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radiomattdt · Posted - Sat May 12, 2001 11:27 am

Hello everyone,

I work in a small market radio station in Northeast Kansas, we use Cool Edit Pro for most all of our production. I found this site, and it is exactly what i've been looking for!

We have been using cep for a couple years now, but I have never been completly happy with the results. I know the problem is our sound card, it is a cheap home built computer with the sound card on the motherboard. I seem to be the only staff member who is concerned with the quality of our commercials, i hear the hiss, hum, and lack of dynamic range and it makes me cringe. I discussed this problem with management and they have refused to invest in a decent sound card.

My question is, with that being the case, can anyone give me some settings I can tweak to get better results. I have been recording everything and doing "Noise Reduction" to get rid of the noise that gets recorded, but still pick up a little more noise when it is played back.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Love CEP!

Matt

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

Frankly, you are on a hiding to nothing here.

There is little or nothing you can do about the on-board card. The only practical thing is to disable it and install something better.

I suggest you refer the guys who sign the cheques to some of the many discussions you will find on the forum covering just this aspect.

There ia a plethora of reasonable quality cards around these days, I can't believe the station is so strapped for cash that it couldn't afford something better than what you already have.

Wildduck · Posted - Sat May 12, 2001 4:01 pm

Has anyone with a background in audio really gone through the program path between the mixing desk and the sound hardware. If not, this is the first thing to do, checking out the levels at each point in the chain. I have seen some (and only some) on-board audio that was adequate and in satisfactory permanent use. Whoever does a check should either get things sorted or condemn the sound, providing the evidence for the attack.

I assume someone has made all the channels of the Windows mixer visible, and has faded down anything that wasn't needed. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean that they are not active and hissing away.

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

radiomattdt · Posted - Sat May 12, 2001 6:33 pm

The station is far from strapped for cash, the reason for that being THEY NEVER SPEND MONEY ON ANYTHING! LOL As long as a piece of equipment is functioning, they won't spend another dollar on it...thankfully, most of our equipment is up-to-date. But when it comes to computers, everyone here is clueless.

I was the person who setup the computer...In the windows mixer, I have EVERYTHING except the bare essentials muted. From the jacks on the back of the computer, the audio goes into a "Matchbox II" to connect it to the production control board.

Can anyone tell me what would be a good sound card, that might be cheap enough for me to just go buy and put into the computer? If there is a good sounding card, for less than say $30 I would consider doing that. Thanks for all your help :-)

Matt

jonrose · Location: USA

All right, Matt-

There appears to be only two possible solutions to your problem.

1) Take a copy of an advertisment to your management and have them actually listen to it - BEFORE you do any NR - then have them honestly tell you it sounds okay.

2) If you think this won't work, then make a copy of said advertisement, muck it up even more with noise, hum, and anything else you can muster, THEN let them hear it. Tell them that "The problem seems to be getting worse!"

3) Okay, I know I said two, but here's another possibility: Overload the input of the on-board chip until it dies. Then tell them it doesn't work at all. Now, get together a list of REAL soundcards and their prices (you're a RADIO STATION, for crying out loud! Don't go under $250 (US)!)
Don't let them weasel you into buying a piece of SH-T. No one will be happy.

All the best... -Jon
:-)

Graeme · Member Location: Spain

I hate it when beancounters with cloth ears run an audio busines!

I agree with jonrose - you're being placed is a ridiculous situation. If they've got the money, just blow up the existing card and then buy a decent one.

A Lynxone would probably last you the rest of your lifetime ;-)

Jay Marble · Posted - Sun May 13, 2001 7:29 am

Matt: I get the impression that if you blow up your existing card, your managers will only suggest that you do your production on a reel to reel or something else...O.K. it's not fair. You should not have to buy your own gear...But if I were really convinced that that the station would not buy a card, I'd blow up the existing card. When the boss refused to buy another, I'd buy my own.. I'd Go in on the weekend and install it myself. I would not say anything unless they asked. If they did ask, I'd calmly explain that it was impossible to to do my job without the card. Yeah it's not fair...But working in radio without a good card is really frustrating.

radiomattdt · Posted - Sun May 13, 2001 8:48 pm

Thanks for you ideas, i'll see what I can do... It is very frustrating, the owner, who is also the sales manager, puts all his efforts on "making sure the sales people are treated right and have everything they need to do their job". But when it comes to on-air, whatever it takes to get by....im sure it is this way in many small market stations. I have to laugh sometimes, the PD asked me one time "How do you get your commercials to sound so much more clear than everyone else?" I showed him, step by step what I do and he got mad, "well, there isn't a chance in hell i'm going to go thru all that...i'd rather put up with the hiss over wasting that much time" AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO CARES? LOL Oh well...if that sound card want's to live past tomorrow, it better take a hike! Thanks guys

jonrose · Location: USA

Geez, Matt, it's too bad you're not getting much listener feedback - perhaps you ought to just let a few adverts fly without any noise reduction - after some heavy rotation, see if any listeners pipe up about it. If the advertisers themselves hear it, they're likely to hit the ceiling, since they're the ones paying for the airtime and production! Tell them the PD told you it was okay. Then let him try some back-pedalling. Fast. REAL fast.
;-D

Just a thought...

All the best... -Jon

auralstimulation prod · Posted - Mon May 14, 2001 8:27 am

or you could have one of the sales people do a trade out for a really good soundcard with a local computer store

Jay Marble · Posted - Mon May 14, 2001 12:06 pm

Matt: You mention that you use cool edit for most of your production...What else do you use? I ask because if you are using another automation or editing system it might be possible to record your elements on one system, then move the files to cool edit, produce, then move the files back to your automation system... A bit convoluted, but it might work.

radiomattdt · Posted - Mon May 14, 2001 12:27 pm

Jay,
We are using the "DCS" automation program, from Computer Concepts. I know Computer Concepts now offers "Maestro" and I think CEP will Import/Export to that, but not sure if it will with the older DCS program. If it would, that would be a good. All of our spots have to end up in the DCS anyway, and the way we are doing it now is to just play it back thru the board and record it into the DCS. I really wish management would upgrade our DCS', we are running 3 stations with 3 DCS'. All 3 stations are running Jones Radio Network programming. We do a local morning show from 6 to 9, live noon hour from 11:30 to 1, and then I do a simulcast afternoon show on 2 of the stations from 4 to 6. My dream is to upgrade to a little better automation program, and then do some voice tracking during those daytime "Jones Times" and then use JRN overnite...but i'm not getting far with it ;-( Anyway, if someone does know of a way to get audio from DCS to CEP and back, i'd love to hear it! Thanks, Matt

Jay Marble · Posted - Mon May 14, 2001 2:12 pm

Matt: I think you need to figure out what format your automation system uses. Pray that it is not some obscure proprietary format. When you export from this system what is the file extension? .wav, .mp2 or something else? As you may know Cool Edit can use a lot of different formats. Is the automation system networked with your cool edit computer?

radiomattdt · Posted - Tue May 15, 2001 12:20 pm

Good Idea Jay,
The DCS saves to a "*.dat" extension, which I tried to open in CEP but couldn't recognize it. The CEP puter is networked to all our other computers in the building, but not with the DCS system. The 3 DCS have their own network, but they could be hooked together. Does anyone know of a way to get the *.dat files to open in CEP?

Wildduck · Posted - Tue May 15, 2001 3:32 pm

Don't know about DCS, but it might be worth copying a file, renaming it with a .mp2 extension and offering it to some mp2 decoders. Some mp3 decoders will handle mp2 as well (actually they all should to meet the spec, I think).

Many automation systems use hardware mp2 compression and hang a header of their own in front of the audio, then alter the suffix.

I'd be interested to know what you find.

radiomattdt · Posted - Tue May 15, 2001 10:32 pm

I gave that a shot, but all it opened was static. It has the cart name, cut(s) name(s) and run dates for the cut(s) saved into the same file, so I'm guessing it would be harder to open it...but If anyone knows of a way to do this, I would love to hear it.

stephen · Posted - Tue May 22, 2001 2:04 pm

You won't have any luck opening DCS files in CEP. The DCS is a propietary format. I've pored throught the DCS manual and have found no reference to any naming of the file formats. Under "record control" though, you'll find "options" and here you can specify the recording quality options available on your machine, mostly these were designed to economize on file size back when a large hard drive was 766mb!

radiomattdt · Posted - Tue May 22, 2001 5:05 pm

I found that out stephen, wish they'd switch to a standard format! I see where I could save in the DCS to a form of M-PEG file format, but we don't have the MPEG cards in our systems. Maybe somebody out there can write a plugin for cep to work with the DCS files?

Deets · Posted - Mon May 28, 2001 2:22 pm

We have CE2k at the station where I work and DCS too. Always do our production onto the CE2k computer first then dub it into DCS through our production sound board. Bit of an extra step in there but if that's what you've been doing since the beginning you don't even notice.

I think the audio files for DCS are *.daf's and I wouldn't expect DCS to change them to something more compatible with MPG's. Why would they when they can not only sell you the software but also the hardware, now there's a money maker for ya!

Don't get me wrong, I like our DCS, but it would be nice to get our own computers for it instead of theirs.

Our DCS system here runs 3 stations and involves in 3 separate communites each about 60 miles apart and we have to split commercials. Works well, but when it doesn't...it doesn't

Our engineer here just said he's gotten a Layla soundcard (or a name like that) and will install shortly. I'm looking forward to hearing it now. Just this past week we went from mono production to stereo. Sure sounds nice now.

Good luck radiomatt

radiomattdt · Posted - Tue May 29, 2001 12:47 pm

Deets, sounds like your setup is about the same as ours. We have a total of 5 stations, only 3 are run from the building I work at, the other 2, and AM and FM are run seperate. We have the 3 FM's all in defferent comunities about 60 miles apart like yours. two are simulcast off Jones Radio's "US Country" format, but we are running different commercials on both. The third, our new little baby is on Jones "Adult Hit" evenings and overnite and on "AC" during the daytime. That station is mostly AUTO other than the morning show. Our other 2 we simulcast local morning, noon, and evening shifts. Keeps us moving pretty quickly (we only have 4 full time announcers and a part-timer). I've been trying to convice the powers that be to switch us to Stereo production. All of our boards are stereo and all wired into and out of our DCS's in Stereo. the PD here seems to think "we can't let them DCS's get more than 50% full, they start acting strangly then" He is very old school, trying to convert him, but not going well :-) Maybe i'm the only one who notices it, but going from a mono spot into a stereo sweeper/song just makes me cringe, im told that it's "matt just trying to complain about something". I'm curious, have you put any of your music into your DCS's? I host the evening drive on the 2 simulcast stations, and have found it VERY convienient playing my music from the DCS. I have all of the top 40 in, and put in new on each cd we get. Also, I've heard you can do some voice tracking with the DCS...someday we would like to voice track the daytime "holes" that we are currently filling with Satt. I know you can do it with Maestro, which is offered through the same company as the DCS, but our bosses don't and won't upgrade. DCS is good, but it is becoming dated. What are your thoughts?

Deets · Posted - Tue May 29, 2001 2:53 pm

Hi again

Our setup at the station where I work is the FM location. We have a transmitter north and south 60 miles each way. We split commercials to our local area and once to the people living north and south of us. Sometimes it confuses the people in the south when they hear spots for a town 120 miles away. Our sister station, a country AM'er, is at our office in the north of our region and they split 3 ways so each town has it's own spots.

On staff here for the FM'er we have 4 full time announcers. Used to have 5 but that's gone now because of budgets and the like.

We've just gone to stereo production here and it's fantastic! Sure it gobbles up the hard drive space but that's okay by me if we have a lot of it. Listeners may not know exactly what's different about the station but they know something's changed and they like it.

We have about 700 songs on DCS hard drive now and we voice track 6-10pm Mon & Tue and they VT weekend mornings 6-10am and afternoons 4-6pm. During the week we'll VT the midday show 10am-2pm when someone is away. We put the VT right in the DCS along with the directives for music and liners and away it goes. Now that we can backsell the songs, because they're clustered with the VT and spots, no body will be able to tell if we're live or not.

We've just started with the music on hard drive and there are some problems but they were expected. We don't have the Maestro system, just the DCS computers and the Log Merge program. It looks like it'll work out well. I don't know how much the upgrade was for the larger hard drives but we did it and we aren't a station that throws money around.

Hope this too helps you out.