What does the Beeb Use ??

When you get back up the chain, the problem you run into is worse than this. The radio stations transmit tracks which are mastered differently to the stuff you buy in the shops. This is because the restricted bandwidth of FM doesn't allow for bass and treble frequency transmission to the same extent as you get on your good ol' CD / vinyl. Therefore, the station variant is boosted in those frequencies to make it sound similar to what you get off the CD/vinyl. However, this means there's quite a different chain through which the music goes before arriving at your tuner. That probably has a bigger effect than the actual CD player they use.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

The BBC, in my opinion,are not that concerned with quality audio, except for the occasional R3 broadcast, because isn't it they who wish to "dumb down" the quality of broadcasts.

I believe that the BBC, like almost every other commercial radio station, are increasingly playing direct from hard disk (rather like a huge jukebox). They still have CDPs in the studios for music not on the jukebox, and also minidisc players for the jingles, beds and trailers.

Simon

Mike,
The BBC use variety of bizarre kit. I did some work with them a while ago for distributing content over Digital TV, I also have a guy who works for me now who is ex BBC.
They have quite a few inhouse developed systems that are then outsourced to be mnufactured. Certainly some of their transcription systems for older recordings are quite unusual, they still have a lot of drum recordings that are rather old.
Their amplification tends to be Quad and Bryston from what I saw, the guy that founded PMC is ex BBC R&D.
David

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Originally posted by Simon Crosland:
I believe that the BBC, like almost every other commercial radio station, are increasingly playing direct from hard disk (rather like a huge jukebox). They still have CDPs in the studios for music not on the jukebox, and also minidisc players for the jingles, beds and trailers.

Simon

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Hi Simon

Whats a bed.

Syd

I have made a few progs over the years and I have been in several BBC and independent radio studios. I have never seen any radio receivers at all in the studios, but I suspect the BBC engineers probably have some old Quad FM4s lying about for their purposes. Tuners don't really have a part to play in the broadcast, and monitoring in the studio is usually direct from the source before transmission.

The only turntables that I have seen (and used) for broadcasting have been direct-drive types, such as used by dance DJs. Probably Pioneer sort of thing, certainly nothing audiophile. The arms have removable headshells, and I always carried my own pair of headshells and cartridges with me from studio to studio, as I didn't trust the previous studio user not to have wrecked them.

Once again the carts. were moving-coil, robust, dance DJ type things, possibly Stanton? Certainly not audiophile.

So the gear used to broadcast vinyl was always pretty ropey in my experience, but I haven't been into the hallowed halls of Radio 3. On the other hand, even the lowliest local-station broom cupboard will be fitted with a nice Neumann mic in a good suspended stand.

malcolm

Oh yes, you are all correct. Nearly everything now is digital; HD or mimidisc. Some of the older studios still have turntables, but the presenters mainly use them to put their coffee cups on.

Thanks to all of you who replied, not sure if things are any clearer, so given that the general consensus is that they use a load of old c...p, why does it sound so good on a NAIM tuner then ???

Sorry, you asked about the pensioned off Studer CDPs. These are used for robustness and flexibility of control e.g. auto-start from the mixing desk, back cueing, back timing etc. Not for sonic qualities.
If genuine ex-broadcast studio they are probably knackered, as run continuously for years.

There's not much any tuner can do to improve upon the equipment used to replay recordings put out over the air, although our tuners probably minimise any losses at the receiving end. Where a good tuner really comes into its own is on live broadcasts such as those on Radio 3.

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Whats a bed.

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It's not for sleeping in! It's a piece of music that is played in the background under something else (usually speech). Such as the music they play under the traffic news. Sometimes these things are looped, sometimes they are a fixed time. They also play some neat tricks by using the beds for traffic news to turn the RDS beacon on and off.

Cheers,
Simon

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flexibility of control e.g. auto-start from the mixing desk, back cueing, back timing etc.

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Another nice feature of pro CDPs is "auto-cue". Press the auto-cue button and the machine cues to the first non-silent bit on the selected track, so when you hit the play button there is instant sound. This coupled with fader-start makes life pretty easy.

Cheers,
Simon

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Originally posted by Richard Dane:
There's not much any tuner can do to improve upon the equipment used to replay recordings put out over the air, although our tuners probably minimise any losses at the receiving end. Where a good tuner really comes into its own is on live broadcasts such as those on Radio 3.

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Hi Richard,

Agreed about how marvellous tuners can be and how live broadcasts can sound stunning. What is weird however is how some 'programmes' can sound really good. Consider 'Late Junction' on Radio 3. 'Dinner Jazz' on Jazz FM as good examples. They are using manky CD players presumably but it sounds great. Why is this?

Radio 4 plays and taped Jazz concerts on played on 'Mixing it' and 'Jazz on 3' in particular have a stunning realism.

Dev -- Radiohead (boom, boom)

Hi Dev,

I honestly don't know, but I know what you mean...

The closest analogy I can think of is a crummy digitally recorded LP that can actually sound really rather good on a decent turntable/arm/cartridge. Go figure.

I wonder if the process of 'storing' the signal on analog media (vinyl, FM transmission, etc) is equivalent to upsampling to a near infinite sample rate with an extremely good interpolating algorithm

Allan

According to my friend Jim [an ex engineer, boffin & partly responsible for the 'Domesday' thing [laserdisc? DVD? whatever] as well as being part of the BBC computer team] R3, and in fact radio in generalused to be largely run by audiophiles, and sound quality largely ruled over content - think of Rodgers speakers, and lots of other BBC designed equipment. As if we didn't know, this isn't largely the case anymore - witness applying of compression on DAB, which the BBC specified tuners were designed to regulate by pressing the 'DRC' button [now ignored]. He keeps a big box of tissues to cry into near his radio nowadays .... reckons that the BBC's implementation of DAB is now [in spite of originating it] the worst in the world. If you complain, answers are evasive or stupid. It's very depressing.

throb

I saw inside a BBC studio once,and they were using and unknown deck with an SME arm / quad amps.

I wonder how they archive old vinyl material to thier hard disk storage ?

DS

OTR - Dead Ringers

Hi,
Regarding "beds" (background noise to spoken material). I wonder whether the broadcasters realise (or even care) that many people over a certain age suffer from "masking". Deafness, where anything in the background "masks" the words that are being said. Sky News is the worst by a large margin. If they announced WW3 I wouldn't here it for the drums rolling endlessly and the childish swoop of a "jet" or something other gimmick that arrived with the "picture wall". Mind you, it is aimed at the seriously educationally disadvantaged of this world. I only watch it to keep up with British news. I just hope it isn't contagious. I can ill afford to lose any more marbles.
I watch "Clickonline" on satellite too and even that now has "beds" to drown the content. Not that the programme is more than talking heads. Where do they find so many wierd people to do the interviews?

Nime

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Regarding "beds" (background noise to spoken material). I wonder whether the broadcasters realise (or even care) that many people over a certain age suffer from "masking".

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It's not even just the "masking" that can be a problem. One of the BBC local radio stations started playing a new traffic bed one day whilst I was on the M25. I truly thought that the car was about to throw a wheel or something - there was this high pitched whine sound every so often. It wasn't until the traffic news stopped that I realised that it had been on the new bed. I called them to complain and found out that they had received lots of complaints about the same thing. Just goes to prove they don't think about the listeners' environments before commisioning these things.

On the original subject, I read an interesting article about the production of "Later with Jools Holland" a few years back in a pro audio rag. The production staff basically had to make do with whatever old gear that they could find, along with what they could scrounge off the live audio compaines doing rehearsals and monitors for the acts each week. I mean, it's only their premiere popular music show on the tv ... why bother spending any money on it ...

Cheers,
Simon

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Originally posted by Richard Dane:
There's not much any tuner can do to improve upon the equipment used to replay recordings put out over the air, although our tuners probably minimise any losses at the receiving end. Where a good tuner really comes into its own is on live broadcasts such as those on Radio 3.

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Nice one Richard, I think this is the heart of the matter, having been out of the UK for so long, I had forgotten about BBCR3 live broadcasts,

I guess a Nat01 would be wasted out here in Asia then, as it does'nt matter how good the tuner is if you don't understand Bahasa or Thai, and the 'quality' ???? well, nuff said.