[BC] HD2 is here in Albuquerque

[Robert Orban]

At 10:00 PM 2/7/2006, you wrote:
>From: Mark W Earle <wa2mct at juno.com>
>Subject: Re: [BC] HD2 is here in Albuquerque
>To: broadcast at radiolists.net
>Message-ID: <20060207.210415.2748.1.wa2mct at juno.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
>
>On Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:11:38 -0700 "Kent Winrich, K9EZ"
><kwinrich at gmail.com> writes:
> > The sound of HD2 can sounds great!  I was running a test with a CD
> > directly into the HD2 importer without any processing.  It sounded
> > realllll nice.
> >
>
>So. Put it on the air that way. NO processing! Not on the music or the
>mics. Not even a "leveler". If it's a quiet passage, fine.
>
>I've always said that could work.. let the user "tweak" the sound with
>the receiver.
>
>Never fly, but I can dream

I have to disagree. "No processing" would sound like a kid in his basement 
playing radio, with no flow between program elements and very poor 
consistency. Multiband processing definitely has a place in HD2. What 
should be avoided is building up density (particularly at high frequencies) 
and large amounts of peak limiting. Well set up, multiband processing will 
do neither and can also control the amount of HF energy being applied to 
the codec, which is particularly important at low bit rates. A lot of CDs 
today are being mastered ear-bleedingly bright, and these need to be toned 
down by the processing to make the HDC codec perform at its best.

As far as tweaking the sound at the receiver, my Boston Acoustics has a 
volume control, plus a bass control that is essentially a setup control 
because it's buried so deep in the menus. This doesn't allow for the kind 
of tweaking that a consumer would need to do on an unprocessed signal.

Bob Orban