Transmission audio processing is important for your station not just because it protects the transmitter, but because good processing can contribute to the station’s personality.

No technical aspect of radio broadcasting is so subjective in its perception, or elicits such an emotional response, as on-air broadcast audio processing. Everyone in the station, and your audience, has an opinion on what sounds good.

Processors help you achieve the sound you want.

Modern broadcast audio processors generally tfeed audio through a series of processing “blocks”, treating dynamics at a rate from slow (AGC), to fast (Limiting), to virtually instant (Clipping). Splitting up the signal path into these stages provides users the ability to isolate each stage and tweak one at a time if necessary and also to control the rate of compression.

Attack, release, ratio and threshold are the key variables in compressors.

If you know what you are doing you can create your own sound with manual settings, or you can choose one of the many presets that are available in most products.

One well known brand of compressors is Orban’s Optimod. Peter Lee explains the features of the latest Optimod at Broadcast Asia 2016.