Broadcast Standards WTF?

T_R_S · 29th July 2010

We spend all of this money for this ...
Got a request from a radio station for a track I sent a link to download a 16Bit 44.1 Wave file.
They asked for an MP3 instead

Bad Muffin · 29th July 2010

They may have asked for you to send them an mp3 to download because a 44.1 x 16 bit file was too large to download. If you gave them an actual CD/CDR, I doubt they would prefer an mp3 instead. You also may want to consider the possibility that that particular station's format they use is mp3's for storage reasons. Just give them a bad ass mp3!!!

sardi · 29th July 2010

Most commercial radio stations use mp3 or mp2 and have been for a while now.

It wouldn't be that bad if they were using 320kb mp3's but most are using the equivalent of 128kb. :(

Funny thing is, I work for a community based radio station (read not much money) and we are in the process of converting our CD library to digital for HD based playback and we are going with uncompressed wav. We did the math and for the price of HD's these days including backup/redundancy it was easily doable.

I'd send them a 320kb mp3 but don't be surprised if they ask for a lower bitrate one. :(

mattg082 · 29th July 2010

The price my college station spent on a U87 they never use they could of spent that on many 1-2 tb hard drives. They get a physical cd usually a promo or single, compress it and load it into a data base and then later on usually give the singles and promos for free daily to students. I go by the bin daily to see if anything good is in there.

I feel you though I did a production for my university for a meditation cd with a re-20,U87,SM7b, mac 8 core, rosetta converters, Great river pre and guess what they want just mp3s, background music low and squashed vocal up. I made some very nice mixes and final .wav files to find out it's going to $5 fake ipods and $2 headpones mostly. Now I will use the USB Samson mic they have at the office and mix with Logic ITB with a pair of ath-m50's, and the crappy computer speakers. It just wasn't worth it to bring my own gear in and do it my way. They sound nice as 320 mp3s but still to much trouble.

29th July 2010	#1
T_R_S Lives for gear Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Canuk Posts: 5,153 Thread Starter	Broadcast Standards WTF? We spend all of this money for this ... Got a request from a radio station for a track I sent a link to download a 16Bit 44.1 Wave file. They asked for an MP3 instead __________________ ========== Surplus Sale

29th July 2010	#3
sardi Lives for gear Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Australia Posts: 1,232	Most commercial radio stations use mp3 or mp2 and have been for a while now. It wouldn't be that bad if they were using 320kb mp3's but most are using the equivalent of 128kb. :( Funny thing is, I work for a community based radio station (read not much money) and we are in the process of converting our CD library to digital for HD based playback and we are going with uncompressed wav. We did the math and for the price of HD's these days including backup/redundancy it was easily doable. I'd send them a 320kb mp3 but don't be surprised if they ask for a lower bitrate one. :( __________________ Available & forthcoming releases: http://www.myspace.com/sardisonics

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29th July 2010	#2
Bad Muffin Gear interested Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: Agoura Hills Posts: 22	They may have asked for you to send them an mp3 to download because a 44.1 x 16 bit file was too large to download. If you gave them an actual CD/CDR, I doubt they would prefer an mp3 instead. You also may want to consider the possibility that that particular station's format they use is mp3's for storage reasons. Just give them a bad ass mp3!!!

29th July 2010	#4
mattg082 Lives for gear Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: New Orleans Posts: 2,610 1 Review written	The price my college station spent on a U87 they never use they could of spent that on many 1-2 tb hard drives. They get a physical cd usually a promo or single, compress it and load it into a data base and then later on usually give the singles and promos for free daily to students. I go by the bin daily to see if anything good is in there. I feel you though I did a production for my university for a meditation cd with a re-20,U87,SM7b, mac 8 core, rosetta converters, Great river pre and guess what they want just mp3s, background music low and squashed vocal up. I made some very nice mixes and final .wav files to find out it's going to $5 fake ipods and $2 headpones mostly. Now I will use the USB Samson mic they have at the office and mix with Logic ITB with a pair of ath-m50's, and the crappy computer speakers. It just wasn't worth it to bring my own gear in and do it my way. They sound nice as 320 mp3s but still to much trouble.