Desert Island Disks

[bayswater]

Anyone listen to Desert Island Disks? Better still ,has anyone worked on this show?

My question is about the sound of the music played. I listen to it on an original iPod Touch with Sennheiser earphones. The music played always sounds different different from the originals. I've imported the the sound files, 128 MP3s, from BBC-4 into DSP-Q. Then converted the originals into 128K MP3, and imported that into DSP-Q.

The obvious difference is the DDI versions are compressed and attenuated by 6db or more. There also seems to be some filtering of very high and maybe very low frequencies. Maybe less reverb as well.

A more interesting difference is the DDI stereo imaging is usually more precise than the original. Individual sounds are placed in a very specific narrow spot while the same sounds in the original are spread across a wider range. They are often in a different place, and may be closer or further away from the centre but not in any consistent way you'd get from a plugin that widens the image

I've tried applying compression to the original to approximate the DDI version's dynamic range and peaks, but it doesn't result in closer imaging.

Sometimes the DDI sound is what I'm looking for. It seems particularly suited to recordings of conversations, especially those with several participants. Anyone know what they do?