Sound at the BBC

[bayswater]

Has anyone here done work at the BBC?

If you listen to music played on some BBC shows, you’ll notice it sometimes sounds quite different from the original. A good example is “Desert Island Discs”. We can assume they are not remixing existing songs, because people on that show can nominate any song they like. Pretty much impossible the Beeb could get the original tracks to any song and remix them.

But what they play won’t often sound like the original. Instead the separation of instruments is very pronounced, with instruments sometimes at extreme left and right, or even very much isolated in the middle, even when the same instruments are well separated, or not at all separated in the stereo field in the original. Hard to tell, but sometimes I even hear something akin to 3D using headphones. Other things I’ve noticed is reductions in reverb, and eq processing that enhances presence. Some of this is simple in theory, but clean reverb reduction at least isn’t that easy in practise.

Listen to almost any recent episode and you’ll probably notice it. In some cases it’s quite extreme, e.g. a recent episode that included a track by Mama Cass. The original mix was a but muddy — the DID version is very different, almost an entirely different recording.

I’m wondering what they do and what they use to do it.

[EMRR]

interesting. I'd like to know more.

[mikehalloran]

For decades, tracks on BBC shows were lip sync'd but doing so to the original records was not allowed. The 2-CD set of The Beatles's BBC tracks are famous examples—all were recorded especially for the shows the day before or the morning of.

https://www.amazon.com/Live-At-BBC-2-CD ... 00F4BJ4M0/

[bayswater]

For decades, tracks on BBC shows were lip sync'd but doing so to the original records was not allowed. The 2-CD set of The Beatles's BBC tracks are famous examples—all were recorded especially for the shows the day before or the morning of.

https://www.amazon.com/Live-At-BBC-2-CD ... 00F4BJ4M0/

Yes, true, and you'll still see it happening on BBC TV. But it has little to do with the question.

I'm talking about radio shows where they play recordings, but do so with something that renders the audio in a very distinct way. On Desert Island Discs, for example, they, might play something recorded by Kiri Te Kanawa, and a bit of Beethoven from Academy of St Martin's, some Woodie Guthrie or Frank Sinatra. Not likely they re-recorded any of these.