RTE Radio One audio settings

TheBMG

They’re currently playing some upbeat 80s music but it sounds really smashed to the wall and not in a good way.

Do they daypart the audio processing or is it someone just massively overdriving levels on the mixing desk? It’s not doing them any favours either way

RINO87

double post - deleted

Losty Dublin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058321997/rte-radio-one-audio-settings

FM1 is not at all a music friendly audio set up, is it? Anything half electric and it can't seem to cope.

Mind you it could have been worse; the audio on Dublin City FM sounds like they inherited the graphic from Eamon Cooke's Dustbin AM rig.

KildareP

I don't believe they do daypart but the processing is tuned for speech clarity - which, in fairness, is the majority of their output - and it works for that.

Compared to say, Newstalk, who are also all speech but it sounds like everyone is talking from inside a tube.

Lyric is another example - classical music which is processed for commuter listening and is fairly faithful to the original with classical music, but Marty Whelan can often play more pop or rock oriented stuff in the morning which the same processing setup makes sound completely off.

thejuggler

The mention of dayparting brings back memories of 2fm in its 90s ‘nighttime on 2fm’ heyday when the processing would shift massively during the 7pm news ahead of the hotline with Tony Fenton (RIP). Loud and proud as the great man used to say.

Infoanon

I was surprised to see your comment on Dublin City FM as they recently acquired a new processor and the audio was greatly improved, after listening in over the last few days there appears to be a variation in quality which I would put down to the source material .

Earlier today they played a range of music from the 60s to the 80s , the audio quality was good albeit lacking some depth but on par with most the competition , not Nova quality but better than the mush that is FM104.

As for RTE , there has always been a laziness around processing imho, Ger Roe (a few years ago now ) wrote that the AM TX you refer to was not built for ' radio ' broadcasting !

TheBMG

I suspect Infoanon is right when he talks about source material being a big part of potential audio issues on smaller/volunteer run radio stations.

With such good low cost tech out there these days there’s really no reason for smaller stations to sound that much different from a larger station.

I’ve been in community radio stations before where volunteers don’t understand the issue with playing music from YouTube on air. Or that they’re talking side ways into a front address microphone etc etc. And they’re volunteers so they’re giving their time for free and aren’t neccesarily technically minded.

Livedrive on 103.2 used to sound very warbly at times. I suspect there was a low-bitrate codec being sent from the traffic studios back to the Dublin City FM building. It was fine on voice but fell apart once music was run through it.

As for Radio Dublin? Less said the better!

KildareP

Dublin City FM is far from the worst. It does sound like an Omnia unit (or possibly Breakaway) which can often open up heated Omnia vs Orban debates

iRadio is an example of poorer processing although I think their transmitter side setup has a lot to blame for that. For ages, 104.7, 105.0 and 106.2 were all at vastly different audio levels and 104.7 sounded like it had double processing and double preemphasis applied to it for well over a year.

Today FM also has horrendous audio, although it does sound like they're dayparting - sometimes it's listenable, other times the high end could be mistaken for the world's largest full Irish fry off.

But back to RTÉ - if you want to hear really bad audio, just listen to 2FM...

RINO87

Nothing to do with the sound processing side of things but Engineering on Radio 1 in general has been absolutely shocking for the last while now. You constantly have ads crashing in and out of shows, the links to the News and Nuacht can be a total mess, often when a show starts the wrong fader is opened.

The last couple of Sundays Brendan's show has been crashed into with some interview with Mary Coughlan and then the following week Miriams show was played out over his intro.

I've heard both PBH and Claire recording their links for the following days show over Louise Duffy's intro, Louise's show seems plagued with playback problems too, she often mentions that she has had to "resort to CD's" or on a couple of occasions move studio altogether.

Shockingly bad stuff, and all simple human errors, almost like folks in there are on some sort of work to rule or something.....

Back in 2008 we were given a "tour" of RTE as part of an Electrical Eng degree I was doing...I remember a guy was trying to show off a "fancy" (Behringer in 2008 was far from "fancy"!!) broadcast sound desk - it was clear he hadn't a clue what he was at...one of our lecturers tried to save him by asking him to tell us about his training and how he got the job "Well I'm actually an Electrician, I installed it, and they just left me on it"......

TheBMG

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121365828#Comment_121365828

I believe iRadios audio settings are by design but I fail to understand why. Without a doubt it’s the worst audio processing on any of the ‘large’ stations. Hiss and rumble dragged up all the time. The audio sounding like the radio is slightly offtune. A definite case of listener fatigue with the processing.

RINO87

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121365828#Comment_121365828

Interesting you mention Today FM...would their online stream also go thru the same processing as the FM output? I only ask because I used to stream Kelly Anne Byrne and then Claire Beck, but no matter which stream I chose it always sounded awful. I thought they just cheaped out on their online stream to be honest.

Antenna

TV not radio, but relating to RTE, on RTE's Six-One News this evening, at the end of the report about liquefied natural gas storage, George Lee appeared on screen, doing report from roadside holding a wireless mic with unnatural sounding audio, to my ears. Maybe my ears are oversensitive to digital compression artefacts? (and most others don't notice?) but it was 'metallic' sounding, as some describe it. The picture quality was fine, I would think it's safe to say the wireless mic was to blame.

RINO87

This is a quote from someone on the Creedon show thread, more amateur antics!! I didn't hear this, but did hear Billy Bragg being interrupted half way thru one of his songs by about 45 seconds on a Future Islands track. Mess.

"There's something seriously wrong going on tonight. During the ad break before Creedon started just after 8pm, there were around 2 full minutes of complete silence. There was an ad appeal from Goal or the like, then just nothing until an ad came on suddenly halfway through a couple of minutes later. I thought dead air was considered a total disaster in radio!"

Ger Roe

I have noticed an issue with RTE Radio 1 adverts recently, specifically for concert promotion. I am not sure if it is a particular promotion house every time, but some of the adverts aired have the music track so loud, that it drowns out the VO promoting it. There have been several adverts recently where I struggled to hear the ticket details over the 'greatest hits clips' being played in what is supposed to be 'the background'.

Not sure if it is a recording production or a transmission audio chain issue, but it is annoying to listen to. Does no one monitor an off air feed at RTE?

GPoint

Been playing with old hi gear recently and listened to all available FM stations via a pretty top end FM tuner from the 90s . Everything sounded bad unfortunately, over compressed and tinny. Of all stations 98 fm sounded most listenable albeit loud and may be tiring longer than 30 mins. Voice especially female presenters sounded what I can describe as gurgling don’t know what filter is it but it may sound ok for male presenters but not natural for female presenters. Left me disappointed overall , it seems to me that some 10 or 20 years ago you could listen to your favourite station for hours, now you just want to turn it off.