COMPRESSION MYTH BUSTER

Urban myths and legends have a way of sticking around even in the information age. Knocking on wood is one convincing example. We don't really believe it helps but, it can't hurt so why not.

Such is the way of some myths in the audio game. One myth that's been kicked around a long time has to do with compressing your audio to thwart the beat down it would otherwise get from a radio station's processing. The usual version of this story says that if you hypercompress your audio, the on air chain won't really touch it and you'll take control away from radio's aggressive broadcast settings.

It's not quite true. The only true aspect is that if you input material with no dynamic range, it's tough for the on air compression to reduce it further. Of course, it's more complicated than that. The audio still has to run the gauntlet of processors and it will be degraded further. Heavily compressed audio does not sound louder over the air, it just sounds more distorted which may lead to perceived loudness but at a heavy cost.

That gauntlet of processing just mentioned includes, phase rotation, automatic gain reduction, spatial enhancement, equalization, multi-band compression, limiting, high frequency limiting and clipping (peak limiting). This is a typical processing lineup that can be seen all over the world. Just hitting your compressor harder will not dodge this blitzkrieg. Not by a long shot.

Let your audio breathe. Don't fear the Orban. Make it sound great in the studio and let the on air crunch monsters do their worst, you have nothing to worry about.