CE St Davids Cathedral on St David’s Day Wed, March 1st 2023 [L]

[oddoneout]

The apology at the end(Penny Gore?) also said/reassured that the repeat will be OK soundwise, so was the problem to do with getting the broadcast broadcast so to speak rather than problems with BBC equipment and personnel on site?

[DracoM]

My impression exactly.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I have to say that this live CE from a cathedral - ticking my two main boxes and now a rarity - has been absolutely ruined by the BBC's technical efforts.

Apart from being in mono, there was very audible manual gain riding (last hymn amongst others), and appalling quality of the mics on the speakers. Some of the balance on the choir was pretty strange. One gets the impression that something major went wrong, but why they needed to fiddle with levels so clumsily is less obvious.

It'll be interesting to hear the repeat, if there were problems with the sound desk one suspects that the recording may be as bad. I had assumed early on that it was merely a links-back-to-London problem, but I'm guessing now that it was something local to the OB.

Ah - we have an apology.

I was listening at such a low level that all this passed me by.
I did notice that on In Tune Sean Rafferty had to get the rehearsing pianist to stop playing when the microphone went live for one of his links. Having to rehearse a live piano and voice music balance on pre-fade when transmitting a CD. Of such stuff are nightmares made…

Listening to CE a on Sounds now . The problem seems to be that the right hand channel is much louder than the left. There is still a just about discernible stereo image. Not sure how a digital links problem could cause this. The reason I wasn’t aware yesterday is that I was sitting massively off axis .

[mopsus]

I expect the BBC would use its own equipment but I think it can be a tricky space to broadcast from and any 'extraneous' noise can be intrusive.

I once went to 9 Lessons and Carols there and a microphone was left switched on near one of the lay clerks so his voice dominated till about lesson 6 when it was turned off! There is also a radiator near the front of the north aisle which is prone to humming loudly (on I think a G) at odd moments.

[Guest]

I can't believe that for the 2nd week running circumstances prevented me from listening to a live broadcast!!

[Alison]

Perhaps BBC are trying to prove that a recording is better than live!

[DracoM]

[jonfan]

The whole service was broadcast; a pity there’s negligible comment on what was heard.

[mw963]

I was listening at such a low level that all this passed me by.
I did notice that on In Tune Sean Rafferty had to get the rehearsing pianist to stop playing when the microphone went live for one of his links. Having to rehearse a live piano and voice music balance on pre-fade when transmitting a CD. Of such stuff are nightmares made…

Listening to CE a on Sounds now . The problem seems to be that the right hand channel is much louder than the left. There is still a just about discernible stereo image. Not sure how a digital links problem could cause this. The reason I wasn’t aware yesterday is that I was sitting massively off axis .

That's interesting, because on the live version (I was listening on DSAT and then checking it wasn't at my end on the internet stream) there was a brief moment about 20 minutes in when the right channel became much louder (and that was where I mentioned that the S signal had become very high) but for all the rest of the broadcast the two stereo channels were the same level.

As you imply - odd.

[Ein Heldenleben]

That's interesting, because on the live version (I was listening on DSAT and then checking it wasn't at my end on the internet stream) there was a brief moment about 20 minutes in when the right channel became much louder (and that was where I mentioned that the S signal had become very high) but for all the rest of the broadcast the two stereo channels were the same level.

As you imply - odd.

There was one very off mic lesson reading so I wonder whether it was a rare example of mic failure on both main and back up . I did try mono-ing my amp . If I remember aright a high S signal ( difference between left and right channels which is used to decode your broadcast stereo ) is quite common in church acoustics because of all the reverb. No difference is pretty much mono.

[mw963]

I rather think - from what I remember because it was rather brief and I was also switching between DSat and internet (meaning there was a delay on the latter of about half a minute) that the high right signal co-incided exactly with the wild S peaks, and at the time I wondered if they were trying to crossfade in Con from a dodgy mono feed to a conventional by-this-time working stereo feed. And then having to give up and go back to the mono.

As you say, high S goes with big acoustics, and in my view mono compatibility has not always been adequately considered by the engineers of CE in more recent years, although my current amp doesn't include a mono switch so I haven't checked now for quite a while. But in this instance I think the high S was simply mirroring the fact that for whatever reason the stereo image briefly shifted to hard right.

Of course ironically the M/S method of stereo broadcasting only applies to FM, but it's still an incredibly useful indicator of what's going on, and failure to pay attention to the relationship between M and S can mean the mono listener - of which there are still many even in the modern era of DAB - gets a poor deal.

As you say, some of the readings sounded pretty awful, which led me to wonder up thread whether there had been problems on site as well as on the link back to LBH.

[Ein Heldenleben]

I rather think - from what I remember because it was rather brief and I was also switching between DSat and internet (meaning there was a delay on the latter of about half a minute) that the high right signal co-incided exactly with the wild S peaks, and at the time I wondered if they were trying to crossfade in Con from a dodgy mono feed to a conventional by-this-time working stereo feed. And then having to give up and go back to the mono.

As you say, high S goes with big acoustics, and in my view mono compatibility has not always been adequately considered by the engineers of CE in more recent years, although my current amp doesn't include a mono switch so I haven't checked now for quite a while. But in this instance I think the high S was simply mirroring the fact that for whatever reason the stereo image briefly shifted to hard right.

Of course ironically the M/S method of stereo broadcasting only applies to FM, but it's still an incredibly useful indicator of what's going on, and failure to pay attention to the relationship between M and S can mean the mono listener - of which there are still many even in the modern era of DAB - gets a poor deal.

As you say, some of the readings sounded pretty awful, which led me to wonder up thread whether there had been problems on site as well as on the link back to LBH.

So many people listen on smart speakers or small Dab radios now I almost wonder whether most people are hearing anything like proper stereo. They are getting a kind of wrap around stereo that “ artificially” extends outside the speakers width as it were. For mono listeners to be affected presumably S would have to be larger than M . I can’t remember ever seeing that other then when using artificial echo or a technical fault.
On the Choral Evensong the whole thing is most peculiar. If it was a failure in the left hand channel somewhere e.g. mics , fader group fader , main fader all those can be overridden and worked round . Mind you the last live music balance I saw was being done on a laptop - do those have faders ?
Apologies for the tech digression. Normal Church service will be resumed as soon as possible.

[mw963]

I think over the years that there's been a gradual shift away from exclusive use of "co-incident pairs" as the main component of a balance, which were for many years "de rigeur" in BBC circles for the main mic array, in part because they almost always provided a good mono signal in addition to well-defined stereo. For good or ill the gradual and increasing use of pairs roughly "à la ORTF" has increased the phasiness of many balances, fine for stereo of course, but while there's still plenty of M signal the mono version has often lost a lot of the characteristics of the sound, a loss of immediacy and bite, a dull flat rendering, often with some odd EQ characteristics. At least that's my impression.

Certainly there have been a number of CEs in the last few years where I think the more conventional BBC engineers of yesteryear would describe the S needle on a PPM as behaving somewhat wildly!

As you say, we're digressing. I must try and remember to listen tomorrow, because really what we heard on Wednesday was hardly fair to the Evensong.

[DracoM]

Rpt today @ 3 p.m.

[jonfan]

Well this is the sound the choir and clergy of St Davids deserved. There must have been a separate mixing console for the recording?