Your Favorite Mic Processor

[flintstone mop]

There are mic processors and on-air processors.   I have been playing with audio and audio thingys since I was a kid in the 3rd grade.

Lately, I have been futzing around with several mic processors including an Omnia Toolvox, Symetrix 528, and a Symetrix 528E.  Then for transmission processing I can connect in the "big guy", the Omnia 6, also an Omnia 3, several different CRL's including their preparation processor, the 4 band spectral energy processor, and an AM llmiter as well as an FM limiter.  Then there is a rare thingy, a 3 band broadcast processor from Processing Plus, an IMP3.   Out in the garage is the old stereo Audimax and Volumax that unfortunately was damaged by water and smoke.

So far my favorite "lineup" is the Omnia Toolvox followed by the Omnia 6 (which is primarily made for FM), but I have the AM software in it.  The mic is either a Shure SM7 or SM58.  There is an old ribbon mic somewhere in the closet I haven't tried yet.

Maybe one day I can connect them all in series and watch the meter stick at 99% negative modulation and 150% positive no matter what I say into the mic.  There will be so much gain, compression and limiting, even a quiet room's low level of ambient noise will keep that meter reading at full scale. 

Come to think of it, I have heard several stations who must be using that same lineup on slopbucket.....all noise and no intelligibility!

Imagine how loud the "bongggg" of the Valiant firing up would sound on those things.

73
Ted W8IXY

I am getting a good chuckle from the responses above this one.
There was a 10,000 watt AMer in burbs of (1960's) Washington DC, 1580, WPGC, Color Radio, that was the loudest station around. Very annoying sound. And reverb on top of it. They would brag that that they were the most powerful station with 10KW. ( I guess they forgot about 1500, WTOP AM, 50KW)
They would not let anyone inspect their processing during their heydays. But it was reported that it was a lot of Daisey-chained processors as you mentioned.
When Roberta Flak's hit "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" played their processing just fell to pieces..........or they were playing the vinyl version and the nothing but feedback and horrendous pumping when the bass notes hit the processors. How they ever passed proof of performance was beyond me.
Fred

[W8IXY]

I once worked at an AM station where the PD was a compression freak.  Installed in the line before the Audimax and Volumax, he had the engineers set up a compressor that he insisted be set to 30 db compression on average program material.  It sounded awful.  Instead of music fading out, the noise level just was brought up.

Several years later, I was at a station where he spent a short time as an on-air person, and called me shortly after he got there insisting that there was something wrong with the processing because when the VU meter went down, so did the audio level.

The old commercial for a Honda used to say "You meet the nicest people on a Honda".  From my experience, it could read "You meet the weirdest people in broadcasting". 

73
Ted  W8IXY

[KM1H]

Simplicity is best IMO. Start off with a properly designed speech section and with enough iron to do the job.

The 4.7 meg at the grid works excellent and D-104's are my weapons of choice.

The 70's Split Band Speech Processor from HRM (I believe) and later offered by Radio Kit was designed for SSB where it dont work worth a damn as its an audio device, not RF as was the Comdel. OTOH it works well on AM. I use one on the QRP rigs screen modulation such as a DX-35 which needs all the help they can get.

I also have a Daiwa RF-440 which is supposed to be an excellent RF based processor but I havent tried it on anything yet. It was in a box of all sorts of stuff I picked up at an estate sale some years ago. Maybe time to drag it out and try on AM.

All these racks full of BC studio junk turn me off, too damn many distractions. Its like playing with antenna software....forever diddling for that last tenth of a dB which nobody really gives a damn about.

KISS

Carl

[k4kyv]

Nothing wrong with processors and such if you know what you are doing, or at least experiment to  discover what really works.  Usually the best result is achieved with something relatively simple, not a bunch of outboard boxes daisy-chained together.

I get a chuckle out of some of the "ESSB" wannabes who try to force-feed extended frequency response through a stock 2.7 kc/s sideband filter in a ricebox.  They inevitably sound awful with intermod, distortion and splatter all over the place.  OTOH, some of the guys who know what they are doing replace the stock filter with a wider one, often tinker with the modulated stage and low level audio stages, and of course use a decent microphone with response set to best match their voice.  Some can be made to sound almost as good as AM, if carefully tuned in.  Where they are missing the boat is not transmitting a pilot carrier about 20 dB down from peak power, and receiving with a synchronous detector.

And Fred, I'm still using that BL-40 you swapped me for the mod reactor.

[flintstone mop]

And Fred, I'm still using that BL-40 you swapped me for the mod reactor.

That is good Don.........With the extra magic black box replacement, it should last forever.

[WA3VJB]

I once worked at an AM station where the PD was a compression freak.

Ted they're apparently everywhere, even still, but I wonder whether the AM stations were more often victims as program directors and other management tried to "sound more like FM," whatever that meant.

An AM station where I worked, the engineer got the bright idea to put a strong AVC on the house monitors that the General Manager/owner listened to, as well as on the line feeding the headphone amp to the jock.  Sure sounded loud.  

Out in the field it sounded good -- oh and note to Don -- the main processor was a Urei Modulimiter BL-40 !
Nice unit, except the automatic input phase reverser was disabled because it made an audible pop transitioning from one mode to the other.

We also tried a trio of dbx 160  as a crude multiband limiter.  I think there was a Crown combiner or splitter on one side or the other. 

[Lou W9LRS]

WOW what great subject

I have a couple of audio chains I use with the Johnson 500. My favorite starts with a PR 40 Mic into a Symetrix 528. I agree that you can get into a mess with the EQ if you don't know what your doing. Keep in mind it was made for voice work and not as a finishing Compressor/Limiter. The DBX, BL 40 ,Crl, Volumax etc. really were made to finish a broad audio signal before the transmitter. For voice work the 528 has the perfect EQ in the voice range, and if you use it correctly + - DB. it sounds great.
 The second chain I use is a Studio Technologies Mic pre into a Drawmer M 500 Processor. The M500 is analog audio with digital control. It allows you to store various Chains(2 Band De esser, switchable compression,expander,adjustable gate and separate control for limiting in any configuration you choose) in the memories.
It takes a little menu time to set up and a lot of people can't deal with that. That said, you can configure several recalls for Battle conditions or HI FI audio or anything in between.
 With all that, if you don't know how to work with your microphone, it won't make any difference .

Lou

[k4kyv]

That is good Don.........With the extra magic black box replacement, it should last forever.

According to the book, that module has a finite life expectancy, kind of like an incandescent lamp, and that activating it with audio signal hastens its demise. I modified my T/R relay configuration to kill the audio to the limiter whenever the station is not in transmit mode. That way, I am not wasting life of the module when the microphone picks up random noises in the shack, including blasts from the receiver monitor speaker and the sound of power tools in the workshop.

[Opcom]

Does anyone else have or use a Kahn or other phase rotator?

[kb3rdt]

I found this a little funny but i use a D104  with mpf102 amp and 2 dsp one is digitech dsp 128 and a bbe 362 sonic maximizer I had a vx-2000 I wasn't crazy about it

[KA3ZLR]

Mine has the HC-5 Element in it.
an nutten else.

73
Jack
KA3ZLR

[KM1H]

When Im on the TS-950SD and linear I use a boom mike with switchable HC-4 and HC-5 elements. Going thru the 6 KHz filter and switchable digital audio filter in the rig gets some good reports with both, I havent tried routing thru the LC 12 KHz one yet.

[W1ATR]

Does anyone else have or use a Kahn or other phase rotator?

Funny you should mention these old symmetra peaks. Been thinking about it lately trying to determine if its snake oil of not, and if it's worth the effort to find or try building one. Welp, after reading W3AM's page about it, http://www.w3am.com/8poleapf.html , I was poking around on fleabay and spotted these. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Audio-All-Pass-Filter-Phase-Rotator-Module-Board-/400159323834?pt=Vintage_Electronics_R2&hash=item5d2b5ab6ba

For 20 bucks, I might give it a whirl. I keep everything balanced, so maybe a couple bal/unbal trannys in and out, a small psu to run it, and stuff it in a little metal box.

Can't hurt, and if anything else, it's really small, so it'll fit in my garbage can nicely.

Any thoughts?

[K5UJ]

The problem with the Kahn reportedly is that if you make the + and - peaks symmetric, you loose the advantage of a natural asymmetry in your voice that gives you higher pos. peaks (if you have the phase right). 

Read this for more on early processors:  http://www.thebdr.net/articles/audio/proc/proc-hist.pdf and go down to page 9 where the author mentions the Kahn symmetraPeak.   

This is part of a series on the history of processing at Barry Mishkind's website.  The author is the late Jim Somich