All posts by Howard Owens
Below are all of Howard Owens's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.Subtitles are a godsend when dialogue is drowned by over-loud, fidgety 'music'. Even some of the great Attenborough documentaries have been afflicted, by a 40-piece orchestra somehow assembled in the jungle!
A senior BBC sound mixer once remarked that all background music can be set at least 6dB lower than the director asks for, without any loss of artistic effect but enormous gain in intelligibility. I would invite creatives to bear in mind that most of us are listening on basic loudspeakers, not super-clear studio stuff, and that we have not read the script.
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Sadly I have to agree with Chris. DAB is profoundly disappointing in terms of content and even sound quality. It's the triumph of quantity over quality, cash over creativity. We now have corporate-dominated 'local' playlist stations, truly dreadful audio on ClassicFM and even on Radio 3 most days. Access to World Service is a strong plus, though again marred by gruff low-bit audio.
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All very helpful information, thankyou. What would be appreciated from Twelve Winds would be a printer friendly list of each service available on a TV transmitter. Maybe there is and I missed it? I have pasted up three pages from the Stockland Hill, info. Took a bit of time because of the textbox formatting clashing with my Mac. Never mind, what a discovery that there's so much available!
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My terrestrial TV aerial has gone to the tip. No dish. No fibre.
BBC radio only from now on. The relief, not to mention release of quality time, is enormous.
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Way back I worked in BBC tv sound. We all took elaborate care with the sound: microphone, often on the end of a pole, was held close to the actor or presenter. If impossible, we would pin on a lapel mic - - and protest a bit if it was muffled by costume.
These days: not much boom-poling, many body-worn mics and sometimes just under the neck - which really makes for poor intelligibility. Then, to make it fully difficult for the viewer, music is often too loud and too busy, with frequencies that conflict with the voice: in music recording studios, backing is often scooped in mid range to give the vocals a chance. A bit of finesse goes a long way.
Oh... and of course then there's the TV loudspeaker! Even on good programming, and of course there is some, the average flat-panel sounds far inferior to the dear old Ferguson black and white I watched back in the 60s.
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Saturday 3 May 2014 10:59PM
Exeter
Grateful for your site. Our Freeview BBC stations, apart from HD, have been wiped out by - it seems evident - a Vodaphone 4G half a mile away that switched on about April 20. Curiously, commercial stations are unaffected.
Is it correct that the BBC has been handed responsibility for diagnosing reception difficulties across all frequencies and services?