Why is Radio 1 compressed?

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We were talking about this last night due to Emma saying that Radio 2 sounds so much better than Radio 1. Radio 2 gets more listeners than Radio 1 these days so it can't be anything to do with ease of signal distirbution and pick-up (cos more people pick-uo the not[so]-compressed Radio 2 than Radio 1. So why the hell do they do it? It sounds awful.

― Emma Royle (Nick Southall asking on behalf of) (Nick Southall), Thursday, 3 July 2003 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

lack of training ? their technical staff and / or dj's still tend to whack the volume up to the red. ?

there's no need as it spoils what rare good music they play.

― frenchbloke (frenchbloke), Thursday, 3 July 2003 12:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Cause it is optimised for car stereos?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 3 July 2003 12:51 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.transdiffusion.org/rmc/features/width.asp

The above article features a section towards the end where this is explained (just between the teletext screengrabs and the final few paragraphs about digital radio).

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Thursday, 3 July 2003 18:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Practically all FM broadcasts - with possibly the sole exception of BBC Radio 3 - have dynamics processing; I presume there's *some* requirement in terms of uniformity of broadcasting level, avoiding overmodulation, etc, but, yes, the commercial stations and R1 completely slam the life out of stuff (which has already been compressed to Pluto and back in the mastering suite).

Now, with DAB, you might not think it necessary and, indeed, that such car-friendly transient-squashing would be best left to the end-user, but apparently that's screwed as well and, with every new channel that joins a multiplex, the bit-rates drop.

Basically: nearly all radio in this country sounds cack, save for the amateur thrill of the pirates and the thick welling of tears as your bus ploughs through South Peckham and Rachmaninoff's 'Miserly Knight' snaps into focus on Classic FM.

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Thursday, 3 July 2003 20:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Radio 1 only sounds good in the car, it's true. It always makes me laugh, on commercial radio, where all the tracks are compressed to fuck, and then the adverts come in , and they're even louder!!

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Thursday, 3 July 2003 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

The bitrate on digital radio via freeview is better than 'traditional' DAB, I am told. Don't know about the compression though. I'm sure it used to be the case that the BBC were much more audiophile about such matters. I blame Greg Dyke.

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 3 July 2003 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

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