Quote
Gaming the system is a futile effort.

I first ran into this with my songs on FM radio (anybody remember that?) and during my time doing voice overs spent time talking with their engineers, since I could speak their language. They showed me how they squash the life out of the dynamic range to make everything you hear equally hot. It was useless to try to tweak your song when they were going to do that. And every station was different. Things really haven’t changed, just the platform.

Yep. Having gotten my start in radio, too, I couldn’t agree more.

I have done a lot of mastering by Christian artists for the K-LOVE radio network. This is a nationwide chain of 10W stations. They squeeze the life out of all program material so that the signal remains intact at the furthest edge of the signal range. The only hope anyone has is to use someone like me to pre-squash the signal while trying to keep the sound intact. By doing this, one stands a chance that it sounds the same once the track hits their brick wall limiters. This is not as simple as it may sound. A kick or bass 1/2 dB too loud will ruin a track while 1/2 dB too low will cause it not to be heard at all.

BIAB 2024 Audiophile, 24Core/60CoreGPU Core M2 MacStudioUltra/8TB/192GB Sequoia, M1 MBAir, 2012 MBP/color]
[color=#FF0040]Digital Performer11, LogicPro
Finale27/Dorico/Encore/SmartScorePro64/Notion6 /Overture5