Prom 4: Sunday 17th July 2011 at 7.00 p.m. (Brian 'The Gothic')

[johnb]

FF, thanks for the link.

Sorry but I just don't buy that explanation, or rather I think he is being economical with the truth.

There were two Proms that were similarly affected: Nos 1 and 4 (The Gothic). I strongly suspect that the "technical problem" RB talks about was the difficulty in handling the massive dynamic range of The Gothic and this was why severe dynamic range limiting was employed. A conscious decision was taken. Prom 1 was very probably used as the test bed for Prom 4 - so there was ample opportunity to adjust the limiting to lessen its effect (there was no need to set it at something like -10dB).

[mercia]

this Proms performance of The Gothic getting a repeat in the early hours of next Tuesday morning
12:30am Through the Night

[Bryn]

this Proms performance of The Gothic getting a repeat in the early hours of next Tuesday morning
12:30am Through the Night

It will be interesting to hear whether they use the heavily dynamically compressed mess the engineers made of it at the time, or avail themselves of the fine work done by Hyperion in attempting to reconstruct at least some of the impact lost by the incompetent engineering dished up to us by the Beeb (both during the original broadcast and via the iPlayer in the week which followed it).

[bluestateprommer]

IMHO, to be "honest", then the broadcast of the "as is" truly live performance should be the one that goes out over the airwaves. The Hyperion recording is indeed touched up, as others have noted, but for that reason, is not the true record of what happened at the actual moment of the performance. This is one of the few moments in life when I'm "purist", or "go Celibidache", in my opinion. If anyone is awake for it, reports will be interesting to read.

[Bryn]

IMHO, to be "honest", then the broadcast of the "as is" truly live performance should be the one that goes out over the airwaves. The Hyperion recording is indeed touched up, as others have noted, but for that reason, is not the true record of what happened at the actual moment of the performance. This is one of the few moments in life when I'm "purist", or "go Celibidache", in my opinion. If anyone is awake for it, reports will be interesting to read.

What Hyperion have done is rescue rather more of "what happened at the actual moment of the performance", than was offered by the disastrously dynamically limited version dished up by the audio engineers for Radio 3. They made such a mess of it on the night that you can lay a ruler along the peaks of the waveforms with hardly a gap showing below the ruler during the louder passages. What Hyperion present on their CDs is far, far closer to what was heard in the RAH last July.

[amateur51]

What Hyperion have done is rescue rather more of "what happened at the actual moment of the performance", than was offered by the disastrously dynamically limited version dished up by the audio engineers for Radio 3. They made such a mess of it on the night that you can lay a ruler along the peaks of the waveforms with hardly a gap showing below the ruler during the louder passages. What Hyperion present on their CDs is far, far closer to what was heard in the RAH last July.

Thanks for this, Bryn - does that make the Hyperion a satisfactory purchase/listen then?

[Bryn]

Thanks for this, Bryn - does that make the Hyperion a satisfactory purchase/listen then?

The Hyperion engineers have done what they can to restore the original dynamics as fed to the mixing desk but they could not achieve full restoration, the damage done by the limiter circuitry was too great. What Hyperion offer is, however, a great improvement on what was available via FM, digital transmission or HD Sound via the iPlayer, all of which passed on the output from the limiter. The same problem vitiated the audio stream put out by the Beeb for the First Night, thus messing up the UK premier of the Jiří Zahrádka and Leoš Faltus edition of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass.

[amateur51]

The Hyperion engineers have done what they can to restore the original dynamics as fed to the mixing desk but they could not achieve full restoration, the damage done by the limiter circuitry was too great. What Hyperion offer is, however, a great improvement on what was available via FM, digital transmission or HD Sound via the iPlayer, all of which passed on the output from the limiter. The same problem vitiated the audio stream put out by the Beeb for the First Night, thus messing up the UK premier of the Jiří Zahrádka and Leoš Faltus edition of Janáček's Glagolitic Mass.

Thanks Bryn