“Danette” Seton’s work space with the LXE three-fader wedge on the left and Prophet Systems’ screen in the middle left, next to the WheatNet-IP audio network control screen in the middle, right. Through the window is Dan Patrick’s announcer station and in a separate studio through a door off to the left is the LXE console used by “Two-A-Days” for live production.  

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By Dee McVicker

Jim Hibbard is as close as this industry gets to a studio whisperer. So, when he told me about the latest Mancave for The Dan Patrick Show, I wondered how he handled the inevitable noise rattling around inside and outside that big space. 

Built into a 18,000-square-foot warehouse, the new Mancave for Dan Patrick’s syndicated show happens to be situated next to not only a Milford, Connecticut, fire station but an AM tower as well. 

This is the latest Mancave for Patrick, where he conducts a live radio and television broadcast every weekday; the show is switched and uplinked in Los Angeles with radio syndication on the Premiere network. It is easily the coolest studio in sports media today with a football field, ping pong table, basketball court, putting green and a $150,000 golf simulator. 

It’s also one of our more impressive WheatNet-IP audio networked studios in action, with “Two-A-Days” producing and mixing the show on our LXE console surface in a side studio and one of the “Danettes” adding local playbacks, bumpers, and sounders from an LXE Wedge next door as an extension of the board, complete with mirrored faders between the two. 

But, was Jim able to get a decent sound from this big, cavernous space? 

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Let's Talk Clippers

Clipping can be like hot sauce. You want just enough to get the job done and not a smidge more. One of the main reasons why processors can’t push the clipper harder is because of the pre-emphasized higher end frequencies. At 15kHz, you have seven times the energy than at 400Hz, which clippers can turn into intermodulation distortion that comes out sounding “spitty” if pushed too hard. This is exacerbated by the limiting stage that precedes clipping. 

Solving the limitations of FM clipping on pre-emphasized content has long been viewed as the critical stage in the audio processor that can finally break through the “sound barrier”  or, that barrier to dynamic, robust audio programming (read clean and loud). We’ve spent a lot of time in our audio processing lab (and even more time in our home labs and in the field) experimenting with different FM clipper techniques, and each new processor we design gets progressively better. Our new X5 FM/HD audio processor effectively breaks that sound barrier with an innovative approach we call the LIMITLESS  Clipper, a high-frequency distortion canceling technology that passes the highs without the spit. Pass the hot sauce, please. 

This tip is brought to you from the Wheatstone Lab by Jeff Keith, CPBE, NCE, Senior Product Development Engineer and Mike Erickson, audio processing field engineer. The Wheatstone Lab has a wide range of music and program content sources that can be routed through more than 37 audio processors, ranging from early vintage 1970s models to the very latest FM audio processor (our X5), plus a half-dozen microphones, three transmitters, and audio display monitors of all types.

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