Between them, RPR1, Radio Regenbogen and bigFM command more than 10m daily listeners. Three of Southwest Germany’s largest privately-owned radio stations, they use three distinct formats – AC, Hot AC and CHR – but each of the stations sharse a single Service Center Production Sound Department.
Very recently, Head of Production, Stefan Müller has purchased Sonnox Broadcast Bundles for each of the Sound Department’s 11 workstations: ‘I had considerable experience with Sonnox plug-ins as a film mixing engineer prior to joining the Radio Group’, he says. ‘Their overall sound quality and flexibility is simply the best you can get in the plug-in market, so I knew they would provide excellent audio processing for radio production where sound is the major priority.’
‘One of the most important jobs is to get the voice through to our listeners as clearly and effectively as possible, without being harsh or unpleasantly loud’, he adds. ‘Of course, the sound of voices, music beds and FX varies from format to format, so we needed a plug-in bundle that would suit all our needs – aggressive for one radio format, more transparent for another without losing loudness.’
The Service Center Production Sound Department uses Sonnox plug-ins differently for each station: ‘The Oxford EQ is engaged for virtually every track, shaping detail and emphasizing transparency, but tailoring the finished mixes for specific audiences’, Müller explains. ‘The Oxford Dynamics plug-in’s built-in modules are particularly well suited to our bigFM audience, and to CHR where voices are more directly in the listener’s face. The SuprEsser plug-in gets deeper into our AC and Hot AC workflows, enabling us to dynamically reduce ”overemphasised” frequencies. The Oxford Limiter and Inflator are our primary weapons in the Loudness War.
‘I’m not a fan of indiscriminately increasing volume – that translates to lost punch and transparency’, he says. ‘By creatively employing the Limiter and Inflator plug-ins in our summing buses and masters, we can achieve excellent loudness levels and retain the details, emotions and dynamics that make compelling broadcasts.’
‘The Sonnox Broadcast Bundles have proved themselves the perfect solution to all our radio sound design challenges,’ he concludes.
More: www.sonnox.com
