In article , tony sayer

wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf jcgl@st-
and.demon.co.uk writes


Well, the measurements I've made show clear level compression on R3 FM
during the day. e.g.

[snip]


I reckon that this is a bit of a difficult one for a broadcaster as they
in order to serve their audience have to take into account typical
listening conditions for the majority of people during the day and I'd
bet that there aren't that many serious listeners who sit down and
listen to the audio systems during the daytime hours, but there are a
whole lot more who are in car and have the tranny on for background
stuff in the day, so who should they serve for best effect?.

That was the purpose of including DRC in the DAB specifications. A recent
statemend I've had from the BBC claims they *do* use this on R3.

Alas, for DRC to have much value on DAB, the results with it disengaged
should be of a good enough quality to merit listening seriously...

Since there is no DRC on FM, the BBC used to choose *not* to compress. The
argument being that it was left to the listeners to decide how to listen.
Nothing to stop manufacturers selling car radios with level compressers.

Now they simply impose in on all. When you think about it, this is a
parallel to the way they have treated DAB listeners.

Of course what they ought do is make a very high bitrate and
un-processed source available on satellite for such serious users, and
use compression on DABble which doesn't matter anymore as its no longer
a serious audio medium.

The problem now is that - even if the BBC do currently offer higher
bitrates and no level compression via other broadcating chains (like DTTV)
- their behaviour gives no reason for confidence that this will continue.
Hence should I or anyone else spend money buying equipment to exploit this
only to risk it evaporating shortly afterwards?

The difficulty here is that the BBC are establishing a track record of
being 'unreliable' as well as showing no real concern for quality.

[N.B. Having problems with the HD on my computer, so there may be
a 'break in communcations' during the next day or so...]

Slainte,

Jim

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