Help required.....our song on radio sounds distorted?

spark240

Ive been banging on recently about a song I worked on which is getting some play on internet radio...great you think !

Well no....because it's been Pro mastered and sounds great on any format except when it's played ( as Wav file) on internet radio stations...firstly they seem to be broadcasting  mono...not sure why that is....but worse it's almost like it super compressed to distortion...oddly the vocal seem ok but the music is breaking up....

Whats more odd is the songwriter listen in the USA and says it sounds fine for her...

Whats going on?

drofluf

Got a link to the song? There’s a lot of internet radio to search...

octatonic

Yes a link would help.
Over compression sounds like the most likely issue.

spark240

I recorded it....will post shortly.

octatonic

Post a .wav or .aiff if you can.
I can run it through Nugen VisLM and see what is going on.

spark240

Radio play - 

Im afraid I recorded  the whole build up for Ego purposes !

Actual track as Mastered. - 

octatonic

I don't seem to be able to download the tunes to put into VisLM so this is a bit of guess work but yes it sounds over compressed, particularly in the 200hz and below range.
The mastered track sounds fine (great actually)- it is the compression algorithm used by the broadcaster mostly likely.

spark240

octatonic said:

I don't seem to be able to download the tunes to put into VisLM so this is a bit of guess work but yes it sounds over compressed, particularly in the 200hz and below range.
The mastered track sounds fine (great actually)- it is the compression algorithm used by the broadcaster mostly likely.

Cheers ....I can send you the files direct if that helps?.....dm an email ?

andy_k

I think there could be many things at play here, the important thing is what the track sounds like on a streaming service.
You say you are hearing a wav file on the radio station, can you be sure? and it is a bit hard to compare either, when we are listening through Soundcloud.
I can hear a bit of distortion on the radio announcers build up, and he obviously has some ducking going on, I do know radio has to work to guidelines, so they will have their own compressors and limiters in play.
The track itself is very dynamic ( sounds great ), but I am also listening through Soundcloud, which is known for its own crude attempts to level out tracks.
Did you try the track out through Loudness penalty site, or plugin, it would be interesting to see the results.
I know that the main streaming sites are using LUFS to grade tracks, and they have varying standards, I think Apple has one of the 'better' sounds, but really we are comparing apples to oranges here.
Its great that you are getting some airplay, but I would't worry about the sound that comes from radio, casual listeners may be listening on mono devices so they may have chosen to broadcast to the widest audience.
The important thing is that you can learn from the experience, and you have trusted a mastering engineer to the final product, who will also be making his own decisions, based on his experience. You need to know what might need attention to be able to inform him of your own preferences, I suspect we all like to make our mixes sound the best for our own preferences, which is fine, but a mix intended for vinyl will be very different to a mix intended for Spotify or Apple (which are different themselves)
It is a minefield when you try and understand how we want to hear things these days, Imagine the warmth that would be introduced if the track was played through a high end valve hi-fi system,preferably from a tape.
Radio has it's own bandwidth, and internet radio, could be very low resolution, something has to give, but the main thing is it is getting played, and a listener that like it will look it up on their preferred streaming site, and if they really like it, they will be listening on headphones, so your well mixed stereo track will be heard in all its glory, at some compressed version for streaming.
It is a minefield, and I am amazed that some of the old stuff sounds as good as it does, there is definitely some magic going on.
congratulations anyway.

spark240

@andy_k - thanks for the info Andy, its reassuring to hear that the basics of what we have done is ok, a guy called Pete Maher  mastered it for me, hes done stuff for us before and seems to understand what we want.

Some interesting points you make though, and listening back to the radio transmission has made me aware of some changes I would make next time.

So do you think that mainstream established producers do a different mix for streaming than they would for radio play?....or is this done at Mastering stage ?        

Cirrus

@spark240 I've had the same thing happen to me a couple of times on amateur Internet Radio shows.

I don't know how or why it happens, but I speculate that there are probably common programs everyone uses to record and broadcast the show. I wonder if it's something as simple as those programs having access to a database of music which sounds fine, but having terrible or easily screwed up settings and codecs for when DJs upload music off their own back for broadcast?

The distortion tends to sound to me like a level mismatch somewhere in the chain, like it's hitting a crap limiter way too hard or with different settings to the other tracks on the same show.

andy_k

There's plenty of information out there, I have no real experience of radio, only the basics, but have heard stories of people who's guitars dissapeared when their tracks were played via the radio.
I absolutely know that some producers mix different versions of their tracks, I think it is widely done- has to be.
Look up Eric Valentines channel for some good stuff about mixing to various mediums, he has got a lot of good information on his YT.
I wouldn't make any decisions based on a radio broadcast though, how can you know what has been introduced in the process?
As far as I know, they could be making a playlist from youtube music, or linking to a Spotify stream?
Loudness penalty site has a lot of information which helps to understand what we are up against.
I think we all like the dynamics of our own tracks, but sometimes these have to be scaled back in mixing and mastering.
We no longer live in an age where there is only radio, tape and vinyl to consider.

octatonic

andy_k said:

I think there could be many things at play here, the important thing is what the track sounds like on a streaming service.
You say you are hearing a wav file on the radio station, can you be sure? and it is a bit hard to compare either, when we are listening through Soundcloud.
I can hear a bit of distortion on the radio announcers build up, and he obviously has some ducking going on, I do know radio has to work to guidelines, so they will have their own compressors and limiters in play.
The track itself is very dynamic ( sounds great ), but I am also listening through Soundcloud, which is known for its own crude attempts to level out tracks.
Did you try the track out through Loudness penalty site, or plugin, it would be interesting to see the results.
I know that the main streaming sites are using LUFS to grade tracks, and they have varying standards, I think Apple has one of the 'better' sounds, but really we are comparing apples to oranges here.
Its great that you are getting some airplay, but I would't worry about the sound that comes from radio, casual listeners may be listening on mono devices so they may have chosen to broadcast to the widest audience.
The important thing is that you can learn from the experience, and you have trusted a mastering engineer to the final product, who will also be making his own decisions, based on his experience. You need to know what might need attention to be able to inform him of your own preferences, I suspect we all like to make our mixes sound the best for our own preferences, which is fine, but a mix intended for vinyl will be very different to a mix intended for Spotify or Apple (which are different themselves)
It is a minefield when you try and understand how we want to hear things these days, Imagine the warmth that would be introduced if the track was played through a high end valve hi-fi system,preferably from a tape.
Radio has it's own bandwidth, and internet radio, could be very low resolution, something has to give, but the main thing is it is getting played, and a listener that like it will look it up on their preferred streaming site, and if they really like it, they will be listening on headphones, so your well mixed stereo track will be heard in all its glory, at some compressed version for streaming.
It is a minefield, and I am amazed that some of the old stuff sounds as good as it does, there is definitely some magic going on.
congratulations anyway.

I've put the tracks through a loudness meter- that were sent to me outside of Soundcloud and in an uncompressed format.

The distorted track is around -22 ish LUFS with peak at -12dB.
The original is -11 LUFS with peak getting to -0.2dB, which is close to digital maximum but not over.
There were no overs in either versions in terms of clipping the master output but clearly elements are distorted in the broadcast version..

The original has been mastered by someone who knows their craft- Pete is a well known engineer.
The broadcast version is distorted, especially 100hz and below and the overall level brought down- the balance of the track has changed and not for the better.

What it looks like to me is the mastered version has been crushed by whatever broadcast algorithm has been used by the stations.
It is pretty clear from this picture:

One question for Spark, which I didn't ask via email, is how was the distorted version captured?
It could be that the playback device did this to the waveform- you have to consider every part of the chain.

spark240

@octatonic - looks interesting !.... I recorded the broadcast direct into Studio One at a reasonable level, then exported as wav file, thats the one you have.

octatonic

spark240 said:

@octatonic - looks interesting !.... I recorded the broadcast direct into Studio One at a reasonable level, then exported as wav file, thats the one you have.

Ah ok- well I think what has happened then is the track was distorted by broadcast and then the overall level was brought down when you recorded it into Studio One.
I now no longer think the level drop was caused by broadcast, but that the distortion was caused by the broadcast algorithm.

How did you record it?
Was it an analogue cable out of *something* into an audio interface?
Or something like Audio Hijack where you digitally route the signal into the DAW?

'At a reasonable level' is a bit vague- where on the meters was it peaking?
It looks like it was recorded way low- like 11dB too low.

octatonic

Hold fire on everything I've said above- I am in the studio now with Pro Tools and VisLM and it looks like the original might be clipping.
I'll post again soon once I have some data.

octatonic

OK, some caveats... 
1. I'm a mix engineer, not a mastering engineer.
2. I'm working with the files you gave me and don't know anything about how/why they were mastered the way they were.

So it looks like the original mastered version clips at several places.
I didn't pick it up last night because I was looking in Logic, without my usual suite of tools.

You can see here that VisLM is reporting digital overages.
It basically happens in all of the choruses.
That is in the original file.

I'd go back to the mastering engineer and (politely) ask if this was by design.
I don't know enough about the mastering process undertaken here and I am not criticising his mastering process.

I have to duck out now- I can reply more later.

andy_k

Mastering to -11LUFS seems a little hot to me, but it is a competitive market place out there, try running it through Loudness penalty website to see what the streamers will do to it.
I am not familiar with the diagnostic software shown here, but I would try it through Audacity just for a second opinion.
It seems strange that it clips in so many places. Is it possible they are reaching peak and are not overs?
I know we should allow some headroom for conversion to mp3, but that is not the case here, I leave my mixes at -.3 before conversion, which does clip occasionally.

Cirrus

Guys am I going mad here?

It's not distorting like *that* on the radio broadcast because of the volume it was mastered at. The master doesn't sound like the broadcast, regardless of the volume difference.

A peak of -7LUFS short term is quite hot yes but nothing that doesn't happen on a regular basis in commercially released music.

roberty

Hey did you record that off the internet radio station? It sounds like there is some heavy data compression there. If the station is based in the US then your songwriter will have a better connection to the station server and possibly be listening at a higher bitrate, which would explain why it sounded fine to her.  The clip up there sounds like 96kbps to me.  In fact if you have a slow connection to the station you are possibly getting it in mono too

spark240

Ok guys questions !....

The broadcast was aired last night on Total radio UK...based in the UK I believe....I think the US folks get is at Total radio .org.

So I recorded the broadcast by just setting my DAW input to channels 16/17 which is the default stereo from the input from my Mac...17/18 are set flat with no EQ or suchlike.as far as I know, there was definitely no clipping at this point as I kept the signal moderate.

My point is that no matter what volume it is, I can gear the overdriven sound mostly in the music rather than the vocals...and its not just me either,...the male vocalist has a small studio and he's experiencing the same thing in Dublin

I cant profess to understand the LUFS stuff.....so I can't comment on that..

Regards my internet ...Im on BT infinity plus @ around 50mbs

I already contacted Pete Maher about it first time round...this was his comments....happy to ask again....hes very approachable.

Hi Tim, radio compression can be harsh depending on the station but in regards to your master it is technically fine. I tested it through standard radio compression in mono and it sounded good. Obviously not as good or full depth as the WAV master but still dynamic and clear. There's zero distortion/saturation in the master so whatever you heard wasn't related to the sonics of the track. It's worth noting that radio compression/playback is not an exact science. Sometimes a track sounds great and other times it sounds crushed (again depending on the station), so I wouldn't worry too much. Radio stations only play tracks that pass their broadcasting quality test. 

Its going on the daily playlist next week I think on Total for a week....Ill try and listen again.....maybe Ill send you guys the link and you can listen and see what you think?