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By the way, Binaural version 1 is coming up as 'This content doesn't seem to be working' in the embed above.

There's also a discrepancy between "1958 recording" and "Read the Order of Service for the 1955 recording". I do hope the correct link will be restored, it's a great material, thanks!

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

No.3 is preferable, nice, flat, and open, as is No.1, but No.3 just has the edge I think. Number 6 is extremely 'nasally' and hollow sounding. Interesting!!

It's a toss-up between 2 and 3 for me, some of the later options seem to have less width and go back into my head!

What does your seemingly computationally intensive binaural processing offer that a dummy head recording does not?

Is the 1958 recording supposed to be available above? The text suggests so but I can't find it...

At first 'glance' for me it's 1,3 or 5.
2,4 and 6 sound like they had covered the microphones with a pillow.

I had no difficulty accessing the 1958 recording around 10 pm. I've never heard 'Once in Royal' like it, and I enjoyed the rest.

1,2,3 seem to give better defined positional information than 4,5,6.

Sound Test position information: Subjectively I hear the left and right channels above my eye level whereas the surround left and right channels are behind and below me. The centre channel also sounds as if it is behind and level with my head. There is another channel announced that sounds very muffled but is too indistinct. Sub-woofer?

Certainly comfortable listening to out-of-head illusion compared to standard stereo.
Any personnel familiar with Zuccarrelli's 'Holophonics'?

(As heard on headphones)

The output seemed low from the media player/PC headphone jack so had to listen via a lead to the Quad 44 with potential losses....

Valuable work, I hope you do more. I've been enjoying the HD R3 Stream from time to time.

I think it's fantastic that you guys are bringing back binaural recordings in this way. It would be really interesting to compare your new "quadraphonic/binaural" version of this to a dummy head version (if one existed!). Even still, the sense of space the 4 speakers gives really brings this to life. Well done.

I really hope the CBC will start bringing back some binaural recordings as well, here in Canada!

I enjoyed the test, but everything went from the centre of my head backwards, i.e. it was like I was facing the wrong way. Otherwise it seemed very realistic. I remember hearing some binaural recorded stereo on Radio 3 many years ago and liked the realism of the sound then. I'd like there to be more binaural broadcasts.

I seem to get the same effect as Squegg with the front channels seeming high and just in front of my head, but the surround ones being low and to the rear. Oddly, the LFE channel seems to be over to the left. Transferring to speakers, the LFE channel seems central. The centre channel also seems slightly to the left on headphones, but central on speakers. To get the centre channel to be central on headphones, i need to reduce the left gain to about 85%. To get the LFE channel to seem central the left gain has to go down to 50%.

I'm not sure that I like some of the effects on the music. This may be because I'm using cheap USB headphones. I think the DAC is very poor and is introducing LF modulation noise. It is particularly troubling on the solo treble voice at the start. (There is no sign of this when playing through a decent DAC into the speakers.) However, this effect seems to vary with the choice of source version - but it is difficult to remember the effect from one session to the next.

Would it be possible to make the clips available in a way that would allow ABX tests (e.g. using foobar)? Maybe just the voice tests and 60 seconds or so of music as downloadable files.

Fascinating test and good initiative. Unfortunately it is very difficult to assess reliably without real time switching between synchronized audio clips. Also the capability to loop is very useful to focus listening on artifacts, for instance the background clatter around 1 min. If you could arrange a better player interface, or as Eric_T said provide some downloadable clips, you could expect more useful feedback results. Thanks.

As a Mac user I cannot participate in this experiment, but would really like to hear the 1958 recording in its original stereo form. Therefore, please could you make available a Mac compatible XHQ download of this.

Thanks.

One general piece of advice is that standard (i.e. built-in) PC or laptop soundcards are pretty average quality. To assess this initiative I'd recommend investing in a decent external (USB, generally) audio interface. These usually have headphone and powered-speaker/amplifier outputs and many allow microphone recording to PC also as a bonus. I can tell you from experience that a good DAC connected to a pair of nearfield monitors turns your PC into a listening station that puts any HiFi I've ever been able to afford into the shade.

Looking forward to hearing the Ö÷²¥´óÐã recordings - good stuff, the true spirit of public service broadcasting!

I'm a retired mobile Sound Recordist and I pioneered stereo filming in the 1970's on The World About Us. I still have good ears and now record wildlife in stereo. What I got from the binaural tests on headphones was an increasing out of phase content but not a rear sound image. We experimented on a stereo course at Wood Norton (Ö÷²¥´óÐã Engineering Training) with a dummy head and the best we got for a rear image was when we hung dummy hair (1/4 tape) on the back of the head.

Possibly my ears are still too "analytical" for a good binaural effect as my ears were trained to do mobile music mixing on headphones, but these examples didn't give me a surround sound effect, admittedly with an indifferent sound card and lightweight Sennheiser PX100 headphones. What I did notice was an increasing enharmonic distortion (cross-modulation) on the higher numbered versions with the congregation singing. I listened at low level and it was still there. I know from experience that is it difficult to avoid some cross-mod on choirs, but it seemed to be more prominent as the version numbers increased.

I am trying to replay the Quadraphonic files on the Fraunhofer player here in the USA. My main problem is that the levels are very low, about 20 dB less than the usual level from the radio player. Is this a USA only problem? However netstat shows a link to bbcd12 rather than akamai.

It would be great to have the possibility of quad from concerts etc. However my present PC sound system does not seem to have the possibility of exporting the 4 channel sound via S/PDIF that would be necessary to listen on my living room system.

Thanks for the opportunity to take part in the experiment.

I'm not a technophile, but I was really excited about hearing the 1958 service in a much better form than the original off-air recording I have. However, I have spent countless hours trying to listen to 1958 in 5:1 AND in Stereo with very little success. Each time I access the Radio Player I have to start at chapter 1 of 29, and so far, after countless attempts, have only been able to reach chapter 7, with long loading gaps, and even more complete freezes. Is there too much demand at present for the capacity of the experiment? My Windows XP has accessed many Ö÷²¥´óÐã podcasts in the past without any problems. Is there something intrinsically different about file size, or access to this experiment that makes it so difficult ? It would be wonderful if the chapters ran smoothly, one to another, or if there was a way to access each individual chapter without having to start at the beginning each attempt. Perhaps a full menu to click on ? I fear I will never get beyond chapter 7 ! I say this with a heavy heart as I was a senior choral scholar in this service, and it would mean a great deal to me to be able to hear it all after 53 years. Any suggestions ? Sorry I can't contribute to the technical aspects of the transmission, but what I have heard so far is a beautiful recording that sounds like a much more recent broadcast. Is there any other way, or will there be, to hear it all ? Thanks for the efforts to probe the past with your technical skills.

Thank you. This is fabulous. I have listed to the recitals from Kings most years for over 4 decades.

The 1958 recording is a jewel which I'm afraid outshines the later recording. David Willcocks arrangements of the carols are simply breathtaking.

Yes, the extraneous noise in the early recording is distracting in places but everything else is wonderful. There seems to be less delay between the choir and the congregation. There is considerably less sibilance, something which has disappointed me for several years now. The organ is more dominant in the early recording.

I'd be interested to know how much of this represents development in recording for broadcast?

ISO images for DVD-Audio of this material would be greatly appreciated. Yes, that format is probably not within the scope of this experiment, but I will ask anyway. Please note I said "Audio", not to be confused with the more common DVD-Video format.

Thank you for your efforts to bring a full sound stage to our longing ears.

Sorry, no feed back until I get my hands on a Windows system.

Hello ballakelly,

thanks for reporting and describing your problem. I'm very sorry about the freezes and the gaps. The player was designed to run smoothly if the download speed is fast enough, which even a slow dsl connection should be able to handle. Since you have no problems with other bbc streams your connection should be good enough.

If the download is to slow you'll experience repeated pauses in the playback when the player buffers - I think this is what you heard.The problem with the freezes, tells me of some very severe connection problems at the time you were listening. It would have been interesting if the other bbc streams played at that time on your PC?

I listened into the program several times over Christmas and never experienced the like. If there was some congestion going on when you were listening I'd suggest to give it another try maybe now under the week. I'm confident you'll get a smooth playback going.

If the playback again is stop and go you could use the pause button during the different chapters, to give the player some time to download the complete chapter. Unfortunately you'd need to do so for every chapter but at least you could then hear smooth audio chapterwise. Currently there's only this workaround if there are connection problems :-(


kind regards,
Michael Breitung
@ Fraunhofer IIS

The 1958 broadcast is indeed a gem; the technical aspects are mentioned in Pawley's book "Ö÷²¥´óÐã Engineering 1922 - 1972", as those stereo tapes saved the day when it came to the repeat - the lines from Cambridge had given trouble and the live broadcast had been disrupted; parts of the stereo recording were used to replace the missing bits of the R.O.T that had been made at LBH, but broadcast in mono of course!

But I'm intrigued by the unusual keys in which Willcocks appears to have performed some of the carols (O Come All Ye Faithful in A flat for example). And I'm not sure what happened when Once in Royal also starts in A flat and then slides very suddenly (and professionally!) back into G when the organ comes in.

I did wonder if this was due to the tape machines of the day having synchronous motors and the mains supply running slow during the recording (maybe a lot of turkeys being cooked early??!!). But I doubt it is that, maybe Willcocks just liked the exotic tone colours. And the organ pieces are at the right pitch.....

The controlled nature of the singing is breath-taking frankly. A choir that really had learnt how to sing quietly but effectively.

Utterly fascinating - modern criticism of the way choirs sang back then look pretty silly, at least as far as this evidence is concerned.

Thanks you for digging these tapes out.

Listening again it seems Once in Royal was meant to be in A flat, but that the treble solo (and particularly the second verse) drifted up almost to A and had to be brought back on pitch (very tactfully) by Mr Preston.

I experience the same imagery as Eric_T on a pair of Panasonic RP-HC200's, in both active and passive mode although I'm unable to test the relative levels required to re-centralise the centre and LFE channels.

Is this available in Ambisonic B-format? I'd be interested to see how it sounds on a speaker rig.

Amazing to hear the 1958 service--so clearly. More an historical than technical question--does anyone have orders of service for the King's service, pre-1977? I am trying to compile as many of these as possible.

Trying to listen to the 1958 service in stereo via speakers from my laptop but can only get sound coming from my left speaker. All connections are OK.

Am I missing something?

Now that I have set up a proper quadraphonic loudspeaker arangment, both recordings sound marvellous. I apologise for my previous comment about the level. Clearly the recordings reflect the true range of levels in the chapel and reach the proper level without clipping on the later portions of the service. Yes, please let us have some contempory broadcasts in surroud sound.

I'd really like to know the bit rate used for this experiment. My impression is that the quality is better than we get here in the US from the radio player (48 kbps AAC). My network monitoring seems to show that the bit rate is lower for this player but that may be because I am not seeing the main download that is being buffered.

An additional question. Where the microphones in the 58 recording crossed ribbons i.e. a Blumlein pair?

Thanks again for releasing this recording from the vault. A note on the linked/attached 1958 order of service: the arrangement of "Gabriel's Message" is credited to David Willcocks when, in fact, the choir sings Edgar Pettman's arrangement of this Basque carol.