Festival TV broadcasts revisited

[S&L]

six weeks ago there was a thread talking about the broadcast quality of Glastonbury, vocals buried in the mix etc. on ordinary TV's. this weekend I have caught a little of the Reading-Leeds festival. Pulp sounded good, clear, cohesive - all of them seeming to shun 'in ears' and wireless mics (I'm sure that's nothing to do with the quality but this anorak found it interesting). I'm listening to Elbow on the red button as I type - they have to be one of the more sonically challenging bands for an engineer whether FOH, monitor or broadcast - a myriad of instruments and tones, tonally complex songs and even a string section on stage - and the TV mix is sublime on my standard TV.

Same broadcast company so presumably same broadcast spec. but it sounds unbelievably better. is anyone genuinely in the know and do you know what they are doing differently?!

[Alec]

Yup, watched Elbow & Muse and though both sounded fab (with the exception of the interference in the middle of the Muse set, but that's another matter).

 

Shame we couldn't get the whole Muse set, but still more than happy with what we did get.

[peza2010]

Perhaps just a different engineer??? :s

[Brian]

Perhaps just a different engineer??? :s

Perhaps it's the same engineer but he's read the previous posts about the subject here on the Blue Room.

[alex_kyuss]

I went through the Radio 1 / NME stage this year and it was a proper BBC OB truck doing the audio recording. I didn't go to the main stage so I dont know what was going on there.

[J Pearce]

Define 'proper BBC truck'. What makes a BBC truck better than anyone else's, especially as theyre not actually BBC trucks anymore they sold them all and lease what they need as they need it.

[starsky]

white coats and upside down faders?

 

Good point though - Ive seen BBC OB (or contracted out) facilities range from an LS9 in the back of a transit van to a Gorgeous big suite with what might have been a Audient 8024, 1030AM's on the walls and some real thought put into the response of the room.

 

I'll never forget being approached by what appeared to be a 16 year old girl in the middle of mixing a local festival who introduced herself as being some OB technician and was clutching a portable DAT recorder and asked me for a mix. I told her "I'll do you mix on the Aux busses; what do you want XLR?"........... "XL what bus?" was her reply

 

then theres the time they wanted to charge us for using the tie lines in RAH, and the time I set up an OB training day for them only to be called back to swap out the desk as it was showing peak with no input, so I drove back and politely showed the guy who was teaching the course how to press the PFL..................

[dosxuk]

Define 'proper BBC truck'. What makes a BBC truck better than anyone else's, especially as theyre not actually BBC trucks anymore they sold them all and lease what they need as they need it.

 

I'm pretty sure the BBC still retain their sound trucks - http://www.bbcradioresources.com/ob/index.html

 

It was BBC Resources, who look after the TV side of the business, which was split up, with the OB section eventually being bought up by SIS.

[J Pearce]

The smaller community radio trucks are still owned, but I was under the impression the larger audio trucks were part of the tv group, not the radio group.

Your link would seem to disagree, so I may have been misinformed.