About this notebook

Most writing about audio falls into one of two heaps. There is manufacturer material, which explains a product rather than a principle, and there is forum folklore, which is often right and almost never says why. What is missing in between is the plain explanation: what the thing is, what it is for, what the numbers mean, and which of the received opinions about it are actually true.

That gap is what this site is for. It covers the transmitted side, in On Air, and the studio side, in In the Room, and it treats them as one subject, because they are.

How a piece gets written

Each piece starts from a question that has a definite answer, then goes looking for where that answer is actually specified. In this field the answer is usually in one of three places: a federal regulation, a published technical standard, or long-established trade practice that is documented but not codified.

Those three are treated differently on purpose. Where a figure comes from a rule or a standard, the note at the foot of the piece names the rule or the standard, so a reader can go and check. Where something is trade practice rather than law, the text says so, because the difference matters the moment anyone acts on it. And where a number moves, as platform loudness targets do, the piece says that it moves and gives the order of magnitude rather than pretending to a precision it cannot keep.

Nothing is invented. There are no anonymous quotations, no composite anecdotes, no round numbers standing in for measurements, and no examples described as real when they are illustrative. Where an illustration is drawn to explain a structure, such as the example hour clock in the shape of a broadcast day, the caption says that it is an example.

Corrections

Pieces are corrected in place rather than replaced. When something material changes, the text is edited, the revision date in the byline is updated, and where the change matters to a reader who has already read the piece, the note at the foot records what moved. A piece that has only ever had one date has never needed correcting.

Two kinds of correction are especially welcome. The first is a figure that has been superseded, particularly where a rule or a platform specification has been revised since a piece was written. The second is a definition that is technically defensible but misleading in practice, which is the commonest failing in writing of this kind.

Getting in touch

The address is contact@notjustradiolubbock.com. It is read by the person who writes the site, which is the same person who edits it and the same person who makes the mistakes.

A correction that names the piece, quotes the sentence and says what the right version is will be dealt with quickly. A question about a subject not yet covered is also useful: the running list of things to write about is mostly made of questions people have asked.

What the address is not for: requests to place a link or an article, offers of guest posts, and enquiries about advertising. There is no arrangement under which any of those happen here.

Where to start reading

If you have no particular question, the two pieces that make the rest easier to follow are what is actually riding on an FM carrier, which defines most of the vocabulary used on the transmitted side, and loudness, and the ceiling nobody can raise, which is the one subject that concerns everybody who works with sound, whatever they do with it afterwards.

If you are setting up a room to record in, start at microphones, and the six inches that decide everything instead. And if you simply want to know what a word means, the glossary holds every term used across the site, defined in a sentence or two.