Watch Your Zero

One problem I often see in Broadcast Audio is two people working with a different “Zero.”  Back when we used analog meters “Zero” was your average point – the mid point for all audio.  The meters would give you 10-20 decibels of headroom over your average point.  If you were passing audio from one room or facility to another you would first send tone sitting on your zero.  Then the other person would adjust their gain to set your zero to their zero point, and it allowed you to make sure that your volumes would be comparable.

Today it’s different.  Nobody seems to send tone anymore.  Then we have all these people running around thinking that since they are working in digital that as long as nothing overloads it will be fine.  The problem is that everything is not fine. People forget that the signal chain from source to final listener will have analog and digital components in it.  It’s deteriorating audio quality in everything we do.

Television production uses -20dBfs as their average point, while FM uses -15 or -12 dBfs.  Yeah, that sentence alone explains a lot.  I’m noticing more audio out of phase or not even from other stations.  I double check my signal and it’s fine.

I don’t care if you are working out of your basement or work for the largest network on the planet – you can be screwing something up.  Double check your signal before you blame the other guy.

I connected to another station (larger than ours) this past week or so because of the Pennsylvania Primaries.  They swore that we were doing something wrong, and went to a tape sync.  30 minutes later we did another feed with an even larger organization without a single problem.  We didn’t adjust anything on our end.  The difference, the people we were connecting with.  Yet, the first group swore it was us.  What I want to say to everyone in audio and broadcast. . .

Watch your zero.  Double Check yourself.  Don’t automatically blame the other guy.