Compression

[dgmccarthy]

At the time I was there, the R1 guys (I remember Chris Lycett in particular for some reason) were trying out new boxes to create an "audio signature" which would make Radio One louder than everyone else, probably in preparation for the flurry of new national FM broadcasters that were waiting in the wings.  These boxes by the likes of Optimod and Orban did some clever things but were easy to misuse.

In the studios, while on air, we had monitoring that would allow us to switch between studio output and an off-air feed and the difference was often quite startling. I recall once hearing "Hotel California" (not on Peel!) and wondering where the snare had gone.

However, there was also a brace of compressor/limiters across the desk channels and the technique at the time was to crank up the input on an upcoming disk channel, let it crash into the comp/lim on the group fader and then pull back to a sensible compression level once it had started. Can't have any quiet bits!!

The result was as Stuart recalls - level up for the quiet intro and a nastily squashed loud section until the operator pulled down the input level.  The additional limiting as outlined above added to that.

My session tapes would have all been dubbed independently, not at broadcast, so would have avoided all that.  Can't say the same for my program recordings, although they wouldn't have the additional processing.  I do like to think I had a little more "finesse" but most prime-time shows were crunched to the max with the likes of dear old Steve Wright giving me an earful if everything wasn't louder than everything else!

Memories....

David