Bit of advice - preamp

[flat5]

Yes but you can adjust the time constant (gain hold) to achieve the 'best' result for the application.

 

[audioguru]

Yes but you can adjust the time constant (gain hold) to achieve the 'best' result for the application.

An audio compressor almost always sounds bad. My local TV station over-compresses the voices of the news anchor people. They blast a loud noise when taking a breath then the first syllable also blasts until the slow compressor catches up and reduces the level. Their voices still fade away to a growl at the end of almost every sentence. On a TV show there are people talking with loud drums or other loud sounds in the background. The voices disappear for a word or two following each loud sound.

In "the good old days" there was a sound man who adjusted audio levels, not a stupid compressor machine. The audio always sounded fine and if the drums were too loud then he turned them down.

How about when the TV reporter is out on the street and the "voice" frequency response goes down almost to DC? Low frequency truck sounds are deafening. Why don't they use a highpass filter for street voices??

 

[flat5]

Yes it can be terrible. A limiter has it's uses. A compressor can help after the fact to adjust the levels when two people are talking and the mic favors one of them. Again, time constant can help to hold the level during breaths. Hopefully the mic is not down the throat of one of them so you can also hear their false teeth.

I have some trouble getting to sleep and often listen to classical music at a low level to help the situation.
It gets me quite angry when the studio has the music at a low level but the announcer is compressed with bass boost and much louder than the music. The definition of tasteless.

 

[audioguru]

Yes it can be terrible. A limiter has it's uses. A compressor can help after the fact to adjust the levels when two people are talking and the mic favors one of them. Again, time constant can help to hold the level during breaths. Hopefully the mic is not down the throat of one of them so you can also hear their false teeth.

Hee, hee. I notice that TV stations play "hide the microphone" game. A mic must NEVER be seen on TV. Hide it down a sweater or under the desk so it is not visible no matter how muffled it makes the voices.
They also think that voices have no high frequency silibant and high frequency consonant sounds so they cut off all these important sounds in speech.

 

[flat5]

I would like to continue this tangent but it is off topic to this thread. Sorry about that.