What Is An “FM Radio” Sound?

Some people have noted that the voice quality in the videos I produce for PCMech and in personal music recordings I make that have sought-after "FM sound" to them, which loosely translates to "sounds like the dee jay I hear on FM radio".

If you’re the type that records audio and are looking for that particular sound, it’s actually much easier to achieve than most people realize.

It takes three steps.

First is how you model the sound of your own voice when you speak when recording it.

Do you use verbal fillers such as "um..", "ah…", "er…" or the like? Try not to use those. Don’t worry, a lot of people do and it’s a tough habit to break. You can kill most of the fillers by having a "cheat sheet" next to you when speaking. No, it doesn’t contain every word you’re going to say but just a topic list. When you have this list, verbal fillers will usually decrease noticeably.

There are other tricks you can use, such as saying more with each breath, purposely slowing down how fast you speak (but not by much) and trying find a nice happy medium between speaking and announcing.

Modeling your voice just in the way you speak will make a dramatic improvement in the overall recorded sound.

Second on the list is noise reduction.

On most voice recordings people get hiss (a.k.a. "white noise") and background noise they want out of there.

The easiest way to eliminate the unwanted noise is to use a mild noise reduction filter.

Audacity, a free audio recording program, has a such a filter as do most other programs that record audio. Even Camtasia Studio has one.

The reason you want to use a mild filter is because if you filter it too much it will literally cut out parts of your voice – and you don’t want that.

It takes a bit of experimentation to get the proper sound you want from a noise reduction filter.

Third on the list is compression.

Compression above all else is what most people think an "FM Radio" sound sounds like. And for those most part it’s true.

To note: Do not confuse this with file compression because that’s something totally different. What we’re talking about is using a compressor as an audio filter.

Audacity by the way also has compression filters in it.

In FM radio, music and voice are compressed with a live filter so that everything comes out at an even audio level thru your car speakers when you listen to it. Nothing is too loud or too soft. This is why a recorded piece of music sounds different on a home stereo played via CD (or computer) compared to a radio broadcast. It is the compression you’re hearing that makes it sound different.

When you examine an audio wave in an audio editor like Audacity, the original recording has peaks and valleys. When compressed, most of those peaks/valleys are "scrunched" so that it’s all evened out. Volume levels are even across the wave after the filter is applied for the most part.

Another example of compressed audio is a camcorder’s recording. All audio recorded with a camcorder is highly compressed with a live filter which is why it seemingly can "pick up everything". In reality it can’t. What it’s doing when recording is filtering on the fly so it can "hear" whatever is in range, near or far, and even it out appropriately.

If you’ve never experimented with noise reduction filters and compression, you ordinarily won’t get it right the first time. It takes practice to get the sound you want. But once you do you can repeat the process every time you make an audio recording for podcasting or music recording or whatever you do with recorded audio.

To note: I may do more detailed how-to’s on this later but would prefer if you would comment and say whether you would be interested or not. Any/all comments appreciated. I can get seriously detailed on this stuff. :-)

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  • Merzin

    Rich;
    Thanks for the post. I sure with bloggers making more video posts sound will gain inportance. I would like to see more posts dealing with the technical side. I’m trying to get my blog to the web, but I don’t think it’s ready to go live. Looking at the the end of 1/09 PC Mech has been a great help to me. Thanks for your support.

    Frank Katalenas

  • Bruce Johnson

    Definitely more on audio. I’ve got audicity and am looking to do audio on my own site.

  • http://www.twitter.com/andrewpearce Drew

    As someone who has had vocal training in voice over announcing for radio and TV, I’m always eager to read up on tips and other points of view. And being a Sound Forge user for the last 10 years, I’ve played around with various aspects of sound manipulation (both vocal and music) on a variety of levels, so I’ll definitely be looking forward to any further blog posts with this kind of focus.

    BTW – if you’re in the Tampa area and listen to 103.5 when the Buccaneers are playing, I’m the guy who voiced the 3x Land Rover commercials :)

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