Ola Everyone

So I was thinking, if one was to send a SUPER loud mix to an FM radio station only to have the station completely smash all outgoing audio.

What would a good level, in theory be, to look out for? I'm sure every continent must have their own slight differences in required loudness.

Here in South Africa, most radio stations only accept mp2's and mp3's, these stations are government run..
Something else interesting, is that they have decided on a " 90% local rule , meaning less music from the USA.

This would in some way affect sound engineers as (hopefully) more artists will be inspired to create good music. Someone on my Facebook has already made #1 on the biggest station.
Just a ramble, but i'd enjoy hearing any stories or input on experiences within the ' radio ' industry.

Peace

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2016

Izotope Insight has presets that are compliant with ITU-R BS.1770-1 to 3. I know those have been superseded by ITU-R BS.1770-4.
Anyways, what's useful about Insight is it has presets for the acceptable levels in the EU, Japan and USA. DTS and SMPTE.

It even has preset loudness metering for Console and Handheld Video games.

I only know this because I use Insight but I believe NUGEN Audio has similar if not more capabilities for radio and broadcast.

This post will self-destruct in 24 hours because I am not in the ' radio ' industry.

 

https://www.telosalliance.com/image...e-radio-frank-foti-robert-orban-june-2001.pdf

TLDR: Keep short-term dynamics, reduce long-term dynamics. Have a bit of headroom. DTS & SMPTE are channel orders, not levels reccomendations iirc.

 

You do recall correctly. Thanks for the read.

 

No worries man, thanks for the insight.. haa see what I did there?
I have the Nugen Meter and it does indeed have some reference levels for different mediums, I shall look into it

Thanks a ton, i've got some reading for tonight

 

Every radio station has something of a signal chain that they are running, where the vocals and the music are being fed through.

If they have an analog signal chain in the radio studio a very popular (and expensive) choice is gear from Orban (http://www.orban.com/products/radio/). Gear like that (and a chain of outboard gear) is made to make the vocal warm and full and stand out, and have the music be consistent across all the content that they play (in frequency response, dynamics, perceived loudness, etc..).

In a digital workflow the (really misnamed) 'stereotool' plugin or suite is a go-to solution (specially for Shoutcast stations, but for FM and cheaper home-built like studios as well). It has the same function, a shitload of frequency control, multiband dynamics, loudness normalisation and fm-coding (for the RDS systems and such).

For you as an artist, that means that the song you supply will still be fed through an array of processing filters (digital or outboard or whatever) even if you think it's completely mastered, they will run everything through 'their' chain just to get consistent output.

In my opinion, delivering clean files is more important than already having it squashed and up to 'comparable' loudness levels.. radio stations will do it for you most of the time. And if you already pushed your file as hard as it will go, if they try to push it more it will fall apart. So making sure you don't peak and don't do too crazy stuff in short-term dynamics you will be safe.

If you are supplying your songs to be _audited_ (so people are going to play them on laptops and decide which ones make the cut for airtime), make sure you don't supply a track that is too soft. A bit of loudness is important to stand out or at least don't have people thinking it's bad in the first second. But don't overdo it, as your track _will_ be processed by the radio-station's own signal chain

 

Thanks for the input, I guess I should start listening to the radio more and taking note of how different mixes translate VS the untouched mastered version. You've opened my eyes more thanks

 

Tell me what you think of the quality of this station. It's the most popular in our country.
(I'm pretty sure the bit-rate is really low, but you can still judge the dynamics a bit)
http://www.5fm.co.za/digital/player/1.0/5fm/index.html

 

Last edited: Jun 28, 2016