When David Reaves announced a partnership with Aqua Broadcast earlier this year, it moved the needle — pardon the pun — for people who know sound in the industry.
You may know Reaves from his work as an engineer, including at New York City top 40 station 100.3 WHTZ(FM), “Z-100,” from 1988–1996. He later spent time at NBC News.
Reaves has continued to research and support efforts to develop quality sounding audio on radio. He co-founded TransLanTech Sound, where he came up with the Ariane processor line, named after his wife.
Now, in a venture called David Reaves Audio, he’s taking a “Zen” approach to design high-performance audio level control products, which Aqua Broadcast will manufacture. Industry veteran Rich Redmond is partnering in the endeavor.
More than an afterthought
At the spring NAB Show, Reaves showcased the Zen 10 audio level controller, one of a new series of “Zen Level” controllers. The idea of AGC being a core selling point in a 2025 product might seem surprising — but not to Reaves.
The concept traces to his early fascination with the CBS Audimax processor.
“There’s an AGC of some sort in pretty much every broadcast audio processor system,” he told us. “There is no broadcast processing without an effective AGC.”
Automatic level control, Reaves said, also has a multitude of uses in broadcast production, ranging from music preparation to adding polish to commercials and promos.
“Sometimes audibility is desirable, and, for example, being able to selectively add a controlled amount of ‘punch’ can make a produced program element stand out,” he said.
Reaves believes that, particularly in lower-end AM and FM broadcast audio processors, AGC design is often an afterthought.
“In my opinion, if its action consistently draws attention to itself, it’s a poor design,” he said.
That’s where his thought process has been on the Zen 10: Its design aims to offer users precise level control while minimizing the audibility of its adjustments.
There are uses for AGC beyond traditional radio needs, Reaves said. They might include podcasts, videos and streaming programs, as well as public address applications in houses of worship and music venues.
“Loudness control is useful — even necessary — for creating a comfortable, consistent listening level,” he said.
When we spoke, the company was hoping to begin production shipments after the IBC Show. Also in development is the Z-3, a reduced-feature, three-band half-rack model, and the “Zaudimax,” a single-band, low-cost processor designed to look and function like a 1965 CBS Audimax III.
“That one is mainly for fun!” Reaves said. But the whole process clearly is a joy for him.
A certain charm
Reaves’ fascination with AGC began in his youth. He grew up in Gainesville, Fla., where in the late 1960s three top 40 AM stations competed for listeners. Despite having only 1 kW of power as a graveyarder, 1230 WGGG(AM) stood out for its consistent sound.
“The records simply didn’t fade, which kind of mystified me,” Reaves recalls.
The station would come to outperform the other 5 kW stations in the Gainesville Pulse ratings at the time.
WGGG ultimately forced those competitors to change formats; one went country, the other middle-of-the-road/adult contemporary.
In 1972 Reaves as a high-schooler got a job at the station, playing tapes on Sunday mornings and announcing station IDs — but was not allowed to say his name.
“It was me and two other engineer wanna-be kids, Greg Strickland and Terry Hesters, taking turns playing religious tapes, public service shows and Casey Kasem’s ‘American Top 40’ on weekends.”
That’s how he learned that the “magical” level control of WGGG was due to its use of a CBS Laboratories Audimax AGC. Over time he found that this was a common trait among stations with higher ratings: In almost every case they were using an Audimax.
He said that, from today’s perspective, it’s far from a perfect device, but he felt that there was a certain charm to how the Audimax treated audio levels.
CBS’ patented method is known as the “gain platform,” a hysteresis release system that forces the system’s gain to remain unchanged over periods whenever the incoming signal remains within the “window” of a certain range of variation. In the original Audimax, this window was 7 dB.
Reaves said that during these periods, the audio coming out would be identical to the incoming signal, including all the small variations that give it its natural feel and flavor. It is a control method that left a big impression on him.
After WGGG and graduation, David’s first full-time on-air role was at a station in Eden, N.C. Finally he could say his name on the air. He would DJ at several other Tar Heel state stations while growing an affinity for engineering.
In 1975, he returned to Gainesville to attend classes at Santa Fe Community College and landed a role as a host for progressive rocker WGVL(FM). By this time, in the college town home to the University of Florida, this station, which had come on in 1970, felt like it was at the center of it all. “It was a right place, right time kind of situation,” he said.
Over three years, under the tutelage of veteran album rock programmer Lee Arnold, Reaves eventually become program director while also learning what went into creating a superior-sounding FM station. He credits Greg Strickland, who’d become the station’s chief engineer, as an influence.
“Before CDs, a finely tuned FM station could be the cleanest, most accurate-sounding audio source available to most consumers,” Reaves said. “WGVL was very pure, thanks to Greg’s attention to detail.”
Greg Strickland would go on to be a chief at stations in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, where his Spanish Broadcasting station led the ratings. Reaves would take the same role at top 40 powerhouse Z-100.
“We both did all right,” he allowed.
The Zen mindset
At WHTZ, Reaves followed the lead of former chief and later consultant Frank Foti. At least initally, he only set out to tweak the processing that Foti and Jim Somich had set up.
But the New York market was competitive and dynamic. Engineer Paul Sanchez at WPLJ(FM) had cranked up its processing with its aggressive sound.
WHTZ’s equipment chain, while very high-quality, was relatively simple, Reaves said. But Broadcasters’ General Store gave Reaves access to a new “Tailor” 10-band level controller, created by Jim Trapani. The Tailor was basically an octave-band graphic EQ but with RMS level control built into each band.
“It was powerful. Maybe even a bit too powerful,” Reaves said.
As an analog product, it lent itself to modifications. Reaves wondered if he could apply the Audimax-style gated/platform release control to the 10 bands of the Tailor.
This would mean setting up a “dead-band” dynamic window for each band, so the device would let processed audio “breathe.” That experience was a precursor to the Zen Level design philosophy: “Stay out of the way of audio that is already adequately processed,” he said.
“It taught me a lot.”
Living today in Germany, Reaves has spent time studying and experimenting with the ideas presented in the Audimax patents and figuring out how to best implement them in a DSP application.
The “Zen” name, Reaves said, comes from the patented CBS platform gain technique. “It does something by doing nothing,” he said.
The research has resulted in the David Reaves Audio “Zen Level” line of AGCs, led by the Zen 10. Reaves said it has 10 separate AGCs, arranged in five frequency bands of two-channel stereo control.
Having 10 independent, identical controllers opens up a world of possibilities, he said. The number of bands used is customizable; it can be reduced to as few as one. “For example, I would never use five bands for classical music,” Reaves said.
While there’s a nod to craftsmanship of the past, Reaves lauds the technology the Zen takes advantage of.
Aqua has brought it a flexible, multi-purpose chassis. It features two Raspberry Pi MPUs, in addition to its DSP. Reaves said his venture has contracted to use Dante AES-67 for digitally networked stereo AoIP, in addition to more traditional line-level balanced analog I/O on XLR connectors and normal AES-3 digital I/O.
The Zen 10’s input is relay-connected to output in a failsafe configuration, so that in the event of power loss, there will be no loss of audio.
There is an on-board declipper, through the “Perfect Declipper” algorithm designed by Hans van Zutphen, which can be engaged to automatically remove clipping artifacts from poorly mastered material.
There’s a tunable high-pass filter available, to remove DC and low-frequency noise while allowing a bit of “oomph” boost at the very bottom of the lowest octave. In addition to linked stereo control — where the control linkage between a band’s two channels can be set tight or loose according to user settings, Reaves said — any or all of the bands can alternatively be set up as a stereo matrix, which allows L+R and L–R to be controlled separately.
Each band can be set up with its own set of controls: release timing, release gating threshold, “Zen platform” width and punch. The entire system can be set to operate with reference to the EBU’s BS.1770 loudness EQ contour.
“I don’t know of any other product that can do these things,” Reaves said.
For a user who finds the feature set overwhelming, the Zen 10 will come with presets. Settings can be controlled from the front panel, which has a large, high-resolution color LCD display, while full remote control is available via Ethernet using any modern browser.
After tinkering, users can save their own presets and export them for use on other Zen 10s.
The suggested price for a Zen 10 is $2,200 USD. Aqua Broadcast will make it available through their normal distribution outlets.
Reaves said that the Zen 10 isn’t meant to drive transmitter audio directly. It would be suitable for a station looking to extend the life of a less-capable processor, for example.
“There are so many untapped capabilities we’re eager to implement,” Reaves said. Those include silent-sense with automatic email notification and automatic input switching on loss of input signal, and MP3 and AAC coded outputs.
“We will be very sensitive to user feedback.”
For Reaves, it’s the fulfillment of a dream that began as a curious teen, late-night listening in Gainesville.
