Comments on: BBC 4 Radio Report on Death Magnetic & Sound Issues

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 02:27:20 +0000

It’s not even a valid excuse for radio. Crushing the dynamics of tracks to get a greater percieved loudness is completely unneccessary for radio broadcast – the reason being that radio has it’s own inbuilt compressors, which will raise or lower the peaks and lows of the source-sound automatically, according to the settings of the station in question. In fact, compressing an original recording to be entirely at peak level for the whole track will actually result in the music coming out QUIETER on the radio, as the stations processors will treat the song as one big maximum-peak, and therefore automatically adjust it to broadcast at a LOWER volume than it would be if it were mastered with natural dynamics. Plus it will also sound horribly flat and distorted.

By: Tim Bick

Tim Bick — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:50:08 +0000

That may be an excuse that gets proffered now, but the practice has been ongoing for a lot longer than the iTunes store (prior to which download sales were but a blip and hence not an issue). If anything, the kickstarter was an attempt to get music to sound punchier on the radio where dynamic range is quite narrow.

By: Michel LeGrisbi

Michel LeGrisbi — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:15:48 +0000

Great segment. They haven’t mentioned the reason much of this happens is to maintain a loud sound when the track is converted to mp3 for a portable device.