[BC] Balancing the processing from analog to digital

[Glen Kippel]

Well, our local KPSC (relays KUSC) sounds awesome on my car radio -- clear,
plenty of separation and dynamic range.  And it still sounds plenty loud.
Actually, louder than most other stations here.  I don't know what Lyle is
doing, but it sounds good to me.

On 12/21/06, Kent Winrich <kwinrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Agreed!  One of the local NPR stations is so proud of how little
> processing they run.  But when you listen to a show like "Whatya
> Know?" you are always reaching for the volume control.  Quiet
> passages then all of a sudden thundering applause.  What a PIA while
> driving!
>
> There must be a happy medium.  But of course you will never get a
> group like this to agree what that medium is!  ;-)
>
>
>
> On 12/21/06, Robert Orban
> <<mailto:rorban at earthlink.net>rorban at earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 10:03 PM 12/20/2006, Dana Puopolo wrote:
> >Bob,
> >
> >
> >The notion that someone should take a medium that has perhaps 80 db
> of dynamic
> >range and compress and limit it until is runs within a couple db of the
> >CRUSHED main channel is preposterous! Why bother HAVING all that range if
> >you're not going to take some advantage of it?  The one GOOD thing
> I've heard
> >from FM HD is the lack of noise. To me at least, peak limting (and
> clipping)
> >does the most damage to audio of anything.
>
> You missed my point. At least in mobile reception, there will be areas
> where a significant amount of crossfading occurs between the analog FM and
> HD1 digital streams. If the volume drops 10 dB each time the radio
> crossfades from analog to digital, this will be a HUGE irritant -- far
> worse than excessive compression or peak limiting. Indeed, I believe that
> this would cause 95%+ of the audience to tune out after it happened a few
> times.
>
> If a station wants to broadcast a wide dynamic range signal, they might as
> well do it on a stream. And even if they do, they need to process for
> source-to-source consistency. Schulke's Beautiful Music formats maintained
> the relative levels between sources well enough to allow minimal
> processing
> while still achieving source-to-source consistency. But that was then.
> These days, who has the time or budget to carefully adjust the loudness
> level of every element (including each commercial) before it get entered
> into a playout system? In theory, this could be done automatically by
> analyzing each file's subjective loudness level and adjusting the file's
> level appropriately (which is NOT the same as peak-normalizing the file;
> peak normalization has nothing to do with subjective loudness). But in
> practice, this isn't what happens at most stations.
>
>
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