Radio Compression

[Matt Smith]

I have a friend who works at the local rock station here in Athens, and he helps us out by playing some stuff on the radio once in awhile. We're recording our second album now, and he said if I went ahead and gave him a mix of one of the tracks he would play it. Now, the last time he played something for us (the Christmas song we did), the drums were completely buried because of the way radio compresses and limits the living piss out of everything. So this time I gave him a louder drums mix and they sounded about right when broadcast, but the overall thing was just a huge, nasty compressed mess.

I'm kinda confused as to why our song sounded so much more ravaged and bad on the radio than the normal stuff. I was listening to the radio some last night, and while the stuff they were playing was obviously overcompressed and whatnot, it didn't sound completely devastated like ours did. The only thing I can figure out is that it's because it hasn't been mastered. The other songs on there have been mastered, so they're already pretty compressed, without many peaks, etc. Since ours wasn't mastered (well, I did a little mastering compression with the VintageWarmer, but nothing much because I don't know what I'm doing on that front and it will be professionally mastered anyway), maybe all the peaks from the drums, etc. made their compressors and limiters just go crazy and clamp down that much harder. Is that correct?

I would have thought it would be the opposite; I figured stuff that is unmastered or mastered correctly (without crushing all the dynamics) would stand up better to being crushed again, whereas the overly-compressed-in-mastering stuff would sound ridiculously mangled and lifeless when crushed again. But maybe not.

So for you pros out there, do you think that's what happened? Would (more or less) unmastered stuff sound far worse on radio than mastered (and potentially crushed) stuff? And I'm sure someone will say "well, the stuff on the radio was mixed by super-experienced pros", but it wasn't the mix because the mix was fine (and it souned TOTALLY different on the radio anyway). I guess that's what I'm getting at--normally, songs played on the radio sound overly compressed compared to the original CD versions, but they still sound like the same song. This sounded like a different song played over the phone via RealPlayer or something.

Here is a 25-second clip of the song, original version and radio version:

http://www.theocracymusic.com/OriginalVersion.mp3

http://www.theocracymusic.com/RadioVersion.mp3

Thanks guys,

 

[vile_ator]

Every song you hear on the radio is already mastered. If you gave them something with a lot of peaks, then yes it could have sent the compressor pumping. Listen to the CDs of bands you are in the same genre as that get on the radio and you will hear the way those mixes sound before and after radio. Say you like how the first Disturbed album sounds on that radio station. Well check the CD in your speakers. Maybe you dont like the way the second Disturbed sounds on that radio station. Compare the two. Which one is more compressed?

The most common radio compressor is called the Orban Opti-mod. Is this the one your friend has? If not then you are not comparing properly. But a lot of the times the Opti-mod is not set the right way and it will screw up some mixes worse than others.

I say dont worry about how it will sound on the radio. Make it sound good compared to other bands' CDs and forget about it. You cannot control how the radio will have their compressor set or what compressor they are using.

And how much more often will your CD be listened to on someones home or car stereo than on the radio? If its metal, dont worry about the radio at all...

Colin

 

[Matt Smith]

Thanks for the info. Yeah, I'm definitely not worried about it, as I don't think we need to be concerned about radio play in general.
But we may give him a couple of other tracks to play over the course of recording, so I was just curious about the lack of mastering being the main cause of the extreme compression. I'll know to crush whatever I send him a little more from now on (don't worry, as I said we'll definitely professionally master the album when it's done).

Thanks,

 

[006]

Off the subject....but Matt is that you singing on the clips? Because I want to learn how to sing! So if it is you, would you be willing to teach me?

~006

 

[SteelRat]

There are a couple things that will crush the song at radio...

1st-depending on the automation system, if the song was dubbed into their automation and not played directly from the cd, then the automation interface probably has both a limiter squeezing the audio, and MPEG compression squeezing the data...most radio engineers set their automation systems to 32K, since radio rolls off around 16K from the transmitter anyway. That could be step one...and probably the biggest killer of your track...see if your friend played it off the cd you gave him...if not, try to get him to do so...it will sound better...

Then, depending on how the Optimod (or whatever processor they use) is set, the general idea engineers use to set them up comes from the "hit" philosophy of record companies, and the midrange will be pulled out a little to emphasize vocals...people want to hear the singer, and then everything else gets squashed.
There's no telling what basic setup on the optimod the engineer set, it could not even be a rock or music-based Optimod setting...some like to set it for more talk-style performance, so the vocals and jocks really float over the music better, but the music itself gets crushed. Our previous engineer liked that, and it's one of the reasons I'm glad he got fired. It makes the station sound flatter than other stations...if there's another rocker in town compare the sound of the two stations, even compare it to other different stations sounds for spread, dynamics and dullness. You'll be surprised at the disparity in sound between stations with different engineers...

Hope this helps...

 

[SteelRat]

By the way, the song sound really cool...it already makes me ready to add it to the collection with your first disc.

 

[SPLASTiK]

I was reading this article on the CD Volume Wars and Radio in Bob Katz's book on mastering, it was pretty interesting.

They had this recording mastered by a large number of engineers and made a 2 disc CD compilation of all their mastered versions. Some engineers were pretty light on the mix while some were compressed to your average loud heavy compressed pop CD loudness.

Then they decided to take that 2 Disc set and bring it to a radio station to be put through the standard broadcast equipment and recorded the output and made another 2 disc comp cd set for comparison.

What they discovered is that when going through the radio's gear not only were the heavy compressed stuff sounding worse from getting squashed even further, they also were the same loudness as stuff that was conservatively mastered.

So there's no real reason to squash the shit out of mixes, that's why we have volume knobs on our stereos.