Format for radio

[Olliedem-c]

Hi people,

 

I have recorded a live show and mixed it at home, it is due to be broadcast on a national radio station.

After speaking to the Dj about which format to send the finished mix to him on, he said

"one, two or three continuous named portion(s) on one CD which would then need to be downloaded on to the hard disk in the studio" was the normal format of OB recordings.

 

is this simply a long cd track containing about 3 songs? of am I missing the point?

 

thanks for any help.

[paulears]

what they need are 3 files that are continuous from the point that there isn't a gap betwen them. One long track could

be loaded into the editor, but that's a large file. They'd then put markers at the start of each music track, so the system can put names to them. 3 smaller files is just easier to manage - and they could, work on two at once.

 

If you have a proper editor like adobe, sound forge etc etc then they can chop the file up properly. even if you do leave a pause, it won't take them lng to edit it out.

 

More important is quality - if it is wav format that's great. if it's in mp3, then the conversion back to cd won't have done it any good - although with a live recording, it might be hidden somewhat.

 

Normally radio stations also ask you for track info for their needle time records, as in who, when where, rights holders if known etc etc

[SeanT]

Would I be totally out of date if I were to suggest that they don't tend to mind minidisc at all as most used to use them for jingles and ads?

That said, what is it recorded in already?

[Simon MFR]

If using midi-discs, crank the gain up....they are notoriously quiet when compared to CD's, and the compression rate is higher which results in quality loss....

[jayselway]

When I was at the student radio station at uni, we always specified an "Audio CD with no gaps between the tracks", unless it was just a general load of tracks specific for one show. We had a play out system that would take WAVs or MP3s which was great. Tagging the files, however, was not, with a track count of over 4000 that needed to be done = pass on to the Head Of Music. It wasn't without faults by any means, but receiving the tracks in an "easy-to-rip" format made things a lot easier.

 

For a pre-miced show, I would definately go with the no gaps plan. One way of doing it is to (as previously suggested), record the whole mix into Adobe Audition, or something similar, and then plot the track changes in that. When you come to record the disc, it should record the CD in tracks, but have no gaps in the middle, so if you were to play the disc it would sound like one single track.

 

Or, alternatively, you can get a CD recorder unit (audio in > disc), and whilst mixing, juggle a remote control that allows you to drop in a track increment. Bit tricky though me thinks (I tried it, and dropped the remote on the cue button = quiet portion of mix cd = not good :** laughs out loud **:.

 

HTH a bit

 

Jay

[Olliedem-c]

Thanks for the replys,

 

I recorded onto minidisc, most were solo acts, so I put crowd noise on one side mixed with one condenser and the other side was the opposite condenser (trad Irish instruments such as uilean pipes).

 

Split the stereo file to two mono's with sound forge, mixed with cubase and then opened again with sound forge and did a bit of editing. Simple enough stuff.

 

I'm not too sure how to mark places for dividing (of course I can split tracks and save seperately) but can I do it with regions? if I split and save seperate when I burn the cd I always get s short gap that I don't want.

 

Anyone experienced in soundforge?

 

Ollie

[Nick S]

if I split and save seperate when I burn the cd I always get s short gap that I don't want.

 

I don't know what you're using to burn, but the dedicated CD burning programmes (rather than the built in OS support) should let you specify timings between tracks (or in your case, lack of)

[SeanT]

I use an excellent little splitting program that cost $17.98 or summat, soundforge to record (of course) and an oem copy of nero to record as you can specify "no pause between tracks"

If you are splitting manually in soundforge you can forgo the splitting software (I use it to split the recording into 3 minute segments so the end user can review sections using transport keys rather than rewind/ff)