Audio Interchange Standards

[Alastair Reynolds]

A controversial topic that I would be interested in the opinions of other forum contributers, particularly Production / Voice over facilities that produce commercials for Radio.
I sit on the Board of Digital Radio Boadcasting Australia (DRBA) and the Digital Technical Advisory Committee (DTAC) and one of our hot topics as we hurtle towards the launch of DAB+ broadcasting is tightening up specs on commercials that are distributed to radio stations. Over the years ,despite the improvements we see in technology, the quality of what is delivered to the radio station for broadcast has fallen dramatically. It is not uncommon for a 256K mp3 to be delivered via email for a 30 second spot. The worst we have seen is a 56K mp3. This use of mp3 is the equivalent of distributing on cassette and it seems that the motivation for using mp3 is governed by the maximum size of an email attachment and quality comes distant second.

MP3 when it has been re-encoded to say 256K JS MP2, the most common Algorithm used in Broadcast systems(some of the bigger Music networks, Austereo and DMG have reverted to 16 Linear as storage costs have come down) and then played back , subject to compression through a Studio-Transmitter link, then a Multiband compressor in the broadcast processor with the Harmonic exciters etc results in bad sound on-air, crunchy to say the least. This will be even more accentuated with DAB+ as there will be another encode/decode cycle , this time AAC+ and mp3 through AAC+ sounds real bad.

It is being proposed that a recommendation of 48K ,16 Bit linear (PCM) be the minimum standard accepted for a commercial sent into a radio station.
What are the views of other forum members.
Is this acceptable to the people who make the tracks we hear on the radio every day.

If anyone wants to know more about the launch of DAB+ in Australia or broadcast systems generally including the dark arts of transmission, feel free to ask

[jkhuri44]

It is being proposed that a recommendation of 48K ,16 Bit linear (PCM) be the minimum standard accepted for a commercial sent into a radio station.

its a bit depressing to know that "professionals" need to be told this :(

glad to know the foot is being put down ! :)

[Thirteen]

It would be ironic that the adverts had to be higher quality than the news... I am getting used to hearing reports and interviews on many stations that have that ugly whistly low rate MP3 sound, even the ABC does it quite often now. I have reduced my listening time with radio in general because of poor sound quality. I think it is more than reasonable for you to demand a minimum 44.1k 16 bit file, radio is facing enough competition from other media as it is, dropping audio quality would not be helpful. Even if people do not know that they are listening to an MP3, they will get ear fatigue from it, and that equals irritation which equals changing stations. I would rather listen to a cassette than am MP3, I think that the fatiguing nature of MP3's is underestimated.

[Martin]

as someone who records radio ads as almost a daily event, i would be VERY happy if this became standard.

I'm not the biggest fan of delivering the finished audio as MP3, but keep in mind the ads often go through up to 5 or 6 peoples computers (via email..) for 'approval' before they hit the air, there isn't always time to re send higher res files than that

that said, nothing leaves my shop lower than 320kbit, and while i don't want to turn this thread into a war on who can tell the difference, i'm not sure the latest 'crazy Fred's discount bargain' voice over and library music track is going to be too badly affected


Quite a few businesses, the ones that keep the content coming and paid for, are going to have to change the way they do things to make this happen in the near near future. Sure soon enough the bandwidth won't matter, but currently it still does!

curious to know what others in a similar boat as me think of the matter, thanks for bringing it up Alastair!

[heathen]

I agree that there should be a minimum standard, I rarely listen to any form of advertising and take it all in.

Firstly yes the harsh sound is fatiguing and extremely annoying.

Secondly, adds are way too loud, radio is as bad as TV in that regard, the adds are louder than everything else.

So yeah blaring harsh adds just make me want to switch the thing off.

These days a 100mb file can take only a few minutes to send anywhere in the world, so yeah I don't see the problem as most adds are only say 30 seconds max.

I don't see why it needs to be a 48k standard though as 44.1 16 bit is good enough.

[Alastair Reynolds]

As Steve and Martin point out the ads could well sound better than the news. Many of the news Journos source material from internet feeds and programs commonly get grabs from you tube and the like. The education process of Jocks and Journos is a long and arduous one. We (Fairfax-2UE ) have been transitioning to 48K Linear in our News Audio systems over the last year. The limitation ,historically ,has been storage and network speed for retrieval. We will generate many hundreds of actuality clips each day and have to be able to simultaneously stream data from a server to up to 30 work stations without a glitch so this calls for a quite high sustained read/write speed from a disk array on the server and wide bandwidth network and switch.

I'm not an mp3 basher, mp3 or more correctly MPEG1-Layer 3 audio has its place and does an excellent job when used as intended. It is ,however, only intended to be used in a single encode/decode cycle. MP3 cascades or concatenates poorly. MP2 (MPEG1-Layer2) is more robust and with a sufficient data rate will withstand up to 15 encode-decode cycles before noticible artifacts occur. Mp3 is more spectrum efficient but at the price of far lower immunity from artifacts when re-encoded.

Distribution is best handled by FTP rather than email and with ISP bandwidth getting cheaper by the day any arguement about cost goes out the window. 2 x 30 second spots @ 48K 16 bit PCM is about 12 MB. Most people get and send more than that each day in "joke" emails and funnies with WMV clips to their mates

That said, if you've used a library track from Zomba, Universal or anyone else from an mp3 source then you re-encode it send it off to a station who dub it into a system and re-encode it then play it back and shoot it over an STL and further process it you've got 4 maybe 5 encode/decode cycles -result crunchy sound. Digital Radio adds another dimension.
Legislated Bandwidth per station is 128Kbps Max, this is then divided up for primary and secondary/tertiary services and data channels the Average bit rate for transmission being 48Kbps Parametric Stereo AAC+ so there's going to be aggressive processing added to achieve this.

Our Aim is to keep the quality as high as possible until the last point where we have to crunch it down.

FYI the typical cap city station these days is running fully digital 48K 24 bit internally from the first mic preamp A/D until it hits the transmitters exciter input. 48K linear is the EBU (European Broadcast Union ) standard for interchange.

Steve's point on fatigue is very relevent and made worse again when you reach the transmission processor. IN AM land (Which can be Hi-fi if you use a wide band Tuner and a good Antenna but that's a whole other thread) We limit asymetrically to maximise transmission and overcome limitations of the medium . Again this combined with mp3 leads to , you got it, crap sound on air.In The FM World , depending on what RDS you-re transmitting and whether you've sold your upper sub-carrier to Frankins or Woolies for the in-store radio (SCA) you again have a limited area to play with before you run out of bandwidth so you'll crunch it aggressively to maximize the use of the medium.

over to someone else for the next installment

[musikwerks]

You set the standard and the suppliers will follow. I think it's a great idea.

There's no way I would be allowed to deliver a master to Foxtel or the BBC or whoever on VHS or DVD. No, it's on HDCam or Digital Betacam and it's all within the broadcaster specification (EBU or SMPTE) for chroma/luminance/gamut etc, even starting time codes and how much black between segments. If it's even a hair out it's rejected. If it's rejected it costs me to fix it and if I miss deadline.... well, you don't miss deadline.

Advertising agencies don't know dick about technical stuff, and nor should they, that's the job of the production house. If you were to issue a real set of standards that were enforceable (not like the ridiculous OP48 for TV) and there were consequences for failing to adhere to those standards (ie, reject the master until it meets standards) you will quickly see the quality improving. Nothing gets it going faster than if you tell someone all the money they spent on talent and studio time is for nothing because it's been sent as an mp3 and not a Wav. They'll be on the phone screaming for a new one in 2 minutes.

I would suggest though that you specify standards for the quality of the original source because what's to stop them just re-encoding the same mp3 as a wav?

[musikwerks]

As an aside.... there are plenty of super high quality audio facilities in Sydney alone. I can think of Stellar Sound who are THX certified in all suites, then there's Beamo's and Song Zu and a bunch of others. Most of the high end guys would cringe at mp3's when they create the work on a Fairlight or other pristine system. Perhaps the education needs to occur at the agency level as opposed to the production level? With that in mind, the only way to get through to the agencies is to issue a strict set of standards that they must adhere to. They will push and push until someone says stop.

[Thirteen]

I don't know if this suggestion is practical or even sensible, but as mentioned earlier in the thread, the shunting of files via email is a real issue. This is coupled by most people's lack of understanding, access and knowledge of FTP technology compared to email.

Would it be practical for a body such as DRBA to get someone to write a small cross platform FTP application that was specific to the Australian broadcast industry? Basically a PC/Mac app. that has an interface that is configured specifically to taking a PCM file and directing it to one of a list of FTP destinations, those being supplied by the relevant radio networks?

If this app. was made available to advertisers, studios and so on, the it would be a matter of booting the application and following the prompts to get the file to the correct destination by ticking the correct box. The app. can look at the file suffix and alert the sender if the file is an inappropriate format as well. The idea is to make it simple for anyone including the receptionist to get a file directly to a correct server without training. The app could also stamp the source file information so that there is no confusion at the destination as to the sender of the file.

Don't know if this is practical, I guess it would depend on how much it would cost....

[Kurt]

Following on from the ftp idea, the bittorrent p2p protocol was created specifically for moving large files (linux distributions and the like) as efficiently as possible. I think it's a bit harder to get set up but it's very easy to use and fast.

Combine efficient transfers with lossless compression like flac or ape and moving a lot of high quality audio is easy. Just ask any teenager!

[wez]

Would it be practical for a body such as DRBA to get someone to write a small cross platform FTP application that was specific to the Australian broadcast industry? Basically a PC/Mac app. that has an interface that is configured specifically to taking a PCM file and directing it to one of a list of FTP destinations, those being supplied by the relevant radio networks?

If this app. was made available to advertisers, studios and so on, the it would be a matter of booting the application and following the prompts to get the file to the correct destination by ticking the correct box. The app. can look at the file suffix and alert the sender if the file is an inappropriate format as well. The idea is to make it simple for anyone including the receptionist to get a file directly to a correct server without training. The app could also stamp the source file information so that there is no confusion at the destination as to the sender of the file.

this is a great idea.

has anyone seen Sterling's 'eMastering' system? it's not a new concept, but it's a good one.

[Alastair Reynolds]

Commercial Delivery Companies already exist and have done for over 12 years e.g. Dubsat, Adstream and Digital Courier(Ring Lawsie's Cowbell here and add disclosure "Digital Courier is a Fairfax Media Company"). They Generally operate via FTP through a web interface and all are adding software to automate detection of uploaded tracks for format /sample rate etc. These distribution companies do not charge the Studios , they charge the agency based on how many stations they are to deliver to, so no cost to the studio operaters and if you have a good ISP who doesn't charge for uploads, No Cost for dubbing etc. remember the old days of running off 10 dubs on 1/4 inch then bagging , addressing and ringing the courier company. Bit Torrents are great for domestic use or small places but you'll find most larger corporation (The Guys with the Money that own the Radio Networks) have very,very tight Network security. Limewire , forget it you won't risk taking down your Broadcast network because of a virus that crept in on the back of a (probably)illegal download of someones copyright material (Whole other topic there).

here's some websites

http://www.fxrs.com.au/Programming-And-Services/Various-Other-Services/Digital-Courier-Audio-Distribution.aspx
http://www.adstream.com.au
http://www.dubsat.com.au

Check them out

[Martin]

I don't think its bandwidth getting in the way of the quality, its time and approvals.

'Don't make your lack of planning, my emergency'

I think agencies are aware that if they call back to get a hi res master they may get charged for the time it takes to create or send it

Getting past email size limits (and often this is as little as 5-7mb so once its been encoded to work with the email, its over that limit) is one major issue, as these same companies often don't have FTP set up or lack the skills to connect to the studios own FTP site (another expense..)

Services like YouSendIt can be useful but i'd never send anything through that i wasn't happy for the world to see

[Kurt]

On the other hand I suppose, how secure does advertising distribution need to be? The whole point of ads is to have them heard by as many people as possible!

[Thirteen]

I do wonder about the whole fatigue thing, it has fascinated me from the day that I was doing a studio install, and had been playing CD's for a few days to keep me company as I worked, and then one day I took my iPod, which I rarely use, plugged it into the monitors, and realized a couple of hours later that I really wasn't enjoying listening to my favorite albums, and I kept wanting to turn the volume down. I just found it hard to listen to, and the tracks were MP3 encoded at a high rate.

It's a subliminal thing, but I wonder if I was someone who listened to a station all day, such as a commercial driver, would I be more inclined to channel surf to get away from the stress of harsh digital sound?

[Martin]

On the other hand I suppose, how secure does advertising distribution need to be? The whole point of ads is to have them heard by as many people as possible!

true, but sometimes waht you send might have a wrong word or offer in there and there is hell to pay if it goes to air or gets out and its wrong

[seanc]

I'm surprised the Radio Stations and Commercial Delivery companies haven't been much more strict on what is acceptable quality. It's not like it just suddenly happened - this has been a gradual process and people have just blindly accepted stuff that was really below broadcast quality. I guess a minimum standard of CD quality (44.1k 16bit) should probably have been enforced long ago.

[Alastair Reynolds]

On Martins last comment about accountability I refer you to another sub-division of Fairfax Media
http://www.fxrs.com.au/Programming-And-Services/Various-Other-Services/Radio-Monitoring.aspx

We watermark commercials for ourselves and license to Adstream and then detect plays from off-air receivers and collate data for agencies and buyers. And yes they get upset when you play the $20 Million lotto ad on the wrong day.

For time and approvals, distribution is not the problem, getting a sales rep to take a call during that extra long lunch and send an ATB (authority to broadcast ) is the biggest time waste. for fast Turnaround every Today tonight and Current affair Promo comes through our chain around 4 o'clock every afternoon, we can process, watermark , alert stations to new material and have them downloading by 4:10 to have you hear in the 4:20 ad break what's on the show tonight

[Alastair Reynolds]

this has been removed as the PEBKAC hit submit twice

[rick]

my feeling is we are seeing the bottleneck of a bunch of things i have no idea what to suggest is a good way to do it , and it doesnt surprise me that you are going through this Alister, glad i am not in meeting after meeting about this shit , i dont think this stuff will ever get sorted out i dont think sound is a valuable commodity at the present time :(
the only reason we are not still listening to cart machines on the radio was mp3 formats are a zillion times cheaper!

i think we are heading into a time were economics are going to be the only way things are judged ..

i have been trying to find a song on the radio that was not recorded in the 1980s all week or wasnt a b grade soapy tv star back announcing the traffic report or the price of petrol

its thursday 8 car trips channel surfing to the max , 20 mins each way no luck yet. :(


on the bright side chinese democracy has been mastered without limiters and bob ludwig is quoted as saying this just might end the loudness war !

on the gloomy side india is burning and pakistan is about to join in , this might just start the final war :(

traffic is backed up over the harbour bridge its coming around to quarter pass the hour that was john melloncamp and billy idol is coming up next but first the weather......

[Alastair Reynolds]

Declining standards and quality has been a bugbear of mine for sometime. The mighty dollar and everyone wanting it done cheaper seems to have overtaken quality. Whilst it still can sound OK for mp3 on the average AM or FM station the industry as a whole stands to lose further to the ipod if the punter who gets his new DAB radio turns it on to his favorite breakfast show and it sounds like crap. Consumer experience = negative, less DAB sales and it goes the way of AM Stereo (remember that ) Industry loses more market share , cheaper ads are made by amateurs and another reputable V/O Studio goes to the wall cause they can't get work.
Sad part is being from a radio engineering background I have some fabulously good sounding tuners from all eras Early 50's Valve FM , wide band Valve and solid state AM, Late model Studer precision Receivers , hard to beleive how good FM can sound off a really good receiver. and there's just nothing worth listening to. As Pink Floyd put it, "13 Channels of Shit {on the TV} to choose from" :)
Guess there's nothing left to do today , but go home, uncork a wild turkey while the Quad IIs and ESLs warm up and Settle back and listen to Mercury Living Presence SACDs in the dark and hear the way it used to be done with 3 mics and a 3 track recorder in the early 60s.



Drink anyone ?

[wez]

Drink anyone ?

oh yes please.

[adamcal]

I have been fighting this fight too, perhaps less officially but its a daily battle.

voice actors send me MP3's, clients send me MP3 music tracks, then expect MP3's back. I always offer to send full quality wavs on to production, (and charge for it - BTW) but once they have their MP3s they are happy, and end up sending them themselves, saving money, loosing quality.

On top of this, many VO actors are setting up at home, and while some of them dont mind opening their wallets and buying half decent or even decent gear, mostly they opt for the cheapest they can get away with, a $200 Chinese mic, a low end mic pre or channel, not to mention the lack of room treatment.

I recently helped someone quite well known set up, you would know his voice instantly he is one of the biggest. The conversation went like this:

Me: well someone of your profile should get yourself a nice high end mic, a neumann perhaps, how about a 416 shotgun, a popular radio and TV VO choice around here.
VO: how about this $200 Rode
me: yeah........but
VO: so, show me how to set up this MP3 sending thing
me: kill me now

I think enforced standards are a great idea, CD quality as the bare minimum, but not just for the final file, there is little point to a wav that has been made form a mp3, and made from mp3 parts.


ok, so thats the audio engineer talking, now ON THE OTHER HAND:

advertising, TV, Radio, its a market place, you present better ads (including how they sound) you get better results, you present cheap and nasty ad's then thats the impression your potential customers will get of your product.
If the client/agency dont care about the multiple MP3 crunch, and the ads endup sounding...crunchy, be it on their own heads.

Thats what we need to get across.

[Kurt]

I really don't think people are that fussy about audio quality, the radio is just background noise for them. How often have you heard a radio slightly off the station when you walk into a shop? With dropouts, static and interference.. Drives me nuts but it seems most people will tune out the irritation rather than retune the radio.

[no-fi]

my pet hate with radio ads is bad fx reverb... like some goose is using the the most awful tinny (but long) crap reverb effect to make their add extra annoying and stand out.

That guarantees the radio station I'm listening to in my car will instantly change.

[adamcal]

I really don't think people are that fussy about audio quality.

But who is going to care if we (the audio engineers) dont either.

the problem is nobody wants to be a pain in the ass to their clients, insisting that music and voice tracks be sent as wavs when what they want is MP3's attached to an email, so they can send them on to their clients for approval and so on.

so then we get into a situation where you have to make multiple versions, for clients, for production and hope the client submits the wav, or you have to once approved, something thats not always possible.

if there was an official standard, that no mp3's are accepted for broadcast, it removes the argument and makes sure that files avoid yet another round of compression.

I know its just ad's, but there is a knock-on effect and it contributes to the general downgrading of acceptance of audio quality in peoples minds. is it already too late?

[Alastair Reynolds]

As Steve said earlier, one of the big things you notice is fatigue in listening when mp3 or other lossy compression is used.
One of the prime things that drives ratings is TSL, Time Spent Listening. If you are fatigueing your listeners they will ,as Steve Points out ,switch off or channel surf .TSL goes down, ratings go down, spot rate goes down ,production costs are cut Talent then uses cheap shit Mic into Laptop and mp3 via email, industry dissapears up it's own fundamental oriface.

Interestingly AM processing and overuse of positive peak modulation also introduces subtle distortion and fatigues the listeners. If you can get your hands on a wide band AM receiver have a listen accross the band to the difference in bandwidth, overmodulation and compression and how it differs between stations. Some you'll find are bandwidth limited down to 4.5Khz and sound wooly. I run the "Fortress of Arogance" at 8.5KHz (Full legislated legal limit) with only moderate compression and gentle positive modulation (about 120% Positive, 99.5% Negative).

Other fun comes when accounting for bandpass capability of the matching networks (Think 20,000 watt Crossover) and sideband capabilities of an Antenna ( Think frequency response of Transducer) and how that affects distortion when coupled with atmospheric loading, Tide changes and sunspots (This is the Dark Art part of Broadcasting)

[jkhuri44]

the most surprising part of all of this, is that all of this is happening while broadcast technology is improving....or at least i guess it is?


And, as far as im concerned....if i can send my client 150mb (10 minute doco audio) over a slow ADSL connection, i think its only faair that professional broadcast facilities can send the same sized files over Satellite/T3 networks easily, and as many times as necessary until things are approved.