Dr Morelle Broadcasts

[fido]

I often listen to Radio 4 Extra as I like to hear some of the vintage programmes they broadcast. This week they have had some episodes of "A Case for Dr Morelle" but the sound quality is appalling. They claim to be restored but I think I could do a better job of removing hiss armed only with a Dolby cassette deck! This mornings broadcast included an irritating hum. Surely the BBC boffins could manage to filter out a single frequency or add an out of phase waveform to cancel out the hum?

[DODGERN]

No chance. BBC Radio is the poor relation of the BBC, just look what happened to RADIO 7.
Anyway do you think those 'nice' young things at the BBC even care about what other age groups listen to?

Roger.

[Yorkie]

I often listen to Radio 4 Extra as I like to hear some of the vintage programmes they broadcast. This week they have had some episodes of "A Case for Dr Morelle" but the sound quality is appalling. They claim to be restored but I think I could do a better job of removing hiss armed only with a Dolby cassette deck! This mornings broadcast included an irritating hum. Surely the BBC boffins could manage to filter out a single frequency or add an out of phase waveform to cancel out the hum?

You'd certainly think so, but maybe the Beeb (on strike today!) considers Radio 4 listeners to be made of stern stuff, and sufficiently stoic to overcome any handicap in their quest to be informed, educated and entertained!

On another tack, your mention of 'an out of phase waveform' reminds me that some years ago there was a lot of pubicity about noise attenuation of machinery in factories such as printing presses and wood machining equipment by taking the noise, converting it to anti-phase and playing it through speakers so that each half cycle of noise was cancelled out by a half cycle of its mirror image. The demonstrations were impressive, and it was being proposed as a more effective and cheaper alternative to trying to muffle machinery with noise attenuating covers.

I never heard any more about it - maybe it's in use, maybe it didn't live up to its promise?

David

[DODGERN]

I could do with one of those David.
Ideal to mask the noise emanating from the rear of mp3 player earpieces on public transport. Not content with piercing their own eardrums, they like to share the high frequency screech experience with every other passenger. It is refreshing to see the odd headphone set which at least reduces the problem.

Roger.

P.S. When I was a teenager in the 'swinging' sixties, I did carry my 'trany' around with me. Although loud, it was not placed against my eardrum and definitely sounded better! Who am I to complain?

[Brianc]

I think Roger has hit the nail on the head with regards to the BBC. I worked there between 1959 and 1972 and the ethos then was the quality must be the best possible, no matter how difficult it was to achieve. Many of the senior engineers and supervisors were from Alexandra Palace and were very proud of what they had achieved. This rubbed off onto the more lowly grades who tried to keep up the standards. The was even a quality control room at Television Centre where an engineer watched most of the output looking for dropoffs (not dropouts!). Slowly slowly over the years, the standards dropped, each "generation" of operators giving a little less of themselves to the god of quality. Now, after sell-offs and engineer culls, the BBC is a shadow of its former glory. Standards have dropped in both technical quality and program materisl. The pictures we gat on our sets at home may be streets better in resolution etc. But we never had audio level changes of over 6dB between sources, lip sync that never is, sudden cuts away from program endings etc. etc. the list goes on. The BBC cannot possibly hold its hand up and say we're doing our best - they're doing what they must to keep the output going but the caring has gone along with the wealth of experience that has been chucked out with the bathwater - rant over (for the time being).