BBC Proms 2008
Doctor Who At The Proms
27th July 2008
Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

BBC Philharmonic
London Philharmonic Choir
Conductor - Ben Foster (Doctor Who Musical Score)
Conductor - Stephen Bell (Classical Pieces)

Featuring The Murray Gold Band, Melanie Pappenheim, Tim Phillips

Presented by Freema Agyeman, Catherine Tate, Noel Clarke, Camille Coduri

Featuring David Tennant

Encoding:
All tracks featuring music at LAME -V0 (VBR). Speech, announcements, applause tracks at LAME -V6 (VBR) to save storage space.

Source material was digitally captured from BBC Radio 3, MP2 stream at 192kbps.

148mb

Part 1: http://sharebee.com/dcdce9c2
Part 2: http://sharebee.com/4812fabf

Thanks a bundle for this, Danny. :)

Thhhhaaaankkkk yoooouu

Very, very nice work, my friend.=-O

Thanks! :)

It's a pleasure. This is as good as it will get until this concert is broadcast on TV. (It is planned - the BBC recorded it for future broadcast, although it isn't scheduled yet.)

When it is, however, I will be recording it and uploading it.

Just a note or two on this recording, for anybody who might question why certain things are the way they are:

a) BBC Radio 3 in the United Kingdom are pretty unique for not applying (mucg) dynamics compression to their broadcasts - none on digital transmissions. The loud bits are loud, and the quiet bits are *very* quiet. I thought long and hard about whether I should do some mastering, dynamics compression, etc, to even it out a bit, but decided against this in order to preserve the quality of the original recording. This means not every track is anywhere near peak levels. This is perfectly normal, folks! It's not due to incompetent encoding. All I have done is normalise - I have not messed with the dynamics one iota - simply normalised. Radio 3 transmissions traditionally leave a *lot* of headroom to avoid clipping, just in case something *very* noisy happens they didn't anticipate.

I know this isn't the best for some people - who might want to listen in a car or in a noisy environment - but it *is* the best way to preserve the dynamic range of this recording - and thus recreate that wonderful live atmosphere. It doesn't sound like a processed, mastered, compressed, overdubbed studio recording - it sounds like a big orchestra and a big chorus playing and singing together in a large concert hall, because that's what it is. To those of you more used to contemporary film score recordings, this kind of recording may sound a bit weird to you. Work with it, you'll get used to it. Go to a concert hall and find out what a real symphony orchestra actually sounds like.

b) This is a live digital capture of the MP2 stream, as made by the BBC from London's Crystal Palace transmitter. BBC Radio 3 broadcasts at a bitrate of 192kbps using MP2 encoding. This is not perfect, and there is absolutely *nothing* that can be done about it. In preparing this concert, I have taken a relatively low-bitrate source, and further re-encoded it - albeit as best as is possible. This MP3 encoding has preserved the quality of the original MP2. Any flaws, etc, are as a result of the BBC encoding and not of mine.

c) No, this isn't 320kbps. It doesn't need to be. The quality of the original source material doesn't justify it (192kbps MP2, lowpassed at 15.5khz as most radio broadcasts are,) and 320kbps is silly anyway. LAME -V0 "listens" to the music and gives more bitrate to the parts that are aurally more complex, and takes away bitrate from the parts that are simpler. The quality is constant - it isn't 320kbps across the board because LAME has decided that there is no quality tradeoff between those rates and 320kbps - except that the files are considerably smaller. If LAME decides that a particular section of music *is* sufficiently complex - it *will* encode that section at 320kbps. It only drops the bitrate if 320kbps is plainly *unnecessary*.

320kbps is a waste of space because it doesn't discriminate. Ridiculously complex sections are encoded at 320kbps - and so are simpler sections (solo piano, solo flute, etc) and so is rubbish like speech, silence, etc. If you are sufficiently bothered by that kind of thing to justify using 320kbps, double the bitrate again and use lossless. 320kbps MP3 is still lossy - there is still quality loss and there are still artifacts. If you're that obsessed, use a lossless codec.

Thank you gentlemen :)

All you achieve with 320kbps is longer upload / download times, and more storage requirement.

All you achieve with 320kbps is longer upload / download times, and more storage requirement.

Although your explanation is technically right (and admirably written), I can't agree with you on this point.

I have MUCH experimented with lame, making dozens of samples from various types of music in order to compare the sound between extreme and insane, and if it sound almost the same, there ARE differences that a trained hear can... hear.

One common difference I found rather frequently is when a cue plays many instruments at the same time, including a hi-strings ostinato in the background. Extreme has a tendancy to simply cut half of the ostinato, with insane you can clearly hear all of it. More generally extreme sounds sometimes very slightly farther, less clear, precise and palpable than insane.

But in fact in less complex cues, the difference is inexistent, or at least unhearable.

After all lame and other mp3 codecs are still experimental, they do their best using psychoacoustic models, but sometimes they're simply wrong, cutting frequencies or sounds where they shouldn't.

That's why I encode the non-orchestral or less important stuff with standard or extreme, and the orchestral or important stuff with insane.

Of course I could use a lossless codec, but
1) the difference between insane and lossless is almost unhearable, but the size is significantly more important
2)the lossless codecs are less convenient (can't be used in portable devices, harder to edit...)

This was a beautiful performance. I really wish the BBC would get round to releasing a live CD of Murray's work. There's enough of it now between the Children in Need concert and this concert to do a double disc set.

I seriously can't wait for the Series 4 soundtrack CD.

Thanks again, danny. :)

No idea what's going on here but it says Doctor Who so imma go ahead and download it.


Audio quality is really confusing to me. Personally I can hear the different between 128/192/320 and to a degree 320/lossless, but I usually just go with 320 because, as someone else mentioned, lossless is still not supported by most portable media players, etc. etc. and a majority of people still arent even aware of a different in usual bitrates.

It's nice on this forum because there are a few people who do rips and actually give a damn about decent good quality rips, but at the same time there's always a bit of conflict about what the best way of doing these things are.

Thank you for your comments! :)

The reason I bought this up is because I had a snotty PM from somebody who complained that it wasn't 320kbps - so I wrote this as something of a rant explaining why it was completely unnecessary.


I have MUCH experimented with lame, making dozens of samples from various types of music in order to compare the sound between extreme and insane, and if it sound almost the same, there ARE differences that a trained hear can... hear.

Absolutely.


Of course I could use a lossless codec, but
1) the difference between insane and lossless is almost unhearable, but the size is significantly more important
2)the lossless codecs are less convenient (can't be used in portable devices, harder to edit...)

I disagree strongly with 1).

The difference between insane and lossless is the difference between night and day. Insane is still throwing away more than 75% of the original sound data.

To my ears, a lossless encoding is flawless, and an MP3 encoding is flawed. The difference between a flawed MP3 (given that all lossy audio compression IS flawed) at 320kbps and one at -V0 is borderline indistinguishable, but the difference between ANY lossy audio codec and lossless is very distinguishable indeed.

If your needs are sufficiently high that -V0 isn't good enough for you, strictly speaking, you shouldn't be happy with 320kbps either. Lossless is your only option.

I also disagree slightly on 2, though I take your point. Lossless AAC is playable on all Apple devices (let's face it - 95% of digital music players) and most of the other ones can now handle FLAC or APE. Most audio editing software includes the ability to edit FLAC, APE, etc, also...


One common difference I found rather frequently is when a cue plays many instruments at the same time, including a hi-strings ostinato in the background. Extreme has a tendancy to simply cut half of the ostinato, with insane you can clearly hear all of it. More generally extreme sounds sometimes very slightly farther, less clear, precise and palpable than insane.

What you're describing is a really massive difference - I'm not disputing what you say you hear, but that shouldn't be happening - are you sure you're encoding is working? I see you're using Lame 3.98 - have you experimented with the final release, or with the dodgy betas?

Most ABX tests can't distinguish between -V0 and insane - and these are conducted in controlled lab tests with hundreds of thousands of pounds of equipment with multiple persons from different audio backgrounds.

If you CAN tell the difference - and I'm guessing you don't have �100,000 worth of audio equipment hooked up to your computer...

a) You have the most AMAZING hearing of any human on the planet.

b) You are thinking you can hear deficiencies in the encoding whereas you are actually making a biased judgement because you KNOW which sample is which. Do it blind and see if you have the same response.

c) Something is going wrong with your encoder...

I'm leaning towards B and C.

I would really REALLY like to hear this for myself...


This was a beautiful performance. I really wish the BBC would get round to releasing a live CD of Murray's work. There's enough of it now between the Children in Need concert and this concert to do a double disc set.

I seriously can't wait for the Series 4 soundtrack CD.

Damn right... I'd give my back teeth for a 2-CD set of that Children In Need Concert.

Incidentally - the recording of that concert - made from BBCi's Freeview service, has exceptionally good quality sound. That channel usually broadcast audio at only 128kbps. Want to know what happened? When I heard what channel was being used, I wrote to the Engineers' Dept at BBC Wales - a few weeks later the head wrote back to me and said that after some exhaustive testing, they would increase the bitrate and agreed that 128kbps would be insufficient for an orchestral performance. Sure enough, on Christmas Day, there it was at 192kbps.

The world can thank ME for the good quality CIN concert floating around. ;)

No idea what's going on here but it says Doctor Who so imma go ahead and download it.


Audio quality is really confusing to me. Personally I can hear the different between 128/192/320 and to a degree 320/lossless, but I usually just go with 320 because, as someone else mentioned, lossless is still not supported by most portable media players, etc. etc. and a majority of people still arent even aware of a different in usual bitrates.

It's nice on this forum because there are a few people who do rips and actually give a damn about decent good quality rips, but at the same time there's always a bit of conflict about what the best way of doing these things are.

I can tell the difference - quite easily - between 128, 192, and 320. I can easily tell the difference between 320 and lossless. What I can't tell the difference between AT ALL is -V0 and 320.

Quality matters to me. I see so much shit out there, really, and I just want to beat up the idiots who make it. I'm an audio engineer and I want it to be known that the decisions I have taken in making my rips, have been done so deliberately and for good reasons. I'm not just some moron who rips a CD and says "Yeah, 128kbps, CD quality, sounds great to me dude!" and leaves it there.

THANK YOU for appreciating that extra bit of effort. :)

Thanks for uploading this. As for the quality debate, I like higher bitrates, or lossless, but if it's not available, i'm not usually that bothered. So I guess it isn't hugely important to me, but I will go for the best available rips.

I can easily tell the difference between 320 and lossless.

I rip all of my soundtracks to my PC, and generally I rip them as 320kbps MP3s using the Lame codec.

But after reading all this, I'm thinking about re-ripping Doctor Who: Original Television Soundtrack - Series 3 with a lossless codec. I've never tried ripping anything lossless before. FLAC is lossless, right? I can use dBpowerAMP to rip the CD with FLAC, I think.

I'm eager to see if I can hear a difference.

AHAHAHA! I was eager to read your reply! I knew it would be lengthy, detailed and elaborate, including probably a slight touch of irony or sarcasm. I was right! ;) That's the dannyfrench I know and love!

I made these tests 1 or 2 years ago (you noticed I still use the old appelations : extreme, insane...), so I agree that things MIGHT have change, but just in case, not to take any risk, I prefer to encode with insane.

Just wanted to say thank you a second time, this is really awesome, and the quality is wonderful.

Oooh this is awesome! Thanks for sharing it :D

sounds intresting... Thanks!

Une pure merveille ! And the sound's stellar.

Quality Numberre....

Am gonna be gettin many hours of enjoyment out of this.....

thank you so fuckin much....

the links are dead. can you reupload please