The View From 2009: This article led me into an interesting and very rewarding series of adventures, having to do with with Johnny Carson shows and his audio engineer, Ron Estes. Read on...

The Brave New World: Bad Audio

Bro Duke

A couple of years back, I got an irate email from a guy in northern California who calls himself Bro Duke. He took me to task for worrying about surround sound, saying, “As far as I'm concerned, the TV medium hasn't even begun to manage mono properly. How is it going to contend with multichannel?” So, I did a column on this very topic (TV Sound: Mean Streets? December, 1998).

Well, Bro Duke is still on the warpath. He’s really unhappy with the quality of much broadcast audio, and thinks we (TV Technology and the FCC, ostensibly) should do something about it. While I’m a little uncomfortable with the notion of deputizing the Bad Audio Police, particular as a division of either TV Technology or, especially, the FCC, I also am not all that keen on the quality of sound I hear from either TV or radio sources. So, when Bro Duke threatened to send me a CD documenting said lousy sound, I took him at his word, and promised to have a listen, do a column, even rant if needed.

Duke’s CD

Well, Bro Duke sent me a CD all right, and it’s pretty interesting. He has examples of “bad audio” and “good audio,” plus some commentary on both. His sources are mostly broadcast, but he also includes several pop record reissues, comparing them with either the original or an alternative reissue.

Now, the first thing to note is that some of the “bad” examples are really pretty dreadful. As in “what could they have possibly been thinking, drinking, smoking” bad.

The second thing to note is that many of the examples occur either in reissue or re-broadcast. The original work may have sounded sound pretty decent, while something really bad happened when the work was re-broadcast or reissued.

Bro Duke takes the general position that we did better in the good ol’ days. We didn’t have all these processors we didn’t know how to use, and as a result we did a better job, necessarily working with less. In other words, the then-obligatory “Keep It Simple, Stupid” syndrome kept us out of trouble. And Duke’s CD tends, of course, to support that viewpoint. Let’s take a look, er, listen.

A Quick Listen to Bad Audio

The first two examples, both record reissues, display some really ham-fisted engineering, including a major-label reissue of a pop guitar instrumental where the engineer, along with doing some massive re-equalization, tries to REMOVE THE REVERB from the guitar solo! It’s awful. The other reissue has a combination of gating and compression that manages to just about wreck the recording.

Duke then shares with us a Time-Life infomercial for a compilation CD of soul recordings that sounds like it is using a ducker backwards, but is probably a soft squelch circuit. The resulting effect is that when the voice-over stops, the level of the music bed gets turned down, erratically. Really dreadful.

Following this are some inexplicable examples of re-runs of Jay Leno. These sound to me like a poorly adjusted Burwen Dynamic Noise Filter (remember those?). When the level of Leno’s voice drops, a low-pass filter seems to sweep down, rolling off the top end and further reducing intelligibility. Why? Why? Why in the world would somebody do this?

Another infomercial, with terrible “phone-quality” voice-overs, follows. This stuff is just plain hard to listen to, really tiring! Harsh, compressed, mid-rangy, no top, no bottom, just squashed hard little voices barking at us, forever, it seems. Egad!

Then Duke treats us to some “good” commercials, some “good” Johnny Carson re-runs, some “good” Leno and some “good” Conan. (I think Duke likes to watch TV late at night.) Now, with all due respect to Duke, who really IS the guy wading through all the crud here, the “good” examples aren’t all that hot either. Duke likes the Carson examples, while I find the upper midrange boost really irritating and the compression on the audience makes me feel like I’m being bludgeoned by a moderately solid 2x4. Duke likes Carson’s voice and the quality of room tone (which is much more “live” than more contemporary broadcast techniques) over more “contemporary” sound qualities. He attributes this to the use of a desk mic (Carson used an AKG 414 during the latter part of his career, if I recall correctly), plus booms rather than lavalieres on the guests and talent.

Some Observations and Comments

None of the problems presented here have anything to do with stereo vs. mono (only one example exhibited any stereo-ness, and it was pretty benign). There were some serious problems with spectrum, some massive distortion, some mix balance problems, etc. In addition, there is some real ambivalence in the examples about ambience (a point we will discuss next month). But the big, big problem that occurs over and over in these examples is in levels management, the bad use of AGC, gates, squelch and compression, often in combination.

Now, compressors and related gain-regulating circuits are among the most difficult devices to “hear out” and learn to use. Moreover, their behavior is often counter-intuitive and sometimes yields artifacts that are quite brutal, while being entirely unexpected and unintended. This is particularly so in systems and chains of systems where we end up with multiple gain-regulating stages in series. This is a common occurrence in broadcasting, as the audio signal goes tripping down the production staircase from studio to control room to post suite to distribution to satellite to cable/regional station to transmitter to couch potato.

Partly, of course, the poor quality is due to simple incompetence. There are people dealing with audio who simply don’t know (and may not care) what they are doing. It is an article of faith that audio is largely forgotten in the TV production and transmission world, and it shows.

Another reason for the poor quality is simple inattention. Gain regulation that worked fine for some program material may not work for other material. The price of quality is eternal vigilance, like the Duke said.

A third reason is poor or incomplete training. The poor schnook that tried to REMOVE THE REVERB from a guitar solo whose quality was based on that reverb apparently lacked the musical training necessary to recognize that inherent production value. The result was inappropriate production goals.

There’s more to this, however. Next month, I’ll discuss some of the other issues surrounding these misadventures, plus my own look at the current state of audio coming out of the tube.

Thanks for listening.

Dave Moulton usually falls asleep before Jay Leno comes on, but he’ll try to stay awake and check it out! You can complain to him about this or anything else at moultonlabs.com.

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