Scoped DJ Recordings question.

[DJBohn]

Hey all! I have been working out the details to obtain some first generation original late 60's early 70's (scoped) radio broadcasts from a person that was at the time was a very popular nighttime DJ at a nationally known Clear Channel AM radio station. What I told him I intend on doing is to clean the audio up a bit, convert to simulated stereo, & replace the scoped music with music from CD's. I had to agree with him to not sell or share them, but could use them for personal use including a class reunion comming up in a couple of years. I also agreed to send him back copies of the finished work.

I think this will be a fairly easy process other than one little problem - The compression originally used with AM radio. Much of the Rock-N-Roll music of the era could start or end very quiet or very loud. I wish to preserve the DJ dialog durring the beginning & ends of the music, but when I fade into and out of the CD's, I don't want it to sound like someone playing with the volume control. To make this all sound as natural as possible, I feel the best approach, as much as I don't want to, would be to use the Punch & Crunch & compress the music to somewhat match the broadcast levels. The end result would at least make for great background listening, still sound better than FM, and the Punch & Crunch should be much more natural sounding than the original AM (probably single banded) compressor. Craig, do you or anyone have any suggestions as to what P&C settings I should use that could somewhat mimic AM compression?

[Craig Maier]

Hi,

I would suggest starting out with a compression ratio of around 1.8 and see how that goes. I would probably set this up in the Multifilter with the P & C first and the Dynamics Processor second. I would choose one of the limiter presets for the Dynamics Processor and I would run all of the signals through the P & C fairly hot. Let the Dynamics Processor catch any potential overloads. That combination should recapture the original sound pretty nicely.

Note: An attack time of around 10 - 20 mSec and a release time of a few hundred mSec's generally works quite well.

[DJBohn]

Thanks Craig. I had thought about going at it from the other direction, that is use the AM Radio De-Compressor preset in the Punch & Crunch & just expand the broadcast, but was afraid it may have trouble separating the DJ dialog from music compression extremes.

[Craig Maier]

As I recall, that preset is designed to add a little of the dynamic range that had been removed from AM radio broadcasts due to compression. I assumed that you are inserting CD quality sound, and that you wanted it to sound more authentic. That is why I recommended multi-banded compression.