Chris Newman and FF on the Feedback programme

[Don Petter]

Cavatina - but do you change pseudonyms because you get bored with one - or does each new name somehow express a different aspect of your personality?

Perhaps I'll change to Eusebius and Florestan?

[ardcarp]

Oh dear, I always seem to be changing the subject. On Feedback, Chris brought up the subject of sudden cut-backs in volume level...as if a loud chord/note/passage took the engineers by surprise. This has annoyed CE listeners in particular for a very long time. The reply was that it was to do with 'band-width'. Really? Then why did it happen in the pre-digital era, long before the expression 'band-width' was bandied about. I know almost nothing about the technical side of sound-engineering, though it was explained to me once that the human ear has a much bigger response to dynamic level than the mike/speaker system, and therefore it would not be possible to broadcast (say) an fff chord on the organ followed by a single chorister humming sotto voce both at the same level. I gather there used to be something called a 'compression amp' [?] which automatically cut the top off the loud bits. Not brilliant for classical music. Do any experts out there have an answer?

[Frances_iom]

...as if a loud chord/note/passage took the engineers by surprise. ..

All FM broadcasts of R3 are now passed thro a compression scheme called optimod which is supposed to reduce the dynamic range to that handlable by the broadcast chain - possibly the abrupt changes in levels confuse the electronics - in the 'old' days it was a skilled sound engineer's job to set up the gain with some compression of the loud sections allowed if manual adjustments (eg between movements/items or very slowly during an item) could not cope. All this changed with pop music which is generally FF or FFF thus those raised on such a diet (other than premature deafness) have difficulty in accepting that levels might vary.

[David Underdown]

The reply was that it was to do with 'band-width'. Really? Then why did it happen in the pre-digital era, long before the expression 'band-width' was bandied about.

OED dates the first use of band width to 1930, and closely related usage to 1922. It's not a new concept, and defines the amount of information that can be transmitted through an available frequency range (a band, the wider the band the more info that can be transmitted). Modern familiarity with data transmission has brought the term to much greater prominence