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The Radio Station: A Hidden Producer and Your Secret Ally

Radio Stations have a serious interest in drivetime sound. Their advertising income, which is the reason for their existence, is based on their market share, particularly during drivetime, which is when everyone (which means everyone with a job and at least a little money) is driving around in their car listening to the radio.

A couple of years back, I got to hang out with the chief engineer of a major commercial station in Detroit. For general amusement and edification, he made simultaneous recordings of his station’s audio as it came out of the console and as it was received in a car. The two versions were night and day, virtually different mixes with different values. It was fascinating and instructive to hear. The reason for this is all the signal processing that the station includes as part of the transmitting process. In order to stay within FCC rules regarding power, substantial compression is routinely used at the transmitter. Spinning off this, stations develop their own “sound” through all kinds of signal processing trickery at this point, including compression, EQ, reverb, exciters, etc. Sometimes, they have been known to speed up their records by a few percent, to make everything a little “zippier,” if you know what I mean.

A great deal of the decision-making regarding such signal-processing involves driving around and listening to the station, especially in comparison to the competition. So, these guys are really tuned in to drivetime, and they spend a lot of time reworking the station sound so that our recordings sound like hot stuff in cars. At one level, this is offensive to all of us who have worked so hard to get our mixes right. We often find their decisions crass and tasteless. On the other hand, it is a great help to us, because it means that we don’t have to worry quite so much about drivetime, at least via broadcast – somebody else is already taking care of it. What you have to do is grit your teeth and resign yourself to the fact that the hosing and squashing they are doing to your song is probably not exactly what you would choose to do to it, while keeping in mind that you aren’t mixing by riding around in your car, talking on a cellular phone to a guy in the studio and saying, “Give me a little more attack time on the bass, and boost 15 KHz. another 6 dB. We still can’t hear the top end out here.” The radio guys do that stuff pretty routinely. Take comfort in it.