The Song Fight Bulletin Board

C'mon, someone here knows: what are the real EQ values for:

AM radio?
FM radio?
Telephone?
Lo-fi TV?

What do you mean by EQ values? Do you mean what frequencies are broadcast over the carrier wave or just the general frequency response when it comes to the listener? Kinda vague from somebody so Generic.

The actual sounds that the phone/radio/TV produces have a specific frequency range, depending on the device. What are those ranges?

here, you can go here to download stuff that you can use to test the frequency response of your telephone, etc., and then you can find out yourself! it's cool cause it's like a science experiment or something.

tviyh wrote:here, you can go here to download stuff that you can use to test the frequency response of your telephone, etc., and then you can find out yourself! it's cool cause it's like a science experiment or something.

Yeah, but that's less time you could be spending on

tviyh wrote:coverfight songs?

so let me just quotate some stuff out of one of my old undergrad texts. Standard uncondioned telephone has a bandwidth of 3k; the range varies somewhat but it's usually about 300-3000 Hz. AM radio is 0-5kHz and FM is 0-15kHz. The audio part of a (non-HD) TV signal is about the same bandwidth as FM radio; I have no idea about things like high-def and digital cable.

Above all applies to the US-of-A; standards vary from country to country.

bzl wrote:I have no idea about things like high-def and digital cable.

MPEG audio streams, so the frequency range is effectively whatever the user sets the lpf at to keep the encoder from freaking out.

so let me just quotate some stuff out of one of my old undergrad texts. Standard uncondioned telephone has a bandwidth of 3k; the range varies somewhat but it's usually about 300-3000 Hz. AM radio is 0-5kHz and FM is 0-15kHz

first of all if we're talking in practical terms not theoretical ones, saying 0 hz makes no sense because most people can't hear below 20hz and most consumer systems don't even get very close to that. on the high end, the high end 5k probably isn't completely accurate for AM. the NRSC standard is 20Hz to 10kHz. For FM the standard is in fact 20Hz to 15kHz. however some stations and such have opted to reduce the frequency range in general because reducing it creates more headroom for the frequencies within the range creating a louder signal. this is a bad habit in my opinion and very equal to compressing your recording to hell so it will be "as loud" as everything else even though you'll end up with a flat sounding recording with no dynamics. the loudness race is killing modern recordings or at least making mainstream music unlistenable anymore if the songs are any good to begin with.

a more real world estimation for radio would be AM: 60Hz to 7.5kHz, FM 20Hz to 15kHz (or lower on the high end for FM) but also you have to factor in the response of the speakers you're listening on, 20 Hz might be a bit low for some systems.

Is is standard practice for big labels to release different AM-friendly or FM-friendly masters of recordings? If not, is there some reason? All my mixes/masters sound good to me on headphones, decent to me on speakers, and crap-crapola to me in my moving car. I imagine its possible (just beyond my skill level) to make one mix/master that sounds great on all those systems, but it seems more likely that specialized mix/masters could sound even better on one (though crappier on the others).

Does anyone routinely check their mixes in a car? Any tricks to making a good mix for the car? (My trouble is some instruments get entirely drowned out by the road/engine noise, and some stick out like crazy: it's never a good result!)

Mostess wrote:Does anyone routinely check their mixes in a car? Any tricks to making a good mix for the car? (My trouble is some instruments get entirely drowned out by the road/engine noise, and some stick out like crazy: it's never a good result!)

I tend to overcompress if I'm tweaking for the car, because there's no room for detail over the engine noise. And I've heard that some tricky producers pan the vocals just right of center to make it sound centered to the driver in a car. But that's insane.

Mostess wrote:Is is standard practice for big labels to release different AM-friendly or FM-friendly masters of recordings? If not, is there some reason? All my mixes/masters sound good to me on headphones, decent to me on speakers, and crap-crapola to me in my moving car. I imagine its possible (just beyond my skill level) to make one mix/master that sounds great on all those systems, but it seems more likely that specialized mix/masters could sound even better on one (though crappier on the others).

Does anyone routinely check their mixes in a car? Any tricks to making a good mix for the car? (My trouble is some instruments get entirely drowned out by the road/engine noise, and some stick out like crazy: it's never a good result!)

I recently read the memoir of the drummer from 90's 1.5-hit-wonder "Semisonic". It's really good and I recommend it highly.

Anyway, in there he describes the process for mixing "Closing Time". Apparently they make ALL SORTS of mixes for a single, for all sorts of different purposes. For example, there will be a different mix for each type of radio-- adult alternative, top 40, urban, etc. Then there will be a mix for MTV. And another for dance clubs. Etc. etc.

So yeah, they make different mixes of the singles for lots of different purposes. Some with different mastering/eq/compression, and others that are actually shorter or longer depending on the purpose.

jb wrote:

Mostess wrote:I recently read the memoir of the drummer from 90's 1.5-hit-wonder "Semisonic". It's really good and I recommend it highly.

Anyway, in there he describes the process for mixing "Closing Time". Apparently they make ALL SORTS of mixes for a single, for all sorts of different purposes. For example, there will be a different mix for each type of radio-- adult alternative, top 40, urban, etc. Then there will be a mix for MTV. And another for dance clubs. Etc. etc.

The Black Eyed Peas are another example of this - their radio mixes are extremely different than the CD versions. They don't even use the same instrumentation a lot of the time. The radio mixes tend to lose the subtlety and emphasize the beat.

I wish I could find an article I found awhile back regarding mixing for FM. College stations don't tend to do this, but pretty much all commercial radio compresses and limits the living bejesus out of the material before it hits the airwaves. This article had ways for dealing with it. Does anyone know which one I'm talking about? I want to say it was posted here somewhere.

jb wrote:Apparently they make ALL SORTS of mixes for a single, for all sorts of different purposes. For example, there will be a different mix for each type of radio-- adult alternative, top 40, urban, etc. Then there will be a mix for MTV. And another for dance clubs. Etc. etc.

I'd kind of suspected that. It seems like different mixes/recordings/masters arise to sustain a song's popularity as well. The first one I remember was in the late-80's: Extreme's "More Than Words" had at least three conspicuously different endings. You never knew which one you were going to get.

And I know songs from last year seem to turn up with more or less rocking arrangements, but (seemingly) the same vocals. I feel like Matchbox Twenty is still trying to figure out how to make "If You're Gone" not sound 1976ish. (Funny: I just checked my facts at their official site and they have the whole song available for streaming. I have never, ever heard that mix/recording before. I assume it's the one on their album, "Mad Season." It does not sound very 1976ish.)

But does all this mean that somewhere there's a DAT labeled "B. Spears, Lucky: FOR AM BROADCAST ONLY"?

joshw wrote: The Black Eyed Peas are another example of this - their radio mixes are extremely different than the CD versions.

"The Mummer's Dance" by Loreena McKennitt on the radio had a beat and this wonky bassline (v cool). The CD didn't have that, and in fact was pretty folky. Found out both versions are on the single, which is cool. I like both.
This stuff about different "mixes", though, is news to me. Heh.
-bill

There's also the obvious "radio remix with swear words removed".

joshw wrote:I wish I could find an article I found awhile back regarding mixing for FM...

This might be it: http://www.euphonicmasters.com/orban_article.php . If not, it's still interesting.

The closing section has this, which is directly relevant to Mostess's question:

We therefore recommend that record companies provide broadcasters with radio mixes. These can have all of the equalization, slow compression, and other effects that producers and mastering engineers use artistically to achieve a desired “sound.” What these radio mixes should not have is fast digital limiting and clipping. Leave the short-term envelopes unsquashed. Let the broadcast processor do its work.

I'll bet Green Day did this with American Idiot. The CD sounds great, although it's obviously heavily compressed. There's no way that sound would survive the extra compression, limiting, and clipping typical of the FM stations that play Green Day.

<b>admin sez: moderated to space the period away from the link so it's clickable and doesn't turn up 404</b>

That article is amazing.

Hypercompressed material does not sound louder on the air. It sounds more distorted, making the radio sound broken in extreme cases. It sounds small, busy, and flat. It does not feel good to the listener when turned up, so he or she hears it as background music. Hypercompression, when combined with “major-market” levels of broadcast processing, sucks the drama and life from music. In more extreme cases, it sounds overtly distorted and is likely to cause tune-outs by adults, particularly women.

"Particularly women?" Someone has been doing some very interesting research on this stuff. I'll have to look for trade journals with these kinds of studies. Damned cool.

I had no idea so much signal processing FM broadcasters do. Fascinating. I doubt HM will ever hit FM airwaves, but it's nice to know how we'd be folded, spindled, and mutilated in the process.

Also this:

(The only significant exception [to clean sources pre-1990] that comes to mind is 45-rpm singles, which often were overtly distorted.)

I still remember desperately trying to get my 45-rpm single of Grand Funk Railroad's "Some Kind of Wonderful" to sound good (a.k.a. not sloppy and loud) on my turntable. It was so scratchy-sounding, I couldn't even determine the singer's pitch. I even replaced my needle, but it didn't have any effect. It's all starting to make sense to me now...

Yeah radio does that to ensure consistent product. They don't want people to have to be constantly turning their volume up and down because of the different mastering levels on different recordings. So they compress the wazoo out of it to ensure the loudest, least-dynamically-variant sound they can get.

not deshead wrote: <b>admin sez: moderated to space the period away from the link so it's clickable and doesn't turn up 404</b>

Thank you. I kind of like having such a hands-on admin, but it must be so time-consuming. You don't happen to have a job, do you?

And the commercials are always louder. That always irks me.

The thing about the radio that I don't understand, and perhaps it's too complicated to explain here... granted this thread is titled "EQ" , not radio, however that seems to be the actual theme here, anyway, I've never understood how one can hear all these different frequencies on a particular bandwidth. Without any scientific background on the subject, it seems to make no sense, (although clearly it does, cause it works).

Mostess wrote:

not deshead wrote: <b>admin sez: moderated to space the period away from the link so it's clickable and doesn't turn up 404</b>

Thank you. I kind of like having such a hands-on admin, but it must be so time-consuming. You don't happen to have a job, do you?

I fix the stuff I notice. I'm a fixer. It's a compulsion engendered by my day job.

Leaf wrote:anyway, I've never understood how one can hear all these different frequencies on a particular bandwidth.

Grossly simplified: the highest frequency they need to represent is 20KHz (the upper range of human hearing.) FM stations don't broadcast at pin-point frequencies. Rather, a station broadcasting at 100.3MHz is using spectrum from 100.2MHz through 100.4MHz. So that's a bandwidth of about 200KHz. Lots of room. (Here's the math: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?nod ... modulation ... URL comes complete with space before trailing dots )

Thanks. that makes sense now. While I don't pretend to follow the math, I do get the concept. That's also a pretty cool site...one could get lost there for hours.

deshead wrote: This might be it: http://www.euphonicmasters.com/orban_article.php . If not, it's still interesting.

that is a great article...thanks Des!