[BC] Re: It's Eureka over IBOC down under

[Kevin Tekel]

Robert Orban wrote:
> Now all we need are PDs the political courage to turn the processing
> down.  FM analog would sound dramatically better if everyone in the
> current overprocessed markets were just 3 dB quieter than they are now.

That's exactly what I was going to say.  Analog FM can easily qualify as
"High-Definiton Radio" if stations simply backed down their processing to
below the level at which clipping distortion constantly rears its ugly
head.

> No other branch of the entertainment industry (movies, television, etc.)
> intentionally degrades its product the way all too many broadcasters do.
> It's nuts.

Well.... movies are definitely louder than they used to be, because
producers have learned to make fuller use of today's more powerful theater
sound systems.  Movies have always had "loud" and "quiet" scenes, but now
the "loud" scenes are more vociferous than they used to be, often up to
uncomfortably high levels.  Some of today's movie sound tracks peak at up
to 110 dB -- that's LOUD!!

And more relevant to the radio industry, within the last decade it has
become commonplace for music producers and mastering engineers to squash
and clip their audio to within an inch of its life; today's CDs are
averaging at about 10 dB louder than what was common in the mid-1980s.
DVD-Audio and SACD are supposed to be our liberation from this trend, but
now that these formats are actually selling less than vinyl and cassettes,
it won't get any easier to obtain dynamically superior versions of current
popular music (not to mention 5.1 mixes, for those who think Surround
Sound will be IBOC's "killer app"!).




		
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