Now Ya’ Gotta Build It…Low Power FM (LPFM)

The filing window is closed; the commission has begun its review of Low Power FM (LPFM) applications. In short - or maybe not so short - order, construction permits will be granted. The first ones will probably be the "singletons" as some are referring to them...applications which satisfy all of the separation requirements and have no mutually exclusive applications.

 

Then comes the fun part: building the station. This is where smart thinking – and planning – can save some real money.  (Yes,  my group does these but regardless of who you work with, we can’t find a single reason for spending more than you have to in order to wind up with a functional studio/transmission system.)

 

Because of the nature of the LPFM service, cost is a major concern, but so is reliability and durability. After all, it has to stay on the air and many operators may have little or no experience handling radio gear. Here are some points to keep in mind:

 

When thinking through equipment, first plan your programming! If you're doing 24x7 live talk, you could get away with a couple of mics, a mixer, headphones, processor, transmitter and antenna. You could, but even with such a simple format you'll want to be able to pre-produce program intros and closings, station ID's, PSA's and information about donors and support. That will mean a separate production area with its own inputs like mics, music playback (CD, .mp3 players, a quality computer) and possibly a phone input/system to prerecord calls. And, in any case, you'll need to be EAS compliant. That means at least an EAS/CAP decoder.

 

About that phone, if you want to take live calls on air, you'll need a telephone interface – probably a hybrid, but not necessarily – for the air studio. Along those lines, you will probably want to protect yourself against fines with a program delay unit that allows you to terminate callers or other persons before their comments reach the transmitter should their words go outside the bounds of acceptability for the time of day.

 

Of course, it gets more complicated as you add programming types. A local concert will require remote equipment - mics, stands, mixer, headphones and a recorder. Want to do it live? Well, that means a way to get that concert back to the studio. What about live, in-studio music? That's a challenging format since it usually calls for a larger studio, multiple microphones, and a more sophisticated mixing console.

 

You may choose to automate part of the day. It may be voice-tracking by your own talent or by an outside feed. Programming may come from a digital line or satellite. It will need to be downlinked/downloaded and fed out over the air.

 

Each format has its own challenges - and costs. And that means working hard and working smart to keep those costs down. It means doing the research to find that a $200 XYZ box will do just as good a job as a $1500 unit. Quality is quality and LPFM shouldn't be shortchanged. But spending more than you need to is a waste.

 

Then you need to consider the transmission gear. The audio processor (yes, you'll need one to ensure compliance with FCC rules), the transmitter, studio-transmitter link and remote control (if the transmitter is separated from the studio), transmission line, tower and antenna. And don't forget to consider lightning and static discharge protection. Protection doesn't have to be costly and it's hard to dedicate funds to equipment that doesn't affect/improve the sound of your station. Of course, if spending the money on lightning elimination keeps the station on the air undamaged through lightning assaults, it actually does affect the sound.

 

Finally, add in security...to prevent theft and vandalism and to make sure the airwaves aren't accessed by unauthorized individuals.

 

Here, in a nutshell is a checklist for getting your station built:

• Iron out your programming plans
• Work through the equipment you'll need for each format
• Do a layout of studio, production room, meeting room, storage (Yes storage. You'll need more than you imagine)
• Plan your transmitter location and determine how the audio will be transmitted from the studio to the transmitter
• Summarize all of the equipment needed
• Seek a reputable service to specify equipment to meet your needs and satisfy your construction permit and provide you the most flexibility possible within your budget

LPFM is providing valuable services across the country. When you receive your CP you'll be on the road to becoming a part of it.

 

Give me an L-F-ing Break

This is a general request.  It goes out to all the folks mixing audio for television.  It's a simple request, too:  Listen to your product before it goes out the door.  I mean, really listen!

 

Eight thousand years ago, when we laid back a final track, we listened to it.  Yeah, yeah, everybody listens to their tracks.  But, at the time, before stereo, MTS, BTSC and all the other acronyms, we listened on the studio monitor, then on a four-inch Quam squaker atop the audio console.  (We also viewed release video on a mono monitor, too, but that’s for another day.)

 

Any number of times the great audio on the JBL or Altec sounded like garbage on the Quam…and far worse than just what the poor response of that midget caused. 

 

Often the problem was the desire to pump a lot of bass into the signal.  Cool idea.  And on a console TV system with some semblance of an audio reproduction system, it sounded pretty good.  But that bass, when pushed through the 5 watt amp to a small speaker suddenly suffered from A) heavy distortion from the amp and B) even worse distortion as the tiny voicecoil, now getting some nice square waves from the amp, bottomed and topped out, taking the midrange with it. 

 

So, you listened on the small speaker and you heard the problems…and you remixed so that folks could actually hear intelligible audio. 

FADE TO BLACK

 

FADE IN

It’s 35 years later.  We’ve jumped over stereo, forgotten about quad and moved into at least 5.1 sound.  And, hurray for the dot-one.  That is if you have the audio system for it.  No, wait.  Even if you do have the system for it, it’s not a hurray.

 

Why, you ask?  No, really, I just heard someone ask why.  

 

The thinking on the creative side is, “Now we have some real audio.  Let’s use it all.”  And the production guys try to give creative what they want.  So when that Hummer is thundering across the salt flat, they mix the LFE’s (the low frequency effects…the dot-one part of 5.1 content) hot – really hot.

 

But, guess what.  After they listen on the studio monitors – in 5.1 and properly adjusted – many apparently don’t listen in other formats.  And, as far as I can tell, no one in the studio is listening through a TV broadcast audio processor…and, get this…I’m revealing a big secret here…all broadcasters are using them.

 

I’m not going to go into a lot of technical detail here.  But let me offer one example…You’ve produced a “smokin’” (hey world, would you stop with that word!) make that “driving” audio track.  Lots of LFE information.  It hits the station’s audio processor.

 

More than likely, that unit is a multiband processor.  If so, depending upon on its settings, it may squash the dynamic range considerably and completely change the ratio of LFE to audio.  And, again, depending upon settings, if there is a “bass coupling” control, that driving bass will upset the reproduced levels of the midrange and high frequencies, usually reducing them considerably.  

 

So you dump in a thunderous series of 40Hz sfz notes and the track pulses wonderfully.  Then, it hits the processor which, when it sees those pulses, lowers the overall gain – and you lose the dialog!

 

Right.  The dot-one tail is wagging the 5 dog.

 

Now, these days, finding good dialog is hard enough.  But then, to have to dig it out of the mud because of the LFE channel, well, that's just not fun.  It means either backing up with the DVR and trying to pick out a few of the words or just changing channels.

 

Then, don’t forget to figure in processing to comply with the CALM Act.  I have earlier posts on that so I won’t rehash it…but that has to be figured in and should be in the monitor chain at the post house.

 

And to go one step further...most home units put out 2 channel stereo, relying on external audio amps to decode to 5.1.  Oh, and that stereo may pass through a set’s processing, offering EQ and even “audio leveling” which, in most cases, is compression.  If the station processing didn’t crunch your track and destroy the ratio of LFE to music and dialog, the receiver’s waiting like a safety in the game you’re watching, to step on your mix with cleats.

 

Now, let’s say the viewer has a nice LED screen – flanked with its internal 2x6” speakers.  They don’t even hear the LFE information.  It may get to the speakers but it may not even generate any sound at the speakers.  So what does the viewer/listener hear?  Nothing but the audio level dropping and, probably, the dialog disappearing.  And, frankly, as a consumer, I don’t particularly like that.

 

Hey creative folks:  try to remember as you mix that pushing the excitement envelope can, in some cases, render the audio unintelligible.  I won’t point fingers but listen critically to just about any one-hour crime drama.  It ain’t pretty.

 

If your finishing house doesn’t have at least some gear to simulate the broadcast transmission process, ask ‘em why they don’t.  And if they do, insist that they use it.  Listen in 5.1, stereo, stereo small speaker, mono small speaker, and 7.1 if you can.  And here’s a tip:  listen on computer speakers, too.  And, shortly, you’ll want to check it on your iPhone’s earbuds.  No  doubt, in short order, multiple mixes will be packaged in the transport stream and be keyed in automatically by the receiver.

 

IFor now, though, if you listen on a number of possible receiving devices, I’ll tell you this:  the audio you leave with won’t be the same as the super-hot mix you had in mind.  But viewers/listeners will get the content.  And wouldn’t that be pleasant.

http://www.orban.com/products/television/8685/

http://junger-audio.com/products/product-overview/digital-audio-processor-devices/tap-television-audio-processor/main-information/

http://omniaaudio.com/omnia-6ex-and-6exi-features-and-benefits

http://wheatstone-processing.com/

Everyone Wants to Be Normal

I ran into the whole "normalization" thing 10 or 12 years ago. We were working with a major IT company whose expertise we obtained in exchange for our licensing a bunch of rights to them.

We were in the early days of web audio.

As a quality facility, we supplied materials with the expected/required/proper audio and video levels. Nonetheless, we got our first bill - well, it was a deduction from the credit we had for licensing - and it included "Audio Normalizing." 

"We sent you abnormal audio?" I asked, imagining Gene Wilder saying it.

"I don't know," was the response.

"But we were charged for normalizing."

"Well, yes, all audio sent through our group is normalized. That way the levels are constant."

"But what if they're already constant?"

"Doesn't matter. Normalizing ensures it." Then he went into at best a poor explanation of digitization."

That exchange told me they were taking us were back to the wild west again. Like a dorm room carrier current station running unbalanced audio that was all over the place. And, sure enough, that's what their group usually saw. Of course, at that time, a lot of untrained folks bought camcorders and jumped into the business and there lay the problem.

But I hear it now, too - a lot! "Don't worry about the levels; I'll normalize them later."

Makes me reel every time. Also sends me back 40+ years to, "Don't worry about the levels. StaLevel® will catch 'em."

OK. I could say to consider normalization an indictment of sloppy operation. But when I hear someone say they want to normalize, I indict their ears.

Huh?

First, let me say, yes, I know, (oxymoron alert!) "good normalization" involves a more complex algorithm than simple gain adjustment or compression and expansion. But think about two things:

1. Once you get to digital, the mathematics of the process can yield numbers that can't be fully quantified. That is, when the process boosts a section by, say, 2.6dB, a lot of those new numbers don't fall into the exact level of the 16 or 24 bits assigned. Hey, McFly. That's distortion. Might be bad, might be inaudible. But it's there. Some ratios are worse than others. But you can be sure something's there.

2. As smart as normalization might be, it can't (yet) decide how to normalize in certain situations. Dialog, for example - dialog where one line steps on another. Record that with one person about 6 dB below the other. Normalize it and listen. Did a pretty good job, eh? Listen again - to the tails of each line - the parts stepped on. Big change. Did you want that? Normalize a single part or thread and, except for number 1 above, it functions fairly well. Normalize multiple parts already mixed and you get, well, number 2.

Recommendation: just watch the doggoned levels. Get it right in the recording. Your mix will be a lot easier, it'll all be audible, and you won't have to normalize.

Live Performance Sound

I want to talk a little about live performances and audio.  This time, not from a production standpoint, but looking at it – make that listening to it – from the consumer standpoint.

Mitsuko Uchida became the foremost performer of Mozart piano works some 15 years ago.  She decided that wasn’t enough; she then became renowned for her performances of Beethoven.  Sure couldn’t pass up her performance with the CSO. 

But it was an interesting disappointment and it relates to staging a live performance.  In this case, her work was its usual top drawer level.  But she’s chosen to be both pianist and conductor.  So they wheel the piano into place…you look askance because as the stagehands leave the stage, you see the keys facing outward, toward the audience.  And, so that Ms. Mitsuko can be seen by all of the orchestra, they’ve removed the piano lid.

That creates the disappointment.

First, we’re seeing Ms. Mitsuko’s back and nothing of the keys.  OK.  I can live with that.  I can close my eyes and just imagine.

Second, and this is a real problem for me, removing the lid of a piano totally changes the tonality of the instrument.  Just for review, the note of just about any instrument consists of a number of parts.  First, is the attack.  That’s actually a high frequency component, even of low notes.  Heck, even with a kick drum, that chest-thumping part of the sound is due to the high frequencies – the punch in the pedal – that are followed by the thud of the drum.

When the piano is at ninety degrees to the audience and the lid is open (note: it has to be ON to be open) those highs actually bounce off the hard, polished lid and out into the audience.  We hear the attack of each note.  Take away the lid and you take away the attack.  Take away the attack and the notes turn to mush.  That’s not a passing comment.  It’s based on listening, critically, and – tinnitus aside – hearing the lack of attack, the lack of differentiation of notes.

Third, that lack of lid causes yet another problem.  Those close to the source – performer, included – hear those attacks.  As a consequence, their sound seems louder to them than to the audience who doesn’t hear those peaks as each note is articulated.  So? 

So, remember sending guys out to do ball games over POTS lines?  And you’d constantly yell at them about balance between their voices and crowd noise?  They heard their voices and the crowd noise at full range.  But the telco line rolled off everything starting at 3 kHz.  Welllll.  The highs in the crowd noise were already rolled off when they arrived at the announcer’s mic.  So when the play-by-play guy mixed his voice, he mixed it a little low compared to the crowd noise.  His high end was the key to being heard.  But at the other end, rolled off at 3 kHz, the announcers sounded lower in level compared to the crowd.  There were no highs to help them out.

Same thing with the piano.  The performer hears all of the attack of each note.  She/he balances her/his volume on that basis.  But, sadly for row G, the attack isn’t heard.  It’s busy rolling around the balconies.  So the balance is way off, with the piano’s apparent level far below what you as a listener would desire.

So, what’s the lesson to be learned?

Tell the performer she/he can’t conduct and perform?  Nope.  You don’t tell talent that.  But you do make her/him aware of what the issues are.  Make a test recording during a rehearsal and play it back for them.  With luck, you wind up with a separate conductor, or at least with the piano lid back on and the instrument reoriented to reflect the highs.

Same is true with rock bands, jazz, or any other form of live music.  Make sure that what the performer hears is what the audience hears…and make just as sure that the audience hears what you intended.  Is that the job of the house mix guy?  You have to decide that.  Regardless, you want to get the right sound out there.

And you know what all that takes?  Time.  You have to spend the time walking the aisles, sitting in seats and listening critically.  If you’re broadcasting the performance, you have to listen through a filter that duplicates the other end of the line.  That’s the only way that you’ll have even a remote (pun intended) idea of what the listener will hear. 

Doesn’t matter whether it’s a church service, a rock concert or a punk band at a bowling alley.  You gotta do it.  Just think about it from the listener’s (consumer’s) POV.  They’re on site – or listening over the air – because they want the excitement of live performance.  You want them to hear the best you’ve got.

Now, if you’ll let me, I’m going to go rack up a CD of Mozart’s Piano Concerto #20 and listen to those attacks.

Do you Care What's Comin' Out the Other End?

Most of us in this crazy thing we try to call a business work on delivering video, audio, and their related emotions to remote locations.  I’ve talked about production values and their influence on the overall message but I want to talk about receiver locations and guessing – guessing on those locations, the ones of our followers, then guessing on their moods, their friends, viewing/listening conditions, time of day, even their blood alcohol levels.

Yeah, you gotta guess about it all because, somehow, you have to use it to calibrate your thinking.  What am I talking about here?  OK, here’s the “duh” version.  Valentine’s Day.  What content do you offer.  Go for the goulish?  Ripping hearts out and roasting them on a Smokey Joe™?  I don’t think so.

Now, if you start paring it down, you get more granular.  (Is that the department of redundancy department?)  You start asking about which love story to tell.  Or about which love song to play.   Then you ask about timing.  You think about followers as individuals as opposed to this monolithic group, all with the same feelings.

The bottom line is, you can try to figure out your audience really is – make that are.  You create an average and shoot for that.  You can treat them as individuals, too.  But if you don’t have separate channels to deliver different versions to each individual, you’re kinda stuck.

Sometimes you luck out.  You can upload for Youtube, Hulu, Brightcove and others along with MP4, H264 and WMV players.  Then you can offer additional versions for iPhones, Android phones, and, hey, if you wanna, broadcast TV.  NBC Sports and The NFL are taking a big leap by offering the Superbowl online for the first time.

In doing so, they’ve recognized that they have different channels…and they’re delivering content tailored to each medium and, in some cases, to specific devices.  Son-of-a-gun.  They broke the code.  The found out they could deliver different messages and they’re doing it.  It caters directly to their audiences.  Note the plural.  The rabid fan will have multiple screens open alongside the broadcast.  Heck, so will the rabid gambler, but you didn’t read that here.  But the point is that they’re offering multiple angles, replays, facts, stats and sideline views – if you want them.  Cannibalize the broadcast feed?  No way.

Of course, not every event has all of those channels to the viewer.  You can open them but the cost may be prohibitive.  In these cases, you just have to guess at what’s out there because there’s only one medium and one channel reaching your audience.

Flashback:  once upon a time, I had a phenomenal idea.  I mean brilliant!  I sure thought so and I convinced my boss and his boss that it was.  We’d do research to find out what preferences viewers had in adjusting their television sets.  (Yes.  We called them television sets.)  The plan was that we’d find out what they did to “misadjust” their sets and we’d predistort our audio and video in the other direction.  That way, our products – these were commercials – would appear as they should on the screen.

Well, we actually did some research.  At a fine little strip mall in Bloomingdale, IL, we found out that, at least in our slice of the world, people adjusted their television sets way around to the red and with much too much saturation.  It may have been the “Hey, I paid for color, I’m watching color,” thinking along with the dislike of the green component in flesh tones (and that’s not just Caucasian…green seems to be objectionable to viewers in just about all skin colors.  Martians, feel free to take issue) but that’s what we found.  And on the audio side, we found what nearly anyone drawn to this writing would guess – the smiling equalizer…boosted lows and highs with the midrange down about 6-9dB compared to either end.

And the plan?  Well, that should be pretty evident.  Rotate all of our materials around to the green (we figured about 15 degrees.)  Back down the saturation about 10 percent.  Then re-EQ the audio to a frown so that the receiver’s “smile” yielded an overall flat line.

Anyone see the problem yet?  Fortunately, my boss and I figured it out before we went any further…if people want more red, they want more red – in everything.  Including their corn flakes package.  Including their double cheeseburger.  If they wanted lots of highs and lows in the audio, well, they wanted it.
 
So what do you do?  You may have your own ideas…I’d love to hear them.  Mine is, shoot it “normal”, edit it “normal”, distribute it “normal”.  If Mary Elizabeth Dudenclaber decides she wants more red, let her add it.  If she wants green, let her have that, too.  It’s her call.  At the same time, you still have to think.  Old folks will remember “the day” when nothing went out without looking at it on a black & white monitor.  And most places still listen to a mono mix before releasing the content.  That translates to thinking ahead about viewer/listener conditions. 

Bottom line is, you have to know your audience and know your channels.  So many possibilities.  You put it out there in 1080i, full bandwidth. Top notch quality.  Twenty percent of the people are watching on receivers that can handle it, directly off air.  Another 40 percent are watching on cable.  Your 1080i is transcoded to 720i and is being pushed through a bunch of cable as a QAM signal where, at the receiver end, 80 percent of that 40 percent (32 percent for those of you in East Bumquat) feed the signal to a cable box and the rest feed to an integral receiver card or other processor.  And don’t forget the issues created by writing to a DVR’s hard disc and then playing it back.  Then there’s the group of satellite…and on I go covering all the ways of delivering.  Downconverted, upconverted, 16:9, 4:3, limited, “calmed”, 8VSB, QAM, NTSC, you name it.  Don’t forget cell phones, PDA’s and Youtube.  And it’s not just the end format, it’s everything that goofy set of numbers had to go through to get to the viewing screen.

So give it all some thought.  In many cases, You Don’t Know.  But if you do a little digging and thinking, you might figure it out.  If you know your audience, know their preferences and their preferred channels and modes, then you can try to match their preferences.  But don’t leave the color bar chart at home.

...it Makes Everyone a PRO.

Today's gear - hardware and software - makes everyone a pro, right? At least that's what the marketing for manufacturers of most cameras, workflow systems, storage systems and editing software will tell you. My take is a little different: Today's gear makes everyone an amateur. Yeah, a pretty broad brush, but look around. Watch a network or cable channel - see if they can go a half hour with an on-air refocus, accidental zoom, jump cut, closed mic...good luck. I know, I know: look at what's going on on the screen. So much that it's impossible for a production team to manage it all. Well, nobody cares about that part. They care about the content. That's another interesting point: if it is about the content, the way it's presented, production warts and all, shouldn't matter. Maybe so, but does that mean we should all sink to the amateur level just because that clip fed via satellite phone has such poor resolution? Or should we be trying a little harder to up the quality of production. An industry friend called awhile back and asked me for a definition. "What does 'broadcast quality' mean?" I don't have an answer anymore. It is about the content and if that means a YouTube clip makes it to air, fine. But if that clip is surrounded by sloppiness, well, that's not quite so good. But how to define broadcast quality? It's impossible. What to do? How about paying a little more attention to quality. Many techs I know will bust their hump to wring an additional 2 kilohertz of audio response out of a device - if you let them. Most editors will gladly work through a jump cut if they can. They have the pride. It'd be great if that ethic were more pervasive. Then it might be true - the amateurs may really try to emulate the quality that pros put out. Hey! It could happen.

A Little Knowledge...

I was forwarded a complaint by someone living in the blanket area of one of my client stations. Seems we were 5x9 on their $10 house phone. We constructed a small filter and sent it on to them. A couple of days later, a call was forwarded to me. Seems the wife had been told by the husband that she'd better not install it or she could get killed. According to her, he knew "...a lot about electricity and he noticed that the box had over a thousand volts in it, maybe two thousand." Well, he knew enough about opening a device but, apparently, didn't know much about reading capacitors. Those good old .01 @1000v discs would have done their job but may not get the chance. I tried to explain working voltage but don't know that I got through. It brought to mind the statement, "A Little Knowledge is Dangerous." We've all experienced some of these situations. In the "not so dangerous" category is the jock who decides that he can bring in a bunch of Y adapters and series them up so that 4 people can plug headphones into one board phones output. With luck, a fuse will blow or the chip will shut down and there's not a lot of damage done. Then again, they can get more dangerous - like the guys who want to adjust the audio processor on their own. I have seen some so far "gone" that the only way to correct the problem is to reset to the defaults and start over. One friend once very carefully built a gonculator (with respect to Hogan's Heroes). It had 4 pots and two screwdriver adjustments. He labeled it the (call letters) Audio Processor. It had Belden going in and out. The pots had calibrated scales and there were labels above the screwdriver adjustments...labels like: Male Voice Enhancer Depth, and Sibilance Compression. Others were labeled with even more esoteric names which slip my mind. He installed the box in a rack and put a plexiglas cover on it, held down with screws. Now, although the box wasn't in line and did nothing, it was regularly the object of adjustment. In fact, one jock in particular became irate when another one "misadjusted" the box, screwing up his air voice. It was weeks before my friend finally let them all know what they were - or weren't - doing. Actually, those adjustments did nothing and, therefore, the "little knowledge" had little danger. Then comes this one: The DA is out. The antenna monitor is fine but the monitoring points are off. After you examine and cross examine, someone, maybe even the GM, fesses up. The monitor was reading wrong and the started cranking till they got it close. Out at the tower, you replace the toroid with the shorted turn, return the phasor coils to their Sharpie positions and, son of a gun, it's back in tolerance. I don't need to go on. You can all add others - most probably more traumatic than these. Question is, how do you convince folks to call first? If you have the answer, open an office and just sell that answer. You'll make millions.