If you could control Radio 3...

[french frank]

Will it also be subject to direct political interference as has been seen in recent times. Or is R3 too obscure and small/unimportant to figure on the manipulation/keeping friends sweet radar?

Clearly there's a hierarchy, but it's seemed obvious to me that R3 management conforms to what the BBC dictates. And the BBC conforms to … &c &c

[ucanseetheend]

Will it also be subject to direct political interference as has been seen in recent times. Or is R3 too obscure and small/unimportant to figure on the manipulation/keeping friends sweet radar?

Really trying to blame the current for something else ? I think you stretching it say it has or will tell BBC how to run radio 3

[ucanseetheend]

Really trying to blame the current for something else ? I think you stretching it say it has or will tell BBC how to run radio 3

Of course if it was a socialist gov it wouldtell BBC to have a black female controller

[Old Grumpy]

Really trying to blame the current for something else ? I think you stretching it say it has or will tell BBC how to run radio 3

Current what? There is plainly political interference in the running of the BBC - though I agree it is difficult to see what form this might be take in respect of Radio 3.

[french frank]

Current what? There is plainly political interference in the running of the BBC - though I agree it is difficult to see what form this might be take in respect of Radio 3.

There are certainly MPs who listen to CFM and at least one I could name has expressed the view that CFM is "more successful" than R3 i.e. it has a bigger audience. True, R3 hasn't gone 'the whole CFM' yet but its attempts to reach 'a broader audience' are directly contrary to what the Third Programme was set up for. I have heard BBC managers say that if Radio 3 didn't exist now, it certainly wouldn't be invented. But as the public 'dumbs down' (doesn't go to the 'legit' theatre, doesn't read literature, doesn't listen to classical music &c &c for the most part) R3 has risen to meet that challenge.

[NatBalance]

Well, the first thing I would do is something no one else would do or want doing (which really puzzles me), and that is to get all the volume balances sorted. I know no one will agree with me about this, as no one else ever complains about them and I brought this up here many years ago and no one agreed, but this question has encouraged me to bring up the subject again.

To my ears it sounds utterly bonkers to have all the different audio items sounding different distances, therefore I always need to be near the volume control as I am continually adjusting it; up for the music, back down again before the presenter comes back (there are some rare occasions when I don't need to, for instance when a jazz singer sings a ballad). The policy of the whole sound industry is that 'good' balance is when all audio items at their loudest reach the top of the band width. This is fair enough when recording, but surely when then broadcasting (or setting on recorded media) you have to then do some adjustment because if you don't, what you have is, for example, a violin solo piece at its loudest the same volume as an orchestral piece at its loudest.

The result in the above example is that the violin piece and the orchestral piece will sound different distances. The orchestral piece will sound possible about 30-50 yards further away and you won't be able to hear the 1st violin in the orchestral piece as clearly. This to my ears is not a good listening experience at all and it is what I would call bad, in fact extremely bad, volume balancing, but yet this is what I hear on Radio 3 and ALL broadcasting stations all the time because it is the policy that so-called 'good' balancing means everything at its loudest be the same volume, or virtually the same i.e. reach the top of the band width.

Of course if you want to create the effect of something sounding further away, like the distant choir in Holst's Neptune, then that's a different matter, and I know a totally natural balance would also not be a good listening experience. Compromises have to be made, but making an homogenous sound is a much too extreme solution. The power of the big orchestral and choral sounds is lost. The quiet (piano) sections are virtually inaudible and the loud (forte) sections are not actually loud. Anyway, that's my two penneth.

Does anyone ask questions on the Quora website? I asked this question there. I'm down as Richard Archer there:- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-s...their-quietest I have given replies with graphics but you need to click on the Comments icon on bottom left side of their reply to see them.

Edit:- Quora's a complicated site to use. You first have to click on the down arrow where it says All related (33), then click Answers (3)

Rich

[smittims]

In FM days I used often to turn the volme up t hear quiet bits and turn it down at the end to stop the announcer's voice being too loud. I don't find this so much now.

Whe they play CDs they are presumably influenced by the level of the CD. As technology developed, producers favoured wider dynamic ranges, which are effective only in digital sound. The opening of Webern;s Passacaglia or 'Tod und Verklarung' could be an uncomfortable experience on a late-70s LP, whereas solo baroque violin need not be recorded so quietly , as the loudest bits later won't be as loud as the Strauss.

I do like a good acoustic round even a solo instrument. All too often , a solo piano sounds as if we have our head inside the lid . But I remember broadcasts of Steven Osborne playing Ravel at the Royal Northern College of Music where the R3 engineers had set the microphones a sensible distance from the instrument, which made pleasant listening.

[oddoneout]

From comments on this article https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...urn-it-back-on

But my real issue with Radio 4 is the music. I have spent my life using Radio 4 as the only refuge from having to listen to music on the radio. But now there is a creeping sickness that just won't go away. They no longer seem to think that the speaking human voice is enough. More and more programmes are about music and the rest seem to have soundtracks that make listening to the human voice an impossibility. Like Zoe, I used to have Radio 4 running in the background of my life, but the first bar of music has me reaching for the 'off' button and then I don't turn back on for the rest of the day.

Yes, we'd noticed. Is there an assumption that the two audiences are so similar that it doesn't matter if the boundaries are blurred? Pity we can't have them repeated on R3 - perhaps using the slots hijacked by Dumbtime; if we must lose chunks of TTN at least they would be a less insulting replacement.

[smittims]

That woould be welcome, but I don't think it will happen. 'Dumbtime' is an outcome of political correctness, and as log as that is inthe ascendant R3 will kow-tow to it.

[french frank]

"I used to have Radio 4 running in the background of my life."

Well, we're all different: I suppose I could tolerate speech going on in "the bacground to my life", but only because it replicates 'life'- out in the street, in the supermarket, in the workplace. But as a necessity, deliberately sought out? I wonder how that is explained.

"Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none to conceal." T. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

On the other hand, I don't want music running as the background to my life either. Music is for listening to not, not hearing. [All opinions my own]

[kernelbogey]

I wonder whether this comment is also about producers' habit of adding music to programmes that are fundamentally speech programmes: unnecessarily IMV.

[oddoneout]

I wonder whether this comment is also about producers' habit of adding music to programmes that are fundamentally speech programmes: unnecessarily IMV.

Yes I think that's true, but as there have been several comments on the forum about R4 programmes which would seem to be R3 material that that was what caught my attention.

[Master Jacques]

I am told that Radio 4's documentaries about art music are geared to more general audiences, leaving the 'specialised' material to Radio 3. It that's the case, Radio 3 must be catering for a specialised audience drawn mainly from inanely smiling babies and insomniacs.

[oddoneout]

I am told that Radio 4's documentaries about art music are geared to more general audiences, leaving the 'specialised' material to Radio 3. It that's the case, Radio 3 must be catering for a specialised audience drawn mainly from inanely smiling babies and insomniacs.

And not very discerning insomniacs at that!

[smittims]

Yesterday's 'Front Row' on Vaughan Williams was certainly, I thought, aimed at listeners who don't mind having classical music on inthe background and sometimes wished they knew more about it. I hope Radio 3 will keep above that level.