You had to be there

[Gasteiner]

Sorry to be negative but I have found the general sound quality of RAH concerts at this year's Proms to be generally very poor.

I have been recording the Proms for many years, and would say that this year's concerts from the RAH have been the worst I have ever heard in terms of unwanted noise levels. There has been an excessive amount of coughing and various other noises, which for me has spoiled the results so badly that I have hardly kept any of the recordings that I tried to make. Apart from noise "spikes" caused by coughs and suchlike, there was also far too much general, continuous background hissy noise, akin to listening to 78s.

My recording equipment is a desktop PC incorporating an Asus Xonar Essence sound card. I record from the BBC iplayer, via the sound card, and use Audacity using 16 bit WAV format. After editing using Audacity, I save at either MP3 320 kbps or AAC. In other contexts I am usually very happy with the results from this recording procedure. Playback is through a computer based system comprising the same Asus sound card, a Cyrus 8 amplifier (c £1000) and Spendor speakers (c £2,500).

This sound equipment is quite revealing, and although I'm quite fussy about sound quality I'm quite happy to accept the occasional noise issue from live recordings. It's simply that the noise problems this year were off the scale in my opinion.

[Beresford]

.... Apart from noise "spikes" caused by coughs and suchlike, there was also far too much general, continuous background hissy noise, akin to listening to 78s.

I too thought there was a lot of hiss, very obvious in the solo Bach concerts. Someone said it might be down to the use of floor mics, rather than mics on stands. You would not think it too difficult to get good quality broadcast sound from a single instrument. Perhaps the producer gave priority to the visual.

[jayne lee wilson]

Sorry to be negative but I have found the general sound quality of RAH concerts at this year's Proms to be generally very poor.

I have been recording the Proms for many years, and would say that this year's concerts from the RAH have been the worst I have ever heard in terms of unwanted noise levels. There has been an excessive amount of coughing and various other noises, which for me has spoiled the results so badly that I have hardly kept any of the recordings that I tried to make. Apart from noise "spikes" caused by coughs and suchlike, there was also far too much general, continuous background hissy noise, akin to listening to 78s.


My recording equipment is a desktop PC incorporating an Asus Xonar Essence sound card. I record from the BBC iplayer, via the sound card, and use Audacity using 16 bit WAV format. After editing using Audacity, I save at either MP3 320 kbps or AAC. In other contexts I am usually very happy with the results from this recording procedure. Playback is through a computer based system comprising the same Asus sound card, a Cyrus 8 amplifier (c £1000) and Spendor speakers (c £2,500).

This sound equipment is quite revealing, and although I'm quite fussy about sound quality I'm quite happy to accept the occasional noise issue from live recordings. It's simply that the noise problems this year were off the scale in my opinion.

Utterly baffling, GS, but...
Main difference in my setup is the use of an external DAC (T&A DAC8 - revealing of faults to a fault, as it were).
The R3HDs streams out of JRiver on a Macbook via USB asynch, with all nonessential computer functions shut down during music replay ("exclusive access" or "Hog Mode").
This sends on to ATC Pre/Power amps and Harbeth C7IIs. Again very revealing of noise, hiss, drc etc. Whatever I found dislikable about Proms 2015 relays, I never heard hiss as a problem with the RAH orchestras or Cadogan ensembles. (Didn't hear the solo recitals).
OK, so - you need to change something fundamental and see what happens. I guess you're using the analogue output from the desktop? Right, get the digital stream outta there!.
Computers can be very noisy electrical environments and upgraded sound cards may not get around the problem. Can you borrow an external USB DAC, while there's time to access some of the same Proms to compare? That might do it...

I guess you've checked other possible sources of hifi system noise, etc...?

[Gasteiner]

Utterly baffling, GS, but...
Main difference in my setup is the use of an external DAC (T&A DAC8 - revealing of faults to a fault, as it were).
The R3HDs streams out of JRiver on a Macbook via USB asynch, with all nonessential computer functions shut down during music replay ("exclusive access" or "Hog Mode").
This sends on to ATC Pre/Power amps and Harbeth C7IIs. Again very revealing of noise, hiss, drc etc. Whatever I found dislikable about Proms 2015 relays, I never heard hiss as a problem with the RAH orchestras or Cadogan ensembles. (Didn't hear the solo recitals).
OK, so - you need to change something fundamental and see what happens. I guess you're using the analogue output from the desktop? Right, get the digital stream outta there!.
Computers can be very noisy electrical environments and upgraded sound cards may not get around the problem. Can you borrow an external USB DAC, while there's time to access some of the same Proms to compare? That might do it...

I guess you've checked other possible sources of hifi system noise, etc...?

I have done a very large amount of sound recording over many years, and doubt very much that there is anything amiss with my equipment or procedure.

I have tried both an internal sound card (currently an Asus Xonar Essence STX), and an external DAC (currently a Cambridge Audio DAC Magic 100). In each case the outputs from the sound card and external DAC to the amplifier are analogue using decent quality RCA interconnect to the inputs on my Cyrus 8 amplifier. My speakers are Spendor SP2/3r (of similar ilk to your Harbeths).

I find there is little difference in overall sound quality between internal sound card and external DAC. If pressed I marginally prefer the sound of the Burr-Brown PCM 1792A DAC as used in the Asus to the Wolfson WM8742 DAC in the DAC Magic. Both devices offer stable, very high quality. Any further upgrading would be a waste of money in my view.

For use in my desktop PC, I prefer the convenience of the internal sound card. Provided the source material is good, it consistently works very well across all sound sources including TV card, CD, DVD, hard-disk, USB.

I am usually happy with the results I obtain from recordings derived from the BBC i-player, whether it is a live concert or CD material from a playlist programme. As noted, it is specifically this year's Proms from the RAH where I have encountered more than usual noise problems. I used exactly the same procedure in Proms 2013 and 2014 when the noise problems were generally much less noticeable, especially the amount of coughing.