The mixing process for the programme was certainly an interesting one to say the least. The kind of mixing I’m used to usually has many channels playing at once, however in this radio programme it’s rare there was more than 4 playing at any one time. This by no means made the mix process easy as I encountered quite a few issues with the audio. Most radio audio is very ‘warm’ this means there are little to no harsh sounding frequencies, unfortunately there appeared to be a lot of harsh frequencies throughout the recordings. I first tried to tackle this by using EQ on the channels with harsh frequencies, typically cutting around 3-4khz as it is especially harsh on the human ear. This does help but isn’t really a total fix as it cuts that range out of the audio altogether, not just when the audio gets especially harsh. To make more accurate and effective reductions in harsh noise, I used a DeEsser. A DeEsser reduces the volume of a specific frequency range based on a set volume threshold, so for example when the audio gets especially piercing, the volume will only be reduced to react to harsh noise and not just reduced as a whole.   

In terms of volume my main task was to deal with the dynamic range as radio broadcasts typically have a limited dynamic range. This means there are no noticeable jumps in volume levels between channels/presenters’ voices. In order to achieve this, I had to balance out all the channels as evenly as possible. The main bulk of the volume control was done in the master channel in Logic, the master channel is the stereo output that all the other channels are routed to. I used a mastering chain to glue the project together and add any finishing touches. The most important things on my mastering chain was a compressor to reduce the dynamic range alltogether and make the project sound like one cohesive piece of audio, and a final DeEsser, set to a lower threshold to make sure that any harsh sounds had been cut out.