Mastering for FM radio

[Where She Wept]

A band i just recorded requested a FM radio master of a song. I thought that the stations had the equipmen to do that in realtime?

Later

 

[Where She Wept]

I wish forums had a spellchecker

 

[Genius Gone Insane]

is the FM master different? I always assumed it was the radio station that was adding the low end there.

 

[gumplunger]

I wish forums had a spellchecker

I wish forums had an edit post button. Oh wait...

 

[Erik]

fm stations have an fm processor last in the signal chain before the signal goes up into the air. this includes automatic gain controlling, compression, limiting, high pass filter, possibly other EQ, etc. so basically: don't bother mastering differently at all because it will go through a fuckload of processing that you have no control over anyway, and every station has the fm process set up to fit their particular channel profile & transmission equipment.

 

[dreamcatcher]

fm stations have an fm processor last in the signal chain before the signal goes up into the air. this includes automatic gain controlling, compression, limiting, high pass filter, possibly other EQ, etc. so basically: don't bother mastering differently at all because it will go through a fuckload of processing that you have no control over anyway, and every station has the fm process set up to fit their particular channel profile & transmission equipment.

Unless they are some old community radio station in the sticks of Northern Wisconsin and after you spend all damn day pre-producing a metal show and having to bring up 1980s thrash tunes a few dBs and new Andy Sneap produced tracks down a couple before you run the limiter to avoid pumping and even though you take it to -2dB they still fucking complain that you are burying their meters and telling you that it's distorted cuz they're just a buncha warmed over hippies who stopped listening to anything new in like 1976.

 

[EtherForBreakfast]

dreamcatcher that was the best run on sentence stream of consciousness regaling about the way radio works that I have read in quite some time I also found it very interesting when I read in some audio book I got at the plublic library where they spoke about what radio stations generally do to the signal before it is broadcast it was a good read (with vocoder)

There was an interview with Edward Van in Guitar World about 6 years ago, during the Cherone nightmare album where Ed said he "experimented" with a sent out mix by not compressing anything at all and wanting to see how it would parlay on radio. I think his experiment proved to be fuct and I don't think Ed is doing that any more.

Then again, the fantastic music I listen to NEVER gets played on the radio, and the horrible shit that is played on the radio, is stuff I never listen to - so its a win win situation.

 

[SPLASTiK]

What Erik said pretty much. Making a louder mix (if that's what they meant) won't make it sound louder after all the radio processing either.

 

[SteelRat]

Erik is close, but not quite correct...songs are dubbed into computer automation (sometimes with data compression, more often now without as HD transmitters are beginning to make their way to stations), with (hopefully, depending on the brain damage of the station's engineer) little or no audio compression into the automation. The program feed goes into an Optimod for some EQ and multiband compression/limiting (tailored for each format and preference)before being sent to the transmitter...the 16K roll-off you hear is not from the processing, but from the FM transmitter...the AM transmitter begins around 7K (if I remember correctly)...this is changing as HD radio becomes more available as the digital signals will be able to transmit MUCH more information, and high-resolution and 5.1 surround radio is available on the HD transmission. If the recording industry went to 5.1 surround mixing as standard for album releases, then you'd get surround in your cars with an HD radio.

The technology of radio is changing for the better, with RDS information attached to the broadcast stream, higher resolution broadcast standards, and digital sidebands making the options for radio companies broader to allow more stations, different formats, more specialized broadcasts into niche genres available.

Maybe someday, we'll all be able to listen to music we like on the radio.

Just my ramblings...uke:

 

[Where She Wept]

Thank's guys. It's what i thought.