Broadcast news audio

[Grandflash13]

Hello all, I've got a couple of questions.

First, I'm looking for tips on how to set up the dynamics and eq for our news. We have a Wheatstone D-9 board and so far all the dynamic settings I have gone through I just haven't liked how they sounded or how they behaved. Now maybe this is due to the actual compression settings that I am using or maybe the boards dynamics just don't sound good. Sad thing is, I have to make these settings to work for a wide variety of people. I can do some suttle changes between each anchor but nothing too drastic because all of the other people running the board will not know how to change any of it. They are just glorified button pushers.

Second, I was just curious if there is another good site(besides this one) for a broadcast related forum for audio, video and the such. I haven't had much luck in finding anything yet.

Thanks

[dbro]

This isn't much help for you but it's what I experienced - I ran sound for news back in the day for the local NBC affiliate. We had an analog Wheatstone and would slam everything at the master. We squeezed the life out of the audio. And that was before it made it over to Master Control where it was compressed even further. There was nothing delicate about it.

Derek

[Grandflash13]

Yeah, this is a digital board. A digital board with the majority of signals going over a Cat 5e cable to boot, so sadly slamming the faders would just result in some nasty clipping.

The nasty clipping is one of the main problems I seem to be having. I go over that 0 mark by just a few decibals, even on the main fader, it clips. There just does not seem to be any headroom. Of course I could just create my own headroom by not running the levels as hot, but like I said before, I have to make this as user friendly as possible. People like that 0 mark.

[huub]

Hmm... first of all there is something wrong with the gain structure in that studio..
If you stay digital from mixer to master control room, you would peak at -10dBFs maximum, not zero...

If you're set up to peak at 0 anyway (very wrong and scary), the only way is to use the mixers internal dynamics, whether they sound nice or not..
Put a compressor with fast attack on your speech (preferably a subgroup, otherwise on the individual faders after fader) and put a limiter or if not available a high ratio compressor on your stereo out with attack zero...
The treshhold needs to be a bit below zero...

An external limiter is pointless, as any outgoing signal, be it analog or AES will clip at 0 dBFs...

huub

[Grandflash13]

I would definitely agree with something being wrong with the gain structure in the studio, probably more so the whole signal path through to master control. I have been working on that as well.

The problem with the meters on this board is that it only shows levels between -20 to +20. It doesn't even tell me what the 0 is actually. Is it 0 dBFs or 0 VU. I guess I'll need to make a call into Wheatstone to figure that one out because I have not had any luck looking in the manual yet. If it is 0 dBFs, then what use is the rest of the meter. We'd only have -20 to -10 to use, which would be extremely annoying.

[kheftel]

Good luck with that. +1 for there being some kind of gain structure problem at that studio. You should be able to put some pretty good compression in there to be able to prevent the clipping, and yet sound decent on the different anchors.