Mastering for Radio

[nd]

Hi
I've searched on this forum and the web for info on this, I can't really find much about it.
I'll be mastering a couple of hip hop/reggae songs for commercial radio.
The general ideas I've gotten from the articles I've found are:
Don't over compress or it'll be squished on the air. (less compression than the version for CD?)
High pass roll off around 60hz and maybe cutting frequencies above 15khz as well because they don't come through much on radio.

Anyone have any experience with this?

[Jeff Schmidt]

I work in radio - don't bother doing anything SPECIAL to the mix for radio.

It won't matter.

Every station has different processing and air-chain configs so there is no 1 thing you can do that'll fly across such a diverse set of configs. If a mix or mastering engineer insist you do different versions for radio - and YOUR paying for it - forget it. If a label is paying for it and it wont end up comming out of your end (yeah right) then humor them and got with it.

Overall - just make a great sounding commerical release quality mix and it'll sound great on radio.

Seriously.

The term "Radio Mix" usually means only 2 things.

The song has been edited from it's 5-7 minute version to a 3-5 minute version.

And there may be different instrumentation choices - certain elements are reduced or enhanced in a mix to make it more playable on stations with different formats.

[where02190]

Since radio compresses everything to hell, compressing the mix will make your music actually appear louder and more even dynamically. I've had great success with radio mixes run through a Distressor using this method.

Also, sinc emost tend to listen to the radio in noisy environments, put the vocals (or lead instrument) upfront a bit more, and mix it just slightly on the bright side. This will help the music cut through the ambient noise of the street.

Hope this is helpful.