If nothing else ...

[Vile Consort]

... listening to these archive concerts has revealed one thing, viz. how much better the presentation was 20 or 30 years ago. Am I just being old-fashioned?>>

No!

[Bryn]

... listening to these archive concerts has revealed one thing, viz. how much better the presentation was 20 or 30 years ago. Am I just being old-fashioned?

Quite possibly. When one of the current excellent presenters with musical taste on this occasion congruent with mine kindly sought out and sent me a digital copy of the archive DAT of a Radio 3 broadcast from May 1980 that I had been seeking since my cassette recording of the broadcast went west, they commented on how amusingly stilted and old-fashioned the presentation sounded. Some recordings of broadcasts I have from the early 70s, leave even more to be desired in terms of presenter to listener empathic communication.

[french frank]

they commented on how amusingly stilted and old-fashioned the presentation sounded

It always intrigues me that a distinction is apparently made between speaking as people did forty years ago, and speaking with a regional accent now. We don't expect a Lancashire accent from a London-born presenter any more than we expect a present-day presenter to speak like Alvar Liddell. But in terms of listening to the 'real thing', one is found is found acceptable, the other 'amusing', even laughable. Style and accents are personal, some appeal, others repel.

[ARBurton]

... listening to these archive concerts has revealed one thing, viz. how much better the presentation was 20 or 30 years ago. Am I just being old-fashioned?>>

No!

No I agree with you. Noticeable how I think there`s less tendency to burst in hurriedly (T Service I`m looking at you). But, on the other hand, sometimes the sound quality has been surprisingly inferior - I thought the Giulini Brahms sounded as though the microphones had been buried in particularly thick coverings of blancmange then lovingly wrapped in furry blankets...

[Ein Heldenleben]

No I agree with you. Noticeable how I think there`s less tendency to burst in hurriedly (T Service I`m looking at you). But, on the other hand, sometimes the sound quality has been surprisingly inferior - I thought the Giulini Brahms sounded as though the microphones had been buried in particularly thick coverings of blancmange then lovingly wrapped in furry blankets...

I'm surprised you think that. I don't think recording techniques have changed much since 1994 .Last time I went to the proms I recognised some of the mikes as pretty much the same as those of the 80's . Digital recorders have changed but that shouldn't affect the sound. Pretty sure the 1994 Guilini Prom would have been digitally recorded (on DAT?) so difficult to see what the loss of top came from. I didn't hear that top loss but the ears ain't what they used to be...and I was also sitting at 180 deg to my speaker system that night!

[Bryn]

I'm surprised you think that. I don't think recording techniques have changed much since 1994 .Last time I went to the proms I recognised some of the mikes as pretty much the same as those of the 80's . Digital recorders have changed but that shouldn't affect the sound. Pretty sure the 1994 Guilini Prom would have been digitally recorded (on DAT?) so difficult to see what the loss of top came from. I didn't hear that top loss but the ears ain't what they used to be...and I was also sitting at 180 deg to my speaker system that night!

Was not NICAM the BBC's storage and transfer medium in those days? I recall a musician friend, then a BBC Wales audio engineer, advising me that in the earlier days of digital storage, 32 kHz was the sample rate most used, too. It made a certain amount of sense then, the FM upper-frequency limit being below 16kHz, so the Nyqusit of 32kHz sampling was quite enough.