[peel] Compression

[Stuart]

Very interesting! I was also aware of the Peel Show being less compressed
than other shows - Smells Like Teen Spirit used to sound ridiculous on
daytime shows - the guitar intro would play at the volume of the shouty DJ
then when the rest of the band started it sounded like someone had pushed
them away from the mikes and off the back of the stage!

Having got used to the 90s FM sound it was astounding to play back some of
my old off-air Peel mixtapes from the early 80s and hear just what FM is
capable of.

Incidentally not all stations in the 80s were as good, I remember Radio
Scotland had a strangely limited top end until the mid 80s, with the same
tracks sounding less sparkly than on R1, and WestSound was even worse..

These days many internet radio stations sound far better than FM and DAB as
they are broadcast, probably as they don't see the need for compression.

 

Stuart

 

  _____  

From: peel@yahoogroups.com [mailto:peel@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
dgmccarthy
Sent: 12 April 2011 08:19
To: peel@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [peel] Compression

 

  

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