[Disclaimer: Everything I know about radio comes from WKRP, so I’m bound to boob up some terms here.]
My 2006 Toyota’s radio has settings for bass and treble that go from 1 to 10. Generally, I have the bass set at 4 and the treble at 6. As I get a little older, I think my hearing is not as good as it once was, and too much bass makes it hard for me to make out spoken words. Most of the time, the 4/6 bass/treble split is fine for me.
I drive a lot of long distances these days. I mostly listen to NPR in the car. I flip between the St. Louis and Columbia, Missouri NPR stations. I always cut over during either *Morning Edition *or All Things Considered, so I’m getting the same content from each station. And still, whenever I flip from the St. Louis station to the Columbia station, I think, “Jesus, take it easy on the bass!” and I immediately set my bass control down to 1 or 2. It just seems uncomfortably “bassy” to me, and I can barely understand what the announcers are saying.
My questions… Is the bass/treble mix something the radio station has a lot of control over? Is there some guy at the station who moved a bunch of knobs one day and decided they would always be like that, sending bone-rattling bass out to all listeners? Or is it some artifact of the broadcast/reception in my car/etc.? Is there some quirk of physics that might make that particular station hitting my particular antenna sound that way? Am I the only person in Columbia hearing it this way? If the radio station does have fine-grained control over the audio mix they’re sending out, why are they sending so much bass?
Yes, it’s entirely possible the radio station is cranking the bass. They have graphic equalizers, the same as your audio.
Is the Columbia station KBIA? Do they still play a lot of classical music? They might have set the bass high because of the music they play, and leave it there.
Radio stations have been known to actually increase the speed of the music being played in order to make other stations sound clunky and slow. I have no doubt that they do change their own EQ settings; frankly, knowing that their primary audience is people in cars with crappy speakers, they may add bass to help compensate for that.
Yeah, it is KBIA, and they do still play classical during the day. Maybe that is the reason.
I’ve heard of stations playing music faster, but I never knew if it was true or an urban legend. A few weeks ago, I had the fleeting thought that one station I was listening to had sped up “Rolling in the Deep”, because it sounded too fast, but then I chalked it up to my subjective memory of what the song was supposed to sound like.
Huh. I guess I always had the idea that some corporate HQ would dictate “neutral” audio settings, or that some licensing agreement would say the radio stations couldn’t futz around with the speed of the songs.
No doubt, some sound way better than others. My local NPR affiliate WBEZ is simulcast on three different stations which makes it easy to compare. From the wiki:
Chicago Public Media (CPM) broadcasts its primary service on three FM radio stations, with call signs WBEZ (91.5 FM) in Chicago, WBEQ in Morris, Illinois (90.7 FM), and W217BM (91.3 FM) in Elgin, Illinois.
When listening in areas of overlap of the above, the difference in the quality is remarkable. The Chicago transmitter is significantly punchier all around. This is particularly apparent in the bass frequencies. Same exact content & source, quite different sounds.
I have not heard of microphone settings that would allow this. It is possible that studio equipment is used to enhance bass tones.
Something else that is rarely employed these days is echo chamber effect. The only radio “personality” I know of who uses this is right-wing talk show host Mark Levin, who apparently thinks the echo makes his voice sound less squirrely/weasely.
Absolutely true. When I was in radio in the 70’s, I worked at a station that sped up every song to sound “brighter.” The rule of thumb was 3-5 percent before the listeners found the vocals to be high-pitched. From a practical standpoint, since the station was playing about 45 minutes of music each hour, it meant we could squeeze in roughly 16 songs where we would’ve been playing 15.
Did the record labels or artists not mind, or just not know? I would think the artist would be kind of peeved if his or her work was changed like this without permission, although I imagine they can’t monitor every radio station.
Is there any value to the station in playing 16 songs vs. 15, or was it just to sound more upbeat? When I heard the song I thought was sped up, I would have assumed the idea was to squeeze in more commericals rather than more songs.
