High Fidelity Sound

My wife listens to French Radio a lot, on the Long Wave . The reception in South East England is acceptable for voice transmissions but when France Inter transmits music it does not sound so good. I decided to try Internet Radio connected to the HiFi system and there was a marked improvement in the quality of the sound. So we put our anoraks on and compared the quality of Internet radio, DAB radio and FM broadcasting. A five minute test was easy, and all we had to do was connect up the laptop and all the equipment and press a few buttons. We tried a test on BBC Radio 3: Fm radio came out as the winner, second came the Internet radio and third came DAB.

I did a little bit of research, on the Internet, to discover that the authorities are trying to phase out FM radio by 2015. This means that we shall all have to listen to the Radio either on the Internet or DAB, but will there be an improvement to the quality of the sound reproduction? Further investigation revealed that DAB is to be replaced by DAB+, which means that my current DAB radio will become obsolete. What happens to car radio? Will there be complete coverage of the country via DAB+ when FM is phased out?

The quality of the reproduction of the music is vitally important to some listeners especially those who listen to classical music and opera. The performance of DAB, Internet radio and "Freeview" radio is nowhere near as good as FM. FM radio is also better for jazz and folk music and even most types of pop. Radio is a typical example of modern technology not being being able to deliver the same performance as older technology. But this is probably for economic and logistical rather than technological reasons.

There are still some, the audiophiles, who believe that long playing records reproduce music better than Compact Discs, but I am not one of them. This argument has gone on for years and I still have friends who believe that LP's sound better; but of course they need to be played through very expensive equipment.

I once had a work colleague who spent many thousands of dollars on the most advanced LP turntables and CD players etc. He swore that LP's sounded better than CD's and tried to demonstrate this by comparing the same music using both media. Both of them sounded great but the very expensive equipment picked up the static electricity on the LP which spoilt the music for me. I also had to question whether his HiFi set up sounded 20 or 30 times better than my more humble equipment which cost 20 or 30 times less.

In theory,the analogue music reproduction of an LP should sound better than the digital reproduction of a CD. But neither medium can exactly capture sound waves. Playing records on turntables, also means that any imperfection in the design or production of the record itself, the diamond needle and cartridge, the pick up arm or the turntable will be reproduced as rumble, changes to the frequency of the sound or hissing and popping noises from dust, static electricity or scratches. This extraneous noise seems to be unavoidable. For this reason alone, a well recorded CD played through reasonable quality equipment sounds much better.

Many of my audiophile friends seem to spend more time comparing the merits of different forms of equipment and their technical specifications rather than listening to the music.

How can we make comparisons anyway? It is not often that any of us listens to music which has not been electronically reproduced in some shape or form. I have even been to an opera where the production company used a PA system. The only time I have truly listened to live music was at a classical concert, the opera , at a folk club or at home with friends. Most of the music that we listen to has been adjusted to the tastes of a recording engineer, even if we are listening to Radio 3. It is not possible, therefore, for any HiFi equipment to exactly reproduce the conditions of an original live performance. Where the original music is produced electronically we are in a more difficult position for we cannot know what the performance was supposed to sound like.

I have heard John Renbourn a jazz and folk guitarist perform acoustically at a club. His CDs sound almost exactly the same, when I play them at home, even with my humble and aging equipment. This is good enough for me: I have never heard Maria Callas performing live, but I am reasonably confident that I am hearing a very good reproduction of her voice on the CD. Equally, I am reasonably confident that the electronic music of the Pink Floyd is being reproduced as intended by the musicians. I urge all young people to go to hear some acoustically produced live music, such as by an orchestra, to experience for themselves the comparison between live and electronically reproduced music - in this way they can test how good their MP3 players really are.

Any idea, that I had, to prove whether LPs are better than CDs was squashed once and for all on Saturday night whilst I was listening to Classic FM. They had billed the classical pianist Dinu Lipatti to play Grieg's piano concerto in A minor. At the start of the recording, I heard the familiar clunk and rumble of an LP starting up and then I heard the usual crackle and pop which is always present even with the best equipment . All of this was being faithfully reproduced in high fidelity, so I was distracted from the music. The LPs are going to be left in the attic.

Modern technology could be used to much better effect, provided broadcasters like the BBC concentrate on the quality of both the music and the reproduction technology. More choice either in terms of content or technical performance is not so desirable if the budget is spread too thinly. Perhaps, it would be better to drop DAB altogether and retain FM. Virtually everyone has an FM radio which provides good reproduction for all forms of music. Digital services could then be improved to provide a higher quality service via the Internet. The budget could be spent more effectively.

All of us deserve to hear our music being broadcast at the highest possible quality, lets use the technology to really make an improvement at a reasonable cost.