[78-L] CBC radio

[DAVID BURNHAM]

dl wrote:

I wonder if Mr. Burnham has any insight as to why commercially recorded 
classical music on CBC 2 sounds as if it's been put through an echo chamber and 
the highs boosted to ear splitting levels..or if
 there's a policy in place to 
program only those CDs that are unnaturally strident.

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Well, as Mr. Lennick knows, I spent almost four decades as a recording engineer in CBC Television, (briefly), and CBC radio.  One constant bain of my existence there was constantly visiting Radio Master Control to find out why recordings we had worked so hard on sounded so dreadful when they went on the air.  They always passed the buck to the elusive people who worked at the transmitter.  But whatever the reason, no matter how hard we tried to maintain levels so that they could be handled by the dynamic window available for FM broadcasting, they always sounded heavily compressed.  Now, of course, I retired from CBC three years ago so I have no idea what they're doing now, (and I rarely listen to CBC 2 anymore);  however, here's one possibility - they may be running the music through a frequency sensitive compressor, so that several bands of frequencies are each treated independently.  This means that if there is high level say at bass or mid
 frequencies, compression will be utilized at those frequency bands, but it won't affect frequencies which are not high level.  Usually high frequencies are at a lower level than bass and mid frequencies so if they are left uncompressed while the lower frequency components of the signal are compressed, this will make it sound strident.  Also, of course, reverb elements are at a lower level than the main program so they also will be broadcast at a higher level as the compressor threshold recovers.

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dl also wrote:

I also have no problems with 
the audio quality on that idiotic so-called classical station in Toronto ......


I can't possibly agree with this statement;  the level of compression on that station is painful to listen too.  You hear a loud clear oboe solo and the following tutti is swallowed up.  A loud bass drum will swallow the rest of the orchestra;  and their musical standards are hopeless.  As an example, we were promised Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto.....after these messages.  These messages went on for around 5 minutes and then we heard the end of the last movement of the Concerto - the equivalent of the last side of the Heifetz/Barbirolli recording.

db