[BC] Understanding TSL

[Jason R. at KGVL - KIKT]

One of the things that forced us to process our sound the way we do is a 
simple lack of TPO/ERP .  I use light compression/peak limiting.

  Totally uncompressed sound from say, one of the International Philharmonic 
orchestras, an a capella choir,  or similar source might sound wonderful in 
the studio, a half mile from the stick.  But... it gets tiring if carried 
too far.

  We could perfectly reproduce the dynamic range of sources like that to the 
limit of our main transmitter transmitter, so to speak. But, with an ERP of 
little-to-none... it made for a very clean, but very weak, sounding station.

  Exactly like... a Crown500 rig I watched for the BBN.
(Bible Broadcasting Network, ultra conservative, based in North Carolina)  . 
Really.

Crown makes decent sound equipment, this particular rig is a 500 watt FM 
transmitter with onboard compression / expansion/ limiting, a toggle or two 
to adjust input gains.  It works well.

By setting the onboard processing to midrange, picking up the low parts a 
bit and barely quashing the peaks, it would get coverage 12-16 miles out at 
300w ERP, and sounded very good.  It was super clean, no exaggerated peaks 
in any of the freqs and reasonably loud.  Not rock'n roll loud - just, clean 
and present without pumping, lisping, hashing...
dry mic vocals sounded like they were in the car with you, sitting alongside 
you talking.

  But, the corporate folks didn't like that.   They wanted the 'funeral 
home' ambience, found by twiddling the Crown processing to full 'expand'. 
Back to the 'funeral home' sound we went.  Definitely quieter than nearly 
anything else on the band.  Not one hint of noise within a reasonable 
distance of the transmitter, 100%  pos mod, etc. but still - a bit quiet.

Sure, you now got the thoroughly relaxing no-thump no shriek envelope of 
sound to live in... if you're looking for 'fun' or ' loud' radio, you wont 
find it here though it does sound great.  Sort of.  I think it's annoyingly 
wimpy, after about 5 minutes. Even the 1812 Overature is perfectly - blah. 
Nothing exciting about it other than the precision with which it's 
reproduced, but... rrrgh.  Something missing soundwise, imho.  Just a 
frustrating feel to sound like that.  Like a kiss on the forehead.

The tech caveat is that it will only cover a few blocks at the same ERP 
before the noise floor comes up... and the outer contour is now only about 8 
miles, at the same TPO/ERP with the same antenna in the same location at the 
same time of year with the same weather conditions.

  Kinda empirical, but explains why I tightened up the sound a bit at my 
main stations.   At least I can fill in my contours.

 In my piddly thinking,  Just keep things NORMAL sounding - as in - NOT 
sounding like a recording, NOT sounding like you're 'doing something' to the 
sound... and you'll be in the ballpark, at least.   too many people to to 
either extreme trying to impress somebody, it just gets annoying!

Jason