Posted by steve dedman on January 19, 2000 at 16:43:58:
In Reply to: Re: Does Size Matter, Some Observations posted by Jay Bertolet on January 18, 2000 at 10:34:52:
Jay,
As a technician in the television industry, I can tell you a little as to why the radio performances sound so markedly different than what you hear in the booth. What you are hearing in the booth is the actual master, played back on the same machine on which it was recorded. In the process of editing and replaying these performances on air, that original master is probably copied at least 4 or 5 times. Unless it was originally mastered on a digital format (CD, MP3, DAT, etc.), there will be a very large generational deterioration of the audio quality. In other words, on air you are hearing a copy of a copy of a copy. Digital formats do not suffer a generational loss at nearly the same rate as an analog format, but there is still some loss.
Good production houses try to limit the number of times something is reproduced to help attenuate the loss, but a minimum of three generations is necessary for an EDITED show.
The quality of the playback equipment and its maitainence is also an issue. Dirty heads on the playback deck will cause problems. I'm assuming an NPR station, and since many of these are, unfortunately, woefully underfunded, the equipment may be older and more used than the state-of-the-art equipment used by the recording units that produce for the record labels.