FM Airplay killed my mix. Help!

I would look "closer to home" for the source of the mix irregularities.

 It's been a long time since I have spoken with a radio station engineer to see how the industry sets their compression these days. I would suspect that they are not compressing as heavily as they did in the past since many bands and artists these days are doing the compression on the product. 

I've had a few tunes receive airplay and they sounded very close to the sound I was hearing in the studio. No major surprises, aside from the initial surprise of hearing my tune coming out of the car speakers. Nothing like the first time that happens.

Since you mentioned the gear in your studio "I don't have the right setup at home to do a pro mastering job..." I would suspect that to be the reason.  You need to be able to monitor the sound accurately to get a mix that translates well on most other commercial players.

 A pro mastering job might help.... assuming that the tracking and mixing is spot on.  The mix and the tracking has to be done right or you are simply wasting money on the pro mastering.  No amount of professional mastering can make up for a poor tracking and/or mixing job. they are limited to what they can do if the bass track is poorly recorded.

My suggestion is, if you are at the point where you are getting airplay, spend the money on some good studio monitors so you can hear the mix accurately.  You don't get too many chances to get it right on the radio. If the mix is sub-par, you can believe the DJ and station programmer know that. If you get a second chance for airplay and that mix is sub-par also, chances are good, that it will be the last one they ever play from you.  There's too much good  music out there for them to be wasting valuable airtime on a mix that sounds bad, amateurish, or has level issues.

that's just the facts of life in the radio/music biz.

I also use a M/S process to center all the energy below 40-50Hz

Hey Mike, fancy elaborating on that?

Sounds like an extremely worthwhile process seeing as you start to lose L/R information the lower you get.

It's been a long time since I have spoken with a radio station engineer to see how the industry sets their compression these days. I would suspect that they are not compressing as heavily as they did in the past since many bands and artists these days are doing the compression on the product.

 
Most commercial recording are mastered differently these days for the market they go to. The CD will be mastered louder, while a mix going to the radio stations have a lot less compression because the radio stations still squash it to death in a fight to be the loudest. If a squashed mix/master is sent to the station it only get's worse. (The mix itself is the same - it is the master that is different)
 
This is a practise I am aware of in my geographical area with the genre I work with most of the time (Canada, Country/Country Rock stations), and I fully understand this may not hold true everywhere and in every genre. Please accept my opinion with that in mind.

Bristol_Jonesey

I also use a M/S process to center all the energy below 40-50Hz

Hey Mike, fancy elaborating on that?

Sounds like an extremely worthwhile process seeing as you start to lose L/R information the lower you get.

You can set up your own M/S matrix or use one of many new dsp EQ's that offer M/S internal routing.

Basically you pull down the energy below 40Hz in the sides and boost just a little bit in the mid as "make up" gain for the energy reduced in the sides.

It's a common mastering procedure that is trickling down to end user mixers that "master" in house.

best regards,
mike

Bristol_Jonesey

I also use a M/S process to center all the energy below 40-50Hz

Hey Mike, fancy elaborating on that?

Sounds like an extremely worthwhile process seeing as you start to lose L/R information the lower you get.

Get Brainworx bx_Control2 -- it will do the trick easily on any mix.
 
I can't live without it anymore (though it's not the only thing I do to get the mix right).
 
 

First read the document at this link.

http://www.orban.com/support/orban/techtopics/Appdx_Radio_Ready_The_Truth_1.3.pdf


It gives you an idea of what your mix will go through before it gets to someone's radio. Many M.E.'s will do a radio mix and a CD mix with different limiting to avoid the problems.

It's really the vicious circle of the volume-wars. Producers/Musicians wanted their record to sound like the songs on the radio (which were being Orban-processed to make the station's average volume louder than the next station down the dial). So mastering engineers started doing some of the same things before the CD went off for pressing. This made things even more compressed on the radio, so bands now wanted their CDs to sound like the now twice-compressed/limited sounds they heard. It never seems to end, except that the wonderful effects of MP3 compression make it that much worse. Sadly we have a medium with close to 96db dynamic range, of which we use less than 10 db (all at the top end).

feedback50


First read the document at this link.

http://www.orban.com/support/orban/techtopics/Appdx_Radio_Ready_The_Truth_1.3.pdf


It gives you an idea of what your mix will go through before it gets to someone's radio. Many M.E.'s will do a radio mix and a CD mix with different limiting to avoid the problems.

Thanks for this link! A quick glance indicates this is going to be a great read!