Post
by Albert H » Tue May 03, 2016 1:45 pm
Unfortunately, you DO need a limiter - speech (in particular) has huge transients that will cause overmodulation if not tamed, and no DJ has such a monotone voice that there aren't any plosives or consonant clicks that cause big peaks.
Most modern music is recorded with a very limited dynamic range - often achieved by recording much too loudly on to a CD, causing gross clipping. It's instructive to get two releases of the same CD - one from the mid-80s and one from the last 10 years, and compare their levels. You'll find that the more recent version is clipped to hell in an effort to make it sound "loud".
The music that I play and listen to tends to have a larger dynamic range than most current stuff, and compression and limiting is essential to broadcast it successfully. I tend to use a low-level expander (to get rid of record surface noise), a 2:1 (or up to 4:1) compressor to even out the worst excesses of the recordings and a peak limiter that catches the peaks from the records or CDs and handles the peaks that the microphone compressor lets through.
I find that multi-band compression can be useful - especially if establishing a particular "sound" for a station. One station that I set up in the Caribbean has an emphasised bass end and some extra top to sound better on the small portable radios that are common there. The listeners commented on how much "clearer" this one sounds when compared to the competition. It has a fairly relaxed compression, but very aggressive limiting to handle the heavy basslines that they usually broadcast.
Though I say it myself, it sounds damn good!
The other side of the story are the clueless gits that set up "Heart" and "Crapital". They've spent a fortune on processing gear, and haven't got a clue how to set it up. The AM Crapital Gold often sounds better than their horrible FM! They've just cloned the settings from American commercial stations and can't understand why nobody listens for more than 10 minutes at a time! It's truly horrible - over compressed, clipped and with a frequency response that must look really strange on their equalisers. This is an example of exactly how NOT to do it!
Back in the 80s, the Yanks had their "Loudness Wars". The station I was on used to pride itself on being the "loudest thing on the band". When the Arbitron ratings came out - and we were third in listenership - the management decided to screw the levels even further into the red! After a week or two of this over-compressed mush, we snuck in one night and "adjusted" the processing. The management never actually listened to the station, so they didn't know what we'd done, but were very pleased when we were solidly number 1 in the ratings for the next year! We got a reputation for "quality" rather than loudness, and our listeners would stay with us for hours.....
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!" 
