. I suppose the wideband effect could have been from the high frequencies 'sneaking through' the low EQ side, since they would only be separated by the dB limit of the equalizer being used. Thus, when the bass was not present the compressor on the low band would 'recover', quickly bringing up some of the rest of the spectrum and adding it back to the final mix... Does that seem right?

Either way, it was a very desirable kind of sound for that era, even if it would not fly today!

It was the time when radio seemed to sound 'exciting'... It seems the multiband and digital processing of today is sometimes flat and lifeless by comparison.

 

[dannyscott101]

I must also say that I heard Magic 93 on my recent trip back from Carlisle... I thought it had good processing by today's standards. Not only did the highs seem crisp, even on some of the newer hypercompressed material, but it had just a touch (not too much) of that classic "punchy" attack sound that I like. It's the type of sound I would guess can't be had with an "out of the box" Optimod or Omnia, nor can I get it with the Prisms or 8100.

 

[pdjames]

One final but important footnote. We had special capstans installed in the turntables (remember those?) that we used to cart up the tunes. No slower than 48 on a 45 and I seem to remember wrapping splicing tape (remember that?) on them to hype it up faster on tunes I considered "draggy". If you heard the records on other stations ( or at home or on a jukebox) they sounded...slow and...wrong.
All those elements combined to give us a very distinctive sound. I guess it must have worked. we had great ratings. Made some people a lot of money, not yours truly Not a bit bitter, me. Honest.

Jim Rising

 

[Vince Sweeney]

You know, Sir James, I spent over 30 years in broadcasting and never, I mean NEVER, heard of custom capstans or splicing tape being used to ramp up the RPMs on any vinyl. (Believe me, I remember both capstans and splicing tape, along with grease pencils and single-edge Gem razor blades for cutting tape. And how about splicing blocks? FWIW, I was one hell of a splicer. I could cut a consonant out of a three letter word. Talk about a useless skill, like there was a future in that, right?)

I'd love to hear a side-by-side comparison of any hyped up versus draggy original.

 

[dannyscott101]

One more question, and then I'll put this topic to bed. What year did the 'rock crusher' processing on WKRZ go away? I fell out of listening to KRZ by circumstance between 1983 and about 1988.

I was first introduced to KRZ in 1982 when I used a 75 to 300ohm adapter to hook my NewChannels cable feed into the antenna input of my FM receiver. A large selection of stations were available, including "94 rock" from Syracuse, NY (Now Y-94 FM), our own classic rock, WAAL, (which I couldn't otherwise get clean at my Binghamton house due to multipath) and the stereo feed of MTV at 107.1. WKRZ was cable fed at 96.0 (later moved to 95.9 to accommodate digital tuners) My silly neighbors who actually PAID the cable company for this service had a list of stations available on this service. The list had different call letters and the previous format listed for the WKRZ frequency. (it was a news/talk format before?)

Best of all, I have airchecks of myself on WKRZ as a caller to the "All request hour" when Jumpin' Jeff Walker was doing nights! I was calling from Binghamton on the old dial phone! I think still remember the phone numbers, both area code 717 at the time: 825-9812 or 343-9813. Perhaps annoying out-of-town callers like me inspired them to change to the later 800 number, (800) 222-0985. This number would give me a recording saying it was 'NOT AVAILABLE to my calling area'.

At some point around late 1983 a mandatory move of my bedroom to the attic required me to give up the cable feed. Sometime in the mid '80s the cable company then discontinued this service due to lack of interest. It was when I moved to Belden Hill in Harpursville, NY around 1988 that I could get the air signal of WKRZ up on the hill.

At that time, (as I remember) the legal ID would say, "WKRZ, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Hazelton... A service of Beatrice Broadcasting and Osbourne Communications"

The classic hard processing was indeed long gone, replaced by the more refined and milder sound that dominated the late 80s...

Did the killer processing go away with an ownership change?

Another footnote... When my parents took a trip to the Bahamas in the early 1980s, my mother sat next to a woman on the plane who had what appeared to be some kind of on-air traffic schedules. Since my mother worked in the media business, she asked the woman about what she was doing. She indicated that she (or her husband) was one of the station owners of WKRZ. After telling the woman about my being a fan of the station, she sent me a package containing some KRZ T-shirts, and a bunch of those round stickers that said "98 1/2, KRZ, more music, more often".

 

[warmland]

Warmland: The oldies format on "1340" didn't last too long. Chris O'Brien went from there to a station on the Jersey coast as far as I recall. Jerry Padden remained with KRZ and eventually became PD. He is now in Allentown on a country station. Jim

Hello Jim,thanks! I made some phone calls as was able to track O'Brien down somewhat. He did work at WFRB doing moring drive in Baltimore, WDRC in Hartford and then at Voice of America in DC. After that he return to Scranton/WB and worked at ch's 22 and 28 with his former co-worker from WARM Vince Sweeney. O'Briein worked Master Control I think and gave up on air Djing. Last anyone knws he started his own business down south someplace. He recently suffered a heart attact , but is still with us. Great air talent who was lucky enough to work major markets and a pretty nice guy they say. I wish him a spedy recovery and get well wises.
You Jim along with Vince amd Chris are 3 of the radio greats to have wroked here in NEPA.

 

[SharkeySharkDog]

"One final but important footnote. We had special capstans installed in the turntables (remember those?) that we used to cart up the tunes. No slower than 48 on a 45 and I seem to remember wrapping splicing tape (remember that?) on them to hype it up faster on tunes I considered "draggy". If you heard the records on other stations ( or at home or on a jukebox) they sounded...slow and...wrong."

WOW PD James that's fast. 6%! I was sweatin' cartin' stuff up at Q102 between 1.5 and 2% on the Technics TT. "Musical Youth" could not be sped up because they sounded like the chipmunks!

It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized why EVERY prince song sounded flat on CD.

Boy Shawn

 

[warmland]

You know, Sir James, I spent over 30 years in broadcasting and never, I mean NEVER, heard of custom capstans or splicing tape being used to ramp up the RPMs on any vinyl.

Vince, Looks like Jim and KRZ kept a big secret from us all. I just wish WARM would have done the same thing with playing Glen Campbells "Rhinestone Cowboy" every 3 hours a secret to themselves. That was on the air at WARM more than the Cash Calls.

 

[pdjames]

I wish I could take credit for being a genius for speeding up the records-but truth be told I was doing it back in the woods of NH when I was a long way from coal country. And yes certain artists didn't sound so great hyped up. Olivia Newton John comes to mind. Screechy was the word, I think.

Warmland you said: You Jim along with Vince and Chris are 3 of the radio greats to have worked here in NEPA.

Gosh I also wish that was true. Many many fine people have been on the radio here...Just since I have been here D&W, Jeff Walker, Frankie Warren, Jim Ward-all fine people along with being great broadcasters. I could list almost everyone I worked with or against in that category but suffice to say this area, for what reason I am not sure, spawned a great number of very talented folks who went on to bigger and better things. I myself went on to fulfill that old adage : "if you can't do it, teach it!"

Jim

 

[berniek]

Jim:
Your observation is worthy of its own thread....

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Threads like this are a hoot. Love 'em for so many reasons. Greetings from the Buffalo Niagara Fall Rochester board, as I add my 37 cents. Years ago, when I was Prod Director of 97 Rock Buffalo, we had a horde of Pennsylvania guys who left their marks on the station. George Hawras and The Bearman (from the ABE market) came to town and two PA engineers coincidentally arrived named Victor Michael and Lynn Deppen. They were responsible for some of the best home-brewed tri-band, pre-Orban processing I've ever heard.

It's been a long time so forgive my memory gaps, but Vic & Lynn's multiband version used Yamaha crossovers to split the bands that fed Aphex equipment and some off the shelf limiters that may have been three Audi and three Volu maxes. This was before tri-band "Texars into Optimods" were in vogue. Anyway, these two engineering cowboys created the loudest, cleanest FM audio I've heard in a long time, even today. It was a pleasure to work with them. They were always "hot rodding" something.

A few years later, Tom Atkins, now VP Engineering at Backyard Broadcsting, cooked up an even more bad-ass processing chain using Durrough's at one of the competitors. Those were the days of the loudness wars, but Buffalo had the great fortune of having brilliant engineers who were ex-jocks and understood formatic requirements for the processors, so they went for loud AND clean. And they delivered.

The mention of the Shure Level Lock made me smile because I had one of those bad boys in the production room and it smoked. Not the cleanest little black box in the world, but for an AOR station that did tons of concert commercials and bar spots, it smoked! The engineers would say "we gotta get rid of that thing," but they'd smile and look the other way because they knew it was part of the production guy's arsenal and it could be switched in and out of the mic chain. We had amazing McCurdy (sometimes jokingly called Mc-Cruddy) boards that were custom built in Canada.

Thanks for a fine thread. Stop by and visit us on the Buffalo board. We're a crazy, but usually congenial bunch.

-Jim