On Sun, 12 Feb 2006 00:34:24 -0000, Roderick Stewart
wrote:


Used to love listening to
those R2 BBC Radio Orchestra sessions which sounded so much cleaner than
any record.

I think the 60s and 70s should probably be regarded as a "golden age" when
radio was potentially the best audio quality available to the home listener,
with none of the shortcomings of the two main recording systems available at
the time (analogue tape and disk). Since then, its technical ability has been
surpassed by that of a much better digital system (CD), and threatened with
replacement with a worse one (DAB). I doubt if this situation will ever
recur, as the best recordings are much better than the best broadcasts can
ever be, and the internet is gradually becoming the delivery medium of
choice, because the quality can be anything a broadcaster or publisher wants
it to be.


While I agree in general about the "golden age" of radio, you are
allowing too much of a rosy glow to enhance the picture.

Most of the material broadcast would have been played off LP or
analogue tape; even then there were relatively few live broadcasts. In
order to get very good quality reception you had to live in the London
area; everywhere else was fed either by PO lines of variable quality
or rebroadcast feeds. This improved from the early 70s with the
introduction of the PCM distribution system.

But you are quite right about the naturalness of the Radio 3
recordings of the time, the freedom from excessive DR compression, and
the much more intelligent and relaxed presentation compared with the
"we must beat Classic FM" attitude that we have to put up with now.

Bill