CE Chapel of St John’s College, Cambridge Wed, 27th Sept 2023 [R]

[mw963]

Drummond told me that his reception of Radio 3 at home in West London was impaired by hiss in stereo. I suggested he got a better aerial and offered to advise. To no avail.

That's the problem with broadcast compression, as Angus McKenzie predicted right back in the early seventies after hearing the situation in America. They all want to be the loudest on the dial and don't care about what happens to the quality as a result. Nothing wrong with careful care and control of levels by trained sound engineers of course, but not a brown box - often set up by an idiot. FM listening has been impossible as a result for me since about 1990, and on occasion I've even thought that there was a technical fault on some commercial broadcasts, until I realised that it was "supposed to sound like that". Even the high quality streams of BBC radio (apart from R3) on the internet go through compression, totally unnecessary and means that they are anything BUT high quality.

I might add that BBC Controllers don't have a great track record on this sort of thing. At the time this was going on the Radio 2 Controller told people that Radio 2 FM needed Optimod because his car radio never found Radio 2 on autoscan, instead tuning in to various commercial stations (this was before RDS sets were available, which might have helped). No amount of patient explaining to him could convince him that this was anything other than a question of needing to "make Radio 2 louder", even though what was actually happening was that he lived in an area where BBC national reception wasn't very good, so his car radio scanned past the very weak BBC signals and homed in on a couple of local commercial stations.

As to the point about how rogue compression was introduced on this broadcast, remember that this was a RECORDING, so it's even odder, and should have been spotted.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Drummond told me that his reception of Radio 3 at home in West London was impaired by hiss in stereo. I suggested he got a better aerial and offered to advise. To no avail.

That's the problem with broadcast compression, as Angus McKenzie predicted right back in the early seventies after hearing the situation in America. They all want to be the loudest on the dial and don't care about what happens to the quality as a result. Nothing wrong with careful care and control of levels by trained sound engineers of course, but not a brown box - often set up by an idiot. FM listening has been impossible as a result for me since about 1990, and on occasion I've even thought that there was a technical fault on some commercial broadcasts, until I realised that it was "supposed to sound like that". Even the high quality streams of BBC radio (apart from R3) on the internet go through compression, totally unnecessary and means that they are anything BUT high quality.

I might add that BBC Controllers don't have a great track record on this sort of thing. At the time this was going on the Radio 2 Controller told people that Radio 2 FM needed Optimod because his car radio never found Radio 2 on autoscan, instead tuning in to various commercial stations (this was before RDS sets were available, which might have helped). No amount of patient explaining to him could convince him that this was anything other than a question of needing to "make Radio 2 louder", even though what was actually happening was that he lived in an area where BBC national reception wasn't very good, so his car radio scanned past the very weak BBC signals and homed in on a couple of local commercial stations.

As to the point about how rogue compression was introduced on this broadcast, remember that this was a RECORDING, so it's even odder, and should have been spotted.

Very interesting . Didn’t Duke Hussey call FM fuzzy monsters ?
As the choral evensong was a recording I just don’t see how compression could have been introduced on transmission.
FM has recently declined further in the South West - possibly though atmospherics as thanks to global warming we’ve had a year of consistently high pressure and consequent tropospheric ducting. There’s a French station I can now regularly pick up. I’m also convinced they’ve reduced power at the local relay but it’s been denied. I now have a mate at Archiva and I’m determined to find the truth.
If you think compression is bad on radio - a 30 HD minute film delivered to the BBC to meet their spec is about 25 gb,
On download from iPlayer the same film is barely half a gig.

[mw963]

Of course the sort of compression involved in films is data compression rather than audio dynamics compression, but I entirely take your point, degradation of quality. When I record stuff from French TV via satellite it's broadcast at roughly 2 GB per hour, so roughly double what you mention as the iPlayer rate. But of course it may be different coding systems. Actually I've just looked at a couple of Gardeners' Worlds (downloaded via get_iplayer for "management" here at home) and they seem to be roughly 2 GB per hour.

When the VHF/FM band was a lot emptier in the 1970s it was possible to pick up France Musique for 80% of the time on a good aerial high up (admittedly on a building with 9 floors) in London, and even easier in the Exeter area, mostly with stereo (albeit hissy a lot of the time). I daresay your French station isn't France Musique But one of the joys of modern life for me - refusing to listen to Radio 3 after the Kenyon vandalism in 1992 - has been satellite radio, an absolute life saver.

[OtherwiseSatis]

Indeed, compression (or EQ or anything else) introduced into a programme accidentally, whether it's live or pre-recorded, is a very bad thing, and I'm sure there's as much head-scratching going on inside the BBC as to how it happened in the first place and then went un-noticed (or at least un-corrected) and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

There are a couple of possible factors. Firstly digital mixing desks (especially fairly primitive ones like the current BBC Radio continuity ones) often give very little clue as to what's inserted into a channel without interrogating - so a previous operator can leave compression in a channel, forget to tell the next one and there might be no visible clue that it's there. The compression can also be in one of two or three places - channel, group, possibly main output - and an inexperienced operator might not think to check all. The audible clues are obvious though, which is where inexperience comes in again. BBC training now is done largely on the job rather than at Evesham, and people are sometimes thrown into the deep end quickly. The thought process of "this sounds a bit rubbish...oh dear, I wonder which idiot recorded it" becomes "this sounds a bit rubbish...I'm sure that whoever recorded it knew what they were doing...what might I be doing to make it sound like this?" with experience. There are programmes on Radio 3 that routinely sound quite poor, but you need experience (and preferably be a listener) to know that Choral Evensong isn't one of them.

I would add that dynamic compression's only a bad thing if you can hear it. I should imagine that very few if any orchestral recordings (BBC or otherwise) these days have no compression in any of the mics or at CD mastering stage, and a good number of choral ones will - it's a useful creative tool when used properly. They obviously don't have a whopping great compressor over the whole thing though.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Indeed, compression (or EQ or anything else) introduced into a programme accidentally, whether it's live or pre-recorded, is a very bad thing, and I'm sure there's as much head-scratching going on inside the BBC as to how it happened in the first place and then went un-noticed (or at least un-corrected) and how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

There are a couple of possible factors. Firstly digital mixing desks (especially fairly primitive ones like the current BBC Radio continuity ones) often give very little clue as to what's inserted into a channel without interrogating - so a previous operator can leave compression in a channel, forget to tell the next one and there might be no visible clue that it's there. The compression can also be in one of two or three places - channel, group, possibly main output - and an inexperienced operator might not think to check all. The audible clues are obvious though, which is where inexperience comes in again. BBC training now is done largely on the job rather than at Evesham, and people are sometimes thrown into the deep end quickly. The thought process of "this sounds a bit rubbish...oh dear, I wonder which idiot recorded it" becomes "this sounds a bit rubbish...I'm sure that whoever recorded it knew what they were doing...what might I be doing to make it sound like this?" with experience. There are programmes on Radio 3 that routinely sound quite poor, but you need experience (and preferably be a listener) to know that Choral Evensong isn't one of them.

I would add that dynamic compression's only a bad thing if you can hear it. I should imagine that very few if any orchestral recordings (BBC or otherwise) these days have no compression in any of the mics or at CD mastering stage, and a good number of choral ones will - it's a useful creative tool when used properly. They obviously don't have a whopping great compressor over the whole thing though.

Hi Otherwise satis. You sound like you know what you’re talking about. My (hands on) experience of mixing desks ended with GP desks in the mid 80’s . Since then I’ve just relied on operators / editors who know what they are doing . The thing is there is a whole generation that actively likes compression and finds uncompressed music flat and uninteresting. I’ve had a bit of a debate about compression with mw963 about this and as far as I can recall even in the 80’s compression was used in classical esp light classical music balances but in a very sparing way. But the memory isn’t what it was .
You have put your finger on it : the location recording studio manager or audio supervisor in the nations and regions is likely to be very much more experienced than the continuity op you’ve just taken over from . There was quite a good example of what you are talking about just today with some bangingly loud Chopin being audibly taken down a few notches on the fly this afternoon.
Do they still have continuity tech ops riding the levels ? They used to ring up and say well done if they’d heard a nice balance!

[mw963]

. I’ve had a bit of a debate about compression with mw963 about this and as far as I can recall even in the 80’s compression was used in classical esp light classical music balances but in a very sparing way.

Oh indeed, you're quite right, but in the hands of people who knew what they were doing. And from there onwards the VHF/FM broadcast chain was transparent dynamically (apart from the network safety limiters). , But yes, I perhaps could have been clearer.

I think the explanation that there were some pre-existing forgotten settings on the Con mixer seems the most likely in this instance.

All sorts of things can go wrong in Con. Many many years ago I remember listening to a taped concert in the afternoon, which gradually grew more and more muffled. I walked down the corridor to Radio 3 Con, T.O. (Technical Operator) with his feet up on the desk (probably on the phone as well!), and the on-air tape recorder running, with noticeable piles of iron oxide building up round the capstans, rollers and other transport points, and of course on the playback head. T.O. and announcer blissfully unaware that anything was amiss. I rather think it was a banded tape, and during an announcement we managed to get the heads cleaned (which wasn't really encouraged), but the problem persisted and the the ad hoc solution had to be continued for the rest of the concert. And that led to a long investigation into a faulty batch of 1/4 inch tape. But I digress...... (and I should add that most of the T.O.s were highly skilled and alert, and technically very competent).