CE Winchester Cathedral 28th Feb 2024 [L]

[DracoM]

CE Winchester Cathedral 28^th Feb 2024 [L]
Order of Service:

Introit: Call to Remembrance (Farrant)
Responses: Smith
Psalms 136, 137, 138 (Lloyd, Lloyd, Ley)
First Lesson: Job 1: 1-22
Canticles: Collegium Regale (Howells)
Second Lesson: Luke 21 v.34 – 22 v.6
Anthem: Lord, thou has been our refuge (Bairstow)

Voluntary: Symphonie 3 1st movement (Louis Vierne)

Joshua Stephens (Organist)
Andrew Lumsden (Director of Music)

[mw963]

Oh dear, marred by severe peak distortion on the Canticle Glorias. A desperate attempt to mitigate the problem at the end of the Nunc Gloria by whacking the levels back by at least 12 dB.

I wonder what's gone wrong. The poor balancer must be worried sick as to what to do.....

Apart from that, superb service thus far.

[DracoM]

Totally agree about engineering - what on earth was going on?

Good to hear LIVE a choir in such good voice, and that cracking vol!

[mw963]

No apology at the end. Actually the balancer did a good job in keeping it together after the distortion, there was a lot of gain riding and caution shown as the louder passages approached, but it was done with considerable skill, given the stress levels. And I know I don't normally endorse that sort of thing, but needs must and the balancer has my total sympathy.

Great service, I just love the music of Bairstow. Over-imagination on my part, but I always feel old Teddy had a glimpse of Heaven in a lot of what he wrote.

Great Vierne too, it takes guts to bang it in so close the the end of the Blessing. Respect!

[oddoneout]

Oh dear, marred by severe peak distortion on the Canticle Glorias. A desperate attempt to mitigate the problem at the end of the Nunc Gloria by whacking the levels back by at least 12 dB.

I wonder what's gone wrong. The poor balancer must be worried sick as to what to do.....

Apart from that, superb service thus far.

Ah, that has reassured me - I thought it was my radio going phut. Luckily I had the remote control to hand to knock the volume back until the screeching stopped.

[mw963]

I was listening on the internet, but I guess it may have sounded even worse on FM, because as fast as the balancer tried to back off the levels the Optimod on FM (or whatever they're using this week) will have been whacking the levels up again to "make it nice and loud" for people in cars. I'd have been interested to hear the FM version.....

[Nick Armstrong]

Oh dear, marred by severe peak distortion on the Canticle Glorias. A desperate attempt to mitigate the problem at the end of the Nunc Gloria by whacking the levels back by at least 12 dB.

I wonder what's gone wrong.

Gosh it was a shocker wasn’t it

Glad you flagged it up here or like others I’d have been fearful about my (DAB) radio.

What a pity the relay, of what sounded otherwise a wonderful CE, was marred

[kernelbogey]

[/COLOR]

...otherwise a wonderful CE....

I was there! And it was wonderful, although I'm no connoisseur of Church services: I had a personal reason for going on that day.

I wonder whether R3 listeners could hear a titter from the congregation at the end of the Organ Voluntary? There was CCTV for us which, during the Vierne, focused on the young sub-organist, who, as he lifted his hands from the manual after the final chord, grinned at the camera, making a kind of 'Yesss!' gesture with his arms. Quite appropriate after his performance - and rather affecting.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Oh dear, marred by severe peak distortion on the Canticle Glorias. A desperate attempt to mitigate the problem at the end of the Nunc Gloria by whacking the levels back by at least 12 dB.

I wonder what's gone wrong. The poor balancer must be worried sick as to what to do.....

Apart from that, superb service thus far.

Yes I heard the distortion (on FM ) but wondered whether it was post mixing desk . ie amplificating distortion introduced somewhere later in the transmission chain . It didn’t sound like unpredictably loud trebles. Sounded almost like a encoding / decoding problem. The audio equivalent of the digital glitches you get in video all the time, My experience of the latter is that if you’re involved in the gallery you sometimes only hear about it later from phone calls in from viewers .Unless some one in the office is watching off air. On the other hand it could just have been a failure in the mixing desk but those are rare and usually fixable reasonably quickly.

[Lizzie]

I listened at home for once, rather than being in situ. I watched and listened on the Winchester Cathedral live Channel.
It sounded fine on there, and was very well received by our worldwide online community! Try listening that way and hear it properly.
it was Boys, Senior Girls, and Layclerks, with Josh at the Organ. The Choir joined forces to give them all a broadcast before leaving, after the Covid troubles. Josh played a blinder in his first Winchester broadcast.
Our Boys have also been part of a Grammy award! We're a versatile bunch in Winchester Cathedral!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I listened at home for once, rather than being in situ. I watched and listened on the Winchester Cathedral live Channel.
It sounded fine on there, and was very well received by our worldwide online community! Try listening that way and hear it properly.
it was Boys, Senior Girls, and Layclerks, with Josh at the Organ. The Choir joined forces to give them all a broadcast before leaving, after the Covid troubles. Josh played a blinder in his first Winchester broadcast.
Our Boys have also been part of a Grammy award! We're a versatile bunch in Winchester Cathedral!

Yes it was musically wonderful and thanks for the tip . If the Winchester live channel was using the audio output of the Outside Broadcast vehicle and sounded fine that gives an important clue to the origins of the broadcast technical problem.

[Lizzie]

Yes it was musically wonderful and thanks for the tip . If the Winchester live channel was using the audio output of the Outside Broadcast vehicle and sounded fine that gives an important clue to the origins of the broadcast technical problem.

It might have been our own sound. I don't know. Have a listen to the Cathedral Channel via the website.

[mw963]

Yes I heard the distortion (on FM ) but wondered whether it was post mixing desk . ie amplificating distortion introduced somewhere later in the transmission chain . It didn’t sound like unpredictably loud trebles. Sounded almost like a encoding / decoding problem. The audio equivalent of the digital glitches you get in video all the time, My experience of the latter is that if you’re involved in the gallery you sometimes only hear about it later from phone calls in from viewers .Unless some one in the office is watching off air. On the other hand it could just have been a failure in the mixing desk but those are rare and usually fixable reasonably quickly.

Yes, what was odd though (and I haven't listened again so may be mistaken) was that although it appeared that the distortion WAS provoked by the peaks in the Gloria, once established it seemed a bit like a spasm of muscle cramp, because although the level was immediately backed off (confirmed by someone who has just contacted me and observed the same thing) the distortion seemed to carry on for a few seconds; normally one would expect distortion to vanish as soon as the level was back under control.

You know more about these things than I do EH, but I'd be very surprised if the BBC troubled itself to give a feed of their output to a third party, indeed I'd have thought it highly unlikely that it would be countenanced, particularly as Winchester presumably have their own perfectly adequate arrangements in place.

In addition I would assume, from the audio evidence I heard at the time, that the balancer WAS immediately aware of the problem, because why else was the (correct) action taken so quickly to try and recover the situation by backing off the gain, followed by careful gain riding for the rest of the broadcast, presumably with a view to trying to prevent the problem recurring. I doubt that that would have been taking place in Radio 3 Con (the next place up in the chain where I assume monitoring would have been taking place),

To be honest I doubt they even noticed in London, given that they made no apology (in itself an indication as to how far standards have fallen).

[Nick Armstrong]

I was there! And it was wonderful, although I'm no connoisseur of Church services: I had a personal reason for going on that day.

I wonder whether R3 listeners could hear a titter from the congregation at the end of the Organ Voluntary? There was CCTV for us which, during the Vierne, focused on the young sub-organist, who, as he lifted his hands from the manual after the final chord, grinned at the camera, making a kind of 'Yesss!' gesture with his arms. Quite appropriate after his performance - and rather affecting.

Lovely stuff, kernel



.

PS Lizzie, is the live channel you mention on YouTube?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes, what was odd though (and I haven't listened again so may be mistaken) was that although it appeared that the distortion WAS provoked by the peaks in the Gloria, once established it seemed a bit like a spasm of muscle cramp, because although the level was immediately backed off (confirmed by someone who has just contacted me and observed the same thing) the distortion seemed to carry on for a few seconds; normally one would expect distortion to vanish as soon as the level was back under control.

You know more about these things than I do EH, but I'd be very surprised if the BBC troubled itself to give a feed of their output to a third party, indeed I'd have thought it highly unlikely that it would be countenanced, particularly as Winchester presumably have their own perfectly adequate arrangements in place.

In addition I would assume, from the audio evidence I heard at the time, that the balancer WAS immediately aware of the problem, because why else was the (correct) action taken so quickly to try and recover the situation by backing off the gain, followed by careful gain riding for the rest of the broadcast, presumably with a view to trying to prevent the problem recurring. I doubt that that would have been taking place in Radio 3 Con (the next place up in the chain where I assume monitoring would have been taking place),

To be honest I doubt they even noticed in London, given that they made no apology (in itself an indication as to how far standards have fallen).

Very interesting. I’ll have to listen again . It sounded like a very weird type of distortion . I think sharing feeds is pretty common at the Wigmore Hall in that the Wigmore video stream Audio Balance appears indistinguishable from the BBC one. Apart from anything else it cuts down on the number of mikes.

listened again . I was wrong : it’s classic peak distortion on World Without end at about 24.57 in . It’s a ringing high note from the trebles plus organ FF - in a reverberant acoustic that acts like a vast unpredictable medieval amplifier and then not 30 secs before there was a pp section. Just about the worst combination imaginable. How do you squash 65dbs into 40 for broadcast .Might just have sounded fine in the van but the engines (Limiters / transmission system) can’t take it Captain. Wonder if the control room asked them to take it down a bit or just did it themselves..
Said it before but choirs are a nightmare…