I learnt something new today and thought I would share it with you. The other week I sent a few tracks off to TSM Radio, a radio station which is devoted to playing unsigned and independant artists. I was rather happy to see that they added 2 of my tracks to their playlist. (Thanks TSM Radio ).

I went to listen to TSM and heard my track played, in the track I panned a sound going left to right and back again in the mix. Online broadcasts need to be compressed down into smaller bitrates and one way they might compress down your tracks is to make them mono. TSM Radio does this on their 32kbps stream and what this meant was that when the panned sound was suppose to have been panned on one side the sound played and when it was suppose to be panned on the other you couldn’t hear it. Now I wasn’t that upset as it actually ended up sounding quite good because the sound wasn’t an important part of the track and it kept coming in and out. Had it been a more important part such as any vocals for example I would have been a little annoyed, not with TSM Radio but with myself for not realising that may happen.

So my tip is that if you are sending tracks off to any on-line radio stations or podcasts that may broadcast streams in mono it may be worth sending a mix than contains no fancy panning effects. It will stop any disappointment if you can’t hear certain instruments or your mix gets ruined.

TSM Radio