So what's wrong with Radio 3 Breakfast?

[mercia]

my PM

thank you

[Don Petter]

I've now realised that the muffled sound is not the vintage recordings, but the fact that the Rai5 stream is only at 32Kb/s!

A pity, since the music on offer seems consistently quite interesting. Do any of the techies know if there is a higher quality feed to be found?

I have now found this URL for Rai5, which can be played via Media Player, and gives about 103Kb/s and is a much more enjoyable listening experience:

http://mediapolis.rai.it/relinker/relinkerServlet.htm?cont=173832

[Old Grumpy]

The weakest link...

... must be from Dame Edna to Dame Emma (as heard from PT this morning) - dreadful!!

Why on earth do we need to know "news" about some transvestite antipodean anyway?

[mw963]

Whilst on Bayern Klassik yestrday I enjoyed some Gade (sadly only a last movement but it was at a drive time), an overture by Johann Wagenaar, and Puccini's Crisantemi in the space of an hour.

Hardly "first division" music but just what was required on a late sunny afternoon.

I could of course have been listening to "In Tune" but wasn't. Funny that.

[Don Petter]

I like Bayern Klassik, too, but at the moment am really taken by the mix on Rai5. Quite a high proportion of chamber music and small concertante works, which is something that especially appeals.

[mw963]

I did follow the recommendation but being a (very unwilling) Linux user the first links didn't work for me. The later one that was posted did, but the audio quality was so poor that I quickly gave up.

It may be more to do with my Linux set up, however having had a quick look at a satellite list it suggests that Rai 5 is in fact now on (what was) Hotbird. At present none of my six dishes are pointing there, but following a recent redeployment on my "dish farm" (I now have Irish TV, more out of technical interest than anything else) I could press a spare dish onto that satellite again and have a proper listen. Which would also give me back Radio Swiss Classique and Spanish classical radio.

I'll report back, thanks for the prod!

(Incidentally I know my previous had nothing to do with breakfast as such, but it was such a pleasure to hear those pieces I felt it appropriate to refer back to our discussions about foreign radio stations).

[mw963]

Rai 5 is indeed on Hotbird and working fine. The quality is hugely better than that internet feed I eventually got to work, but is subject to some dynamics compression which is a pity. Their old classical service was Rai 3 or 4 I think, so they must have re-organised somwehat in the last few years.

So now I can also make friends again with Radio Swiss Classique, Slovenian radio, Croation radio, and Romanian Classica has appeared since I was last on Hotbird! And Spain's Radio Classica (RNE Radio 2) is still there.

Embarras de richesse. Mind you, Spain has just faded a rather nice piece out and started wittering over it....

[Rupert P Matley]

Referring to the very first post in this thread (sorry... bit slow...) I haven't read all of the thread so apologies if I'm repeating an answer elsewhere. The problems laid out by the OP in Breakfast are to my ears, replicated through much of Radio 3's broadcast output of late, and (in the words of Monty Python's Ann Elk) I have a theory...

Much has been made of cost cutting exercises at the BBC since the licence fee freeze was announced, and in Radio 3's case, I detect a significant shift towards more speech (particularly on Breakfast and Essential Classics) and the broadcasting of classic pot-boilers, the significant part being that many of the 'pot-boilers' (famous overtures etc.) are out of copyright, as is, to my ears, more of R3's recent output in general.

I was an employee of the Performing Right Society for a number of years and one thing I do know with regards to Classic FM is that some years ago, the PRS fee they paid was dependent on them not exceeding a set amount of hours of copyright music being broadcast. I suspect something similar is happening with Radio 3, in order to reduce their PRS licence fee. More speech? I think so (and in some cases, mind-numbingly bland drivel). And it surely wasn't a coincidence that the recent Schubert celebrations were extended far above and beyond what they should have been, by means of not just playing everything he wrote, but in some cases, several times in different recorded versions. His comparatively small output due to his tragically early death would normally have meant that it wouldn't have taken a week to broadcast his entire oeuvre.

As I say, I only offer this as a theory but I do believe it's possible, if not necessarily probable.

[Frances_iom]

I suspect that this is one aspect of 'delivering quality first' (aka BBC-speak for swingeing cost cutting) - on a similar note Greg Bailey in current issue of British Archaeology lays into the BBC funding of channel 4 comparing its cuts with the protected yoof channel (channel 3) - basically any channel that catered for the more discerning is under attack.

[salymap]

Today, Sunday 15th, they are showing the Saturday schedule with 'on now' above it. It's too much as I always think these mistakes are 'me'.

[mercia]

these mistakes

still not corrected, who do we contact ?

[french frank]

Sunday - they're on auto-pilot. Nothing added to Facebook and, with MH doing Breakfast, no new tweets either

[2cats]

Is it just me, or is quarter-hourly news updates (started in earnest by 'Breakfast Time' television in 1983) very un-Radio 3? There is, in my honest opinion way way too much news on the BBC (used to be football until the rise of MurdochSky) and a classic case of overkill, affront to the quintissential British trait of patience (until the hour) and pudding over-eggery.

[Sir Velo]

still not corrected, who do we contact ?

Recently, I had occasion to tweet (sic) to Donald MacLeod (passim) that I was surprised that the website was showing a soprano for the performance of one of Medtner's sonatas for solo piano. DM tweeted back that "(R3) can't get the staff these days". Not sure if he was joking.

[Suffolkcoastal]

Well knowing the shocking mess the website is in; with half-completed, dupilicated/triplicated or missing playlists; wrong information or information missing, incorrect composer pictures etc, then I'd be inclined to think that DM isn't joking at all.