Digital sound quality – what the audience want
Posted on Friday, March 11th, 2011 at 9:30 am. #
Myth: “Listeners to Radio 3 expect really high quality sound”
Myth: “Radio 3 on DAB is not sufficient quality for these discerning listeners”
The above, publicly-available, data seems to bust that myth.
Fact: Among all the BBC’s networks, BBC Radio 3 has the second highest percentage of their listeners tuning in via digital.
(For clarity: BBC Radio 3′s “HD Sound” on the internet was not operational in this survey. Splits for radio as a whole show that DAB accounts for a minimum of 63.2% of all digital listening – internet only 12%; DTV only 17%. There’s also a substantial “don’t know” figure in both sets of figures.)
The amount of crud talked about sound quality makes me laugh.
Personally, I a child I had both perfect pitch and exceptional frequency range (to the extent that I could hear old-style TVs squeaking and was troubled by the starters in florescent lights).
In addition, my godfather worked for Quad (or technically “The Acoustical Manufacturing Company”), the only company in the world that matches all it’s speakers against a single reference speaker by finding the silent point in a quiet room).
So, as well as playing the violin and the clarinet in an orchestra, I had bi-annual trips to visit my godfather at various “hi-fi” exhibitions where I got to see every bit of domestic and professional kit being demonstrated over the years.
So, I’ve always had proper top-of-the-range Quad equipment as my reference point.
Then, professionally working for BT Broadcast Services I got to do the exhibition and user testing studies again as part of my job.
The thing I have learnt – people are easily taken in. Most people believe what they READ about hi-fi, because most people are unaware of how bad their own hearing is, and human nature is for people to not admit it.
My favourite comment is when people say that something “sounds cold”, when they are presented with perfect reproduction..