Audio Compression on Classic FM.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

It's true that there is a huge range of sensitivity to both audio processing and digital compression artefacts among listeners. Lots of people genuinely can't hear anything amiss and can't see what all the fuss is about. The listening environment and reproduction system does make a difference as you'd expect, but some people don't notice a problem even listening with relatively high quality equipment in a quiet room.

That's undoubtedly true, so why do so many stations set up their Optimod (or whatever hardware is in use these days) the way they do?

It is sometimes said the reason is that the subjectively "louder" station will attract the listener, but I'm sceptical whether that was ever true, particularly these days where increasingly, radios are not tuned across the band in the conventional sense.

[paulsherwin]

A lot of processing is about establishing a distinctive sound and brand identity, as with the CFM presentation style. Unfortunately when everybody does it in more or less the same way then any distinctiveness is lost, but nobody wants to back down as with the bonkers CD loudness wars.

Some people in broadcasting genuinely believe that most listeners prefer a LOUD, punchy, highly processed sound. Maybe they do.

I actually find the level of processing on CFM less objectionable than on many other stations, not because I can't hear it but because it's done for a specific reason - to make classical music listenable in environments with high ambient noise levels.

[G6Tanuki]

As to 'loudness', a friend of mine who has a Doctorate in Music from one of the UK's finer universities says "It's all about context" and "delivering presence that delights the audience". He's had his compositions played at the Royal Albert Hall as well as some much-more-lucrative commercial engagements so I think he has a point to make.

He says you wouldn't want Orff's Carmina Burana played quietly or with 'restraint'. Equally, he reckons that if Wagner were alive today he'd be the #1 go-to composer for the soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings movies and Game of Thrones. Sometimes for dramatic effect you _need_ the VU-meter to spend most of its time in the red, whether by virtue of sheer orchestral power or the broadcaster using some behind-the-scenes audio processing to get those extra Decibels.

The one thing broadcasters like CFM are afraid of is significant amounts of 'dead air'. Either use some extra gain to bring the background-level up, or fill the troubling silence with a 30-second ad.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Even that most poignant silence between the fourth quarter, and the first bong of Big Ben chiming midnight on New Year, has been filled with a Radio 4 station ident in recent years. Sacrilege.

[Radio Wrangler]

Don't some distribution systems cut automatically to a service announcement or alternate programme feed if the main feed goes quiet longer than a set time?

Once upon a time, you were marked out as very posh if you could afford a minstrel or two to twang a lute and thump a drum. Nowadays, silence has become precious.

David

[mole42uk]

Silence is no longer golden

[arjoll]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

Does anyone make a box the size of my tuner that will sit nicely into my audio 'stack' and simply feed internet stations into my main stereo?

Not quite what you're looking for, but some here may remember that I posted queries about new audio equipment here a while ago for dad, who decided to replace his NAD 302 (dry joints near the input connectors) and 502 (weak laser) with new equipment. Along with a Yamaha CD player, he ended up getting this receiver. It's connected to his network (wired, but it can be wireless as well), and he worked out how to use it to play music from his PC (right-click on a folder, "Cast to" and pick the device) and Spotify. It can use a range of other services as well, and of course has AM, FM (unfortunately no RDS on the AU/NZ model), phono (MM only) and plenty of line ins and outs.

There are plenty of similar units that are just the tuner/network part, but thought it was worth sharing this unit, and that it wasn't difficult for a (granted, resonably tech-savvy) 80 year old to figure out.

[mark2collection]

One thing I find with Classic FM on the various HiFi's in the house & 'escape room', the hum in the background, on FM & DAB! I haven't measured it, can only hear the hum on quiet passages, reckon it's about 40Hz ...

I know it's not my equipment, since you can hear it in the car, parked in a quiet location, in a different part of the country, you can hear it around my parents house (different side of town) on my fathers HiFi & on the separates setup at work, different county. The equipment spans many decades in these differing locations, from the 60's right up to 2008, so no trends there.

My Roberts R707 plays Classic FM quite cheerfully (it's a pretty forgiving set), my Troughline II not quite so, I only listen to Classic FM on it when sorting paperwork etc, or until the adverts begin to bug me. Radio 3 on the Troughline II with its external stereo decoder does sound very nice.

Having recently resurrected a monster of a power amplifier (500 watts RMS per channel), well, monster for me, since I'm usually resurrecting vintage radios, DAB & most of what's left on FM, you just cannot 'drive' it, as the sound quality at high levels, just isn't quality. A very capable amplifier given the right analogue source, some music sounds 'right' through it, even at low listening levels, possibly owing to the masses of headroom ...

The amplifier lives in my escape room, where no one can hear you scream! She's a bit big for my workshop really, capable of making the needle on the record player dance to the beat, especially when listening at hooligan levels ... not that I do ... of course ...

The hum on Classic FM through this beast is intolerable ...

Mark

[lesmw0sec]

Originally Posted by mark2collection

The hum on Classic FM through this beast is intolerable ...

You need to be a bit careful there. I recall an incident around the 70's where I was detecting (and measuring) a hum on Radio 3 from Rowridge. On the same tuner there was no such hum from Radio 2 or 4. The BBC engineers could not find anything wrong and in the end we had to put it down to some mysterious intermodulation effect. I have never detected any hum on CFM here in Wales, either from the Tx. or the internet.

[Brigham]

Originally Posted by mark2collection

One thing I find with Classic FM on the various HiFi's in the house & 'escape room', the hum in the background, on FM & DAB! I haven't measured it, can only hear the hum on quiet passages, reckon it's about 40Hz ...

I've not heard a 40-cycle hum since the late '60s, when ICI Billingham finally changed to 50!

[stevehertz]

Originally Posted by rambo1152

It is sometimes said the reason is that the subjectively "louder" station will attract the listener, but I'm sceptical whether that was ever true, particularly these days where increasingly, radios are not tuned across the band in the conventional sense.

I agree, I think that most people are swayed by content, then locality (local radio etc) when it comes to their choice of stations.