Best way to get Radio 3?
 

I

FWIW despite being a fan of R3 FM for many years (and having made many
recordings of concerts over 20+ years) I now tend to prefer listeing to and
recording R3 concerts via DAB or DTTV rather than FM. The dynamic range
simply seems more 'natural' to me, and the sound seems to avoid some of the
nonlinearities of FM.


Ahem.. What against a perceptual encoder that throws info away that it
thinks you don't need to hear;?..

My comments/comparisons are based on using a Yamaha CT7000 and a Quad
FM4 tuners for FM. These both give good results, but I've now ended up
preferring DTTV/DAB although this preference is regarded as 'heresy' by
many, I suspect. :-)

I wouldn't say that Jim, but I sometimes wonder if the feed to your
local TX is as good as it ought be. Certainly here in Cambridge even off
the Madingley relay fed from Peterbourgh the dynamic range is about as
good as you'll get in a concert hall. And certainly good enough for home
domestic listening. Still you'll be needing to reach for the volume
control when they open up rumble villa, AKA as R3 continuity;!...

Above said, a decent FM system is capable of excellent results, so you may
find that it provides you with results that you find very satisfactory.
Also, I would not recommend DAB for some of the other stations on it, which
sound quite dire. Hence the above comments are specific to R3.

Quite.. DAB is disgraceful and gives digital broadcasting bad name.

As I said to the original poster a good aerial and decent tuner;))

Its that simple.

--
Tony Sayer

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article , tony sayer

wrote:
I

FWIW despite being a fan of R3 FM for many years (and having made many
recordings of concerts over 20+ years) I now tend to prefer listeing to
and recording R3 concerts via DAB or DTTV rather than FM. The dynamic
range simply seems more 'natural' to me, and the sound seems to avoid
some of the nonlinearities of FM.


Ahem.. What against a perceptual encoder that throws info away that it
thinks you don't need to hear;?..

Not sure what kind of answer you are requesting. My comments divide into
two classes.

1) Comments on the dynamic range and noise level stem mainly from
measurements.

2) Personal reaction having now listened to R3 on FM/DTTV/DAB for some
time.

In general, on R3 DAB or DTTV I simply find I am enjoying the sound of the
music, and the detailed quality of the sound, and simply am unaware of any
artefacts which I can attribute to data reduction. This isn't always the
case. Sometimes the sound seems confused or garbled in some way. However I
also found that if I switched back and forth between FM/DAB/DTTV on such
occasions I often found that:

1) The same 'apparent artefact' was also audible on FM, so was being caused
by something else than the data reduction.

or

2) The noise level on FM was high enough to be more noticable than the
apparent artefacts.

I appreciate that the data reduction is removing components it thinks I
won't notice have gone missing. (Indeed, such forms of reduction are
one of the topics I teach in one of my undergrad courses!) However I
find that when I switch between FM and DAB/DTTV I generally can't hear
any musical details 'go missing' on DAB/DTTV R3. Indeed, the most obvious
difference to me seems to be the much lower noise level on DAB/DTTV.
(Both stationary and II.)

The above is not always the case, so some artefacts show at times. And I
would be less happy if I preferred 'non R3' stations for music. Many of the
other DAB/DTTV radio statios give dire sounds, but I am not well placed to
judge them as I'd probably dislike them even if I was listening directly to
their output.

Also, my personal experience is that DTTV where I live is much more prone
to ignition interference. It seems to produce audible clicks or blips
in a way that DAB here does not. In large part this is due to the low
RF levels for DTTV here, but DTTV also seems to employ less interleaving,
etc, so will 'click' rather than burble when there is II.

I admit I have been surprised by my coming to a preference for DTTV or DAB
R3 over FM. It is not what I expected when I started comparing them. But it
is based on repeated comparisons and simply allowing myself to use what I
find I prefer.

The main reasons seem to me to be the higher dynamic range on DTTV/DAB.
This allows me to hear the music with the musical peaks and ppp passages in
better proportion, etc.

FWIW if II is not a problem, though, I'd recommend DTTV rather than DAB
simply because they sometimes use higher bitrates for some of the BBC
stations. I would also much prefer it if they could use higher rates all
round...

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article , Serge Auckland
wrote:

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...

All methods of delivery are, or will be very shortly, processed
during the day.

Can you say what your source for the above is? Perhaps give a
reference to it? So far, my experience is that R3 DAB/DTTV tends not
to be level compressed during the day in the same way as R3 FM.


Before I retired, I was the guy selling Orban in the UK. That's where
the information comes from, my dealings with the Corporation on
supplying processing for the new London Control Room.

That tells me that you sold them equipment. However it does not say who
told you this was their policy wrt R3 DAB/DTTV, nor why, nor if their
statement was authoratitive. Hence I can't tell if they may be installing
the equipment for other reasons and will not be level compressing DAB/DTTV
R3. Can you say who told you about DAB/DTTV R3, and what they said? (If you
do not want to give their name in public, please email me if you want it to
be 'in confidence'.)

[snip]

Processing is a hot subject within all radio broadcasters, BBC and
commercial. They guard their processor settings jealously, and are most
reluctant ever to talk about it publicly.

I can appreciate that as a general rule. However for R3 one of their
'selling points' should be the *lack* of level compression. Hence I'd
expect them to be willing to state this.

That said, I know that getting any info from anyone at the BBC is a
nightmare. :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article , Jim Lesurf jcgl@st-
and.demon.co.uk writes
In article , tony sayer

wrote:
In
I read an article in one of the audio mags last week that argued the
case that actually, DVB-T (i.e. "Freeview") provides the cleanest,
highest-resolution radio around right now - even compared with FM.

Don't believe all the bollox thats writ by supposed Audio Jurnos:(

ahem That rather depends on the "audio jurnos"... :-)

Also on the measured evidence upon which they may base their comments...
;-

Of course, you may find it's easier to find a 'decent [FM] tuner' than
a decent DVB-T box, and especially one with a digital output.

Freeview is "clean" there is no doubt about that, but it does have that
metallic artificial digital sound to it that I find very irritating.

Not in my experience. What it does have is a tendency to lack the audible
effects of level compression, background noise, and high-level nonlinear
distortion of FM.

Where are you finding this high level non linearity Jim?.
Can you elaborate please?...

Although for obvious reasons, the sound quality will vary
a great deal from one broadcast channel/item to another.

Slainte,

Jim


--
Tony Sayer

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article , Jim Lesurf jcgl@st-
and.demon.co.uk writes
In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 14:10:31 +0000, tony sayer wrote:




I guess it depends on what bothers you. I find even the tiniest bit of
dynamic compression immensely irritating - much more so than the little
glitches from satellite bitrates, which frankly I have to listen for.

I have also come to a similar conclusion. When I first started listening to
DTTV (and then DAB) I found the differences from FM quite noticable, and
initially disliked the results. However with continued listening I decided
that quite a lot of this was due to my being 'habituated' to the level
compression, noise, and high-level nonlinearity of FM.

Now, the sound on DAB R3 does seem 'confused' at times,

This is odd 192 K on DTV and 192 K on SAT why the difference?..
Course we are talking about Radio 3 are we not?.

BTW what do you think of Radio 4 in DAB and DTV...

but also a lot of
the time I now find it much clearer than on FM. Given a free choice and
repeated comparisons over many months I now find I tend to prefer DTTV or
DAB a lot of the time. Mainly I think as a result of the (relative) lack of
level compression, noise, and high-level nonlinearity. Note, though, that
this is for R3, not necessarily for other stations.


Might I ask what do you use for TV Jim (if you get time to watch it)
analogue, or DTV via sat or freeview...

--
Tony Sayer

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article , tony sayer

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


Not in my experience. What it does have is a tendency to lack the
audible effects of level compression, background noise, and high-level
nonlinear distortion of FM.

Where are you finding this high level non linearity Jim?. Can you
elaborate please?...

The "high level" refers to the signal. If you examine the distortion
characteristics of FM the level of distortion tends to rise with both the
signal level and with the modulation frequency. Note that the measurements
quoted in maker's specs and in magazine reviews (when they used to actually
measure this) tended to be for 30 per cent modulation at a frequency like
300 Hz - 1 kHz. Also mono.

These days, though, the makers and magazines have tended to 'solve' this
problem in the same was as they'd dealt with the similar issue of
nonlinearity in pickup cartridges for LP. Just ignore it and hope no-one
notices or cares... :-)

If you measure 'higher levels' - i.e. modulation depths up to 100 percent,
and higher frequencies, and also L or R or L-R, or intermod, the amount of
distortion rises.

I suspect that. like myself, you have measured the distortion of more than
one FM RX whilst trying to align or tweak it, or just to see if it was
working as it should. it is easy enough to get THDs of the order of 0.2
percent for 300Hz 30 percent mod mono. But when you then measure higher
(signal) levels, etc, the results can be somewhat different. Ditto for HF
intermod or L+R and L-R intermod.

The above occurs even for an 'ideal' RX and is due simply due to the finite
bandwidth and the removal of the higher terms of the modulation by the
bandwidth restriction. This, and avoiding modulation clipping is why BBC R3
have always tended to err on the side of keeping down the modulation.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 17:45:22 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

2) started to suspect that the 'warmth' on FM was due to a combination of
peak-compression (so enhancing the sustain part of notes) and the high
levels of nonlinearity for HF peaks from the RX.

Hence I found that my preference started to change, and now is quite
different to my initial reactions to DTTV.

My experience echoes this.

I have also taken a recording of a CD track from Radio 3 FM and
compared it with my copy of the same CD. The level of compression
surprised me, as did the euphonic effect of this making the FM version
seem more 'alive' (probably because of the higher level of background
noise).

When the opportunity arises, I will try the same thing with Radio 3 on
satellite. (This obviously depends on the BBC broadcasting a track
from a CD that I possess. ;-)

--
Chris Isbell
Southampton, UK

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 14:07:44 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

Of
course, you may find it's easier to find a 'decent [FM] tuner' than a
decent DVB-T box, and especially one with a digital output.

Freeview is "clean" there is no doubt about that, but it does have that
metallic artificial digital sound to it that I find very irritating.
Course if the BBC was a pro outfit they'd be on satellite at 256 K/bits
or more but sadly their not. Other European broadcasters seem to be able
to do that!..

I think the whole DAB disaster could have been avoided if they'd
picked a solid technology, but they go for something 20 years old. Its
inexplicably wrongheaded....

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

Hi,

wrote in message
...
On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 14:07:44 +0000, tony sayer
wrote:

Of
course, you may find it's easier to find a 'decent [FM] tuner' than a
decent DVB-T box, and especially one with a digital output.

Freeview is "clean" there is no doubt about that, but it does have that
metallic artificial digital sound to it that I find very irritating.
Course if the BBC was a pro outfit they'd be on satellite at 256 K/bits
or more but sadly their not. Other European broadcasters seem to be able
to do that!..

I think the whole DAB disaster could have been avoided if they'd
picked a solid technology, but they go for something 20 years old. Its
inexplicably wrongheaded....

Eureka 147 was recommended by the ITU for "immediate use" in 1994.
Needless to say, it wasn't twenty years old then. At the time that the
MPEG 1 audio specs were ratified, it was pushing technology in
terms of what could be done in hardware in 'real time'. Plus, I'm not
aware of any 'better' technologies that were available at the time. If
there were any, I'd like to hear about them.

The technology is now looking rather antiquated, however, and bureaucracy
has ensured that we've ended up with a system that fails in one of it's
stated claims - "DAB fully complies with the tough requirements of the
future". The implementation of DAB we have in the UK fails on this
claim, IMO.

Regards,

Glenn.

Best way to get Radio 3?
 

In article ,
wrote:
I think the whole DAB disaster could have been avoided if they'd
picked a solid technology, but they go for something 20 years old. Its
inexplicably wrongheaded....

First demonstration I heard of DAB was about 20 years ago. The better data
compression algorithms weren't around then.

--
*'Progress' and 'Change' are not synonyms.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.