RTE-All Ireland Talent Show Sound

booooonzo

Anyone actually watch this? ive caught bits and pieces and have to say the sound is absolutely terrible! I mean really bad, how can RTE get it so wrong, are there engineers that bad or wheres it breaking down?

DamagedTrax

in fairness even the sound on x-factor is dreadful!

ManFromAtlantis

agree. and also the camera work....zoom in.....zoom out......zoom in.....zoom out is rubbish. a young kid was dancing last week and was excellent but the camera kep changing very annoying. whay do they hace to copy other programmes . just leave th bloody camera on in one or two set ups and give us a chance to see wahts on.

dav nagle

I heard it is a mess alright! AH well no suprise in fairness.

Savman

Anybody working in broadcast able to shed light on this? It's not an area I'd be even remotely familiar with but I do know it's a million light years away from recording studio or even live stage vibe.

I'd imagine everything is compressed to bejaysis and it's challenging to get stuff sounding well with drum kits on plastic LED risers and whatnot.

booooonzo

yes true xfactor can be poor, i think one of the fun lovin criminals pointed out the difference when he was a guest, but not as poor as RTE's attempt.

Then you look at jools holland and even the irish one in that church (cant remember the name now) and they have good sound with full live bands.
maybe its because they are prerecorded? im not up on broadcast techniques either but would love if someone could shed some light.

I wouldnt of thought vox and a backing track would be that hard to get right!

PaulBrewer

It comes down to one main factor, budgets.

But there are other reasons -

Some TV/Radio staff I've come across just aren't any good and have no interest.

There's a whole generation of TV staffers who are effectively Civil Servants with microphones and no more. Clock in Clock out. However a lot are getting to retirement age now. I don't know what they're being replaced with.

TV3s sound appears to be mixed by deaf toddlers, have you ever listened to Vincent Browne's TV show?

I had an experience with with senior TV sound guy who could not, after repeated explanation, understand the difference between a TRS jack plug working as a Stereo Plug (as in Headphones) as a balanced plug (as in microphones) and as a Send and Return plug (as in Insert) ................ this after 25 years?

As embarrassing as it was disturbing.

artvandulet

Savman wrote: »

Anybody working in broadcast able to shed light on this? It's not an area I'd be even remotely familiar with but I do know it's a million light years away from recording studio or even live stage vibe.

I'd imagine everything is compressed to bejaysis and it's challenging to get stuff sounding well with drum kits on plastic LED risers and whatnot.

I heard from someone working on it that a DPA headset went down mid gig last week. A girl who was wearing one sat on her belt pack and snagged the cable. Whe she went to sing...nothing. Didn't see it myself.

ball ox

PaulBrewer wrote: »

It comes down to one main factor, budgets.

But there are other reasons -

Some TV/Radio staff I've come across just aren't any good and have no interest.

There's a whole generation of TV staffers who are effectively Civil Servants with microphones and no more. Clock in Clock out. However a lot are getting to retirement age now. I don't know what they're being replaced with.

TV3s sound appears to be mixed by deaf toddlers, have you ever listened to Vincent Browne's TV show?

I had an experience with with senior TV sound guy who could not, after repeated explanation, understand the difference between a TRS jack plug working as a Stereo Plug (as in Headphones) as a balanced plug (as in microphones) and as a Send and Return plug (as in Insert) ................ this after 25 years?

As embarrassing as it was disturbing.

There is also the opposite problem though. A lot of the kids going looking for work in RTE have degrees in media and little hands on experience. I know people in the lighting and sound department who have been there for 20 -30 that have being doing what they do since they were in their early teens and never went to college. Now a lot of the new recruits come in with a module in the relevant area and a few weeks work experience.

henessjon

conclude its the no talent show

BumbleB

well the Daniel O'donnell show was spot on .

jtsuited

I've got to be fairly quiet about this one (for obvious reasons), but to shed light on this
-
television sound is a completely different ball game than radio. And done by completely different people.

The structure in place for television sound is imo ridiculously over-complicated, archaic in nature and outdated (and remember I'm speaking from experience here) that even if you had the best engineers in the world working on it, the structure (largely dictated by management) would still run the risk of substandard work being produced.

i57dwun4yb1pt8

th bbc seem to get it right on jools holland , but RTE sound is muck

the pat kenny show is a fav of mine for sound sh1tness -

they seem to put the all mics facing the wrong direction for some reason ;-)

DamagedTrax

DaDumTish wrote: »

th bbc seem to get it right on jools holland , but RTE sound is muck

the pat kenny show is a fav of mine for sound sh1tness -

they seem to put the all mics facing the wrong direction for some reason ;-)

presumably so we dont have to hear as much of the fukin idiot robot cnut.

old gregg

agreed re BBC and Jools, however does anyone else think that they seem to nearly always get it wrong on the J Ross show?

henessjon

old gregg wrote: »

agreed re BBC and Jools, however does anyone else think that they seem to nearly always get it wrong on the J Ross show?

dont understand that as most of em are lip syncing anyways

old gregg

henessjon wrote: »

dont understand that as most of em are lip syncing anyways

indeed, but Milli Vanilli always sounded good though they were never on J Ross

ball ox

Well, Jools Holland is a show about music. J Ross is not. I think it's quite easy to figure out why the production quality is better on one than it is on the other.......

ogy

just watching this one, sounds awful, doesn't even look like the contestants even have monitor mixes. as usual sounds like it was recorded in the grand canyon theres so much reverb on the backing track

Survivin' Ivan

TV sound and Radio sound are two different ball games..Radio has a lot of good engineers gone in in the last few years with a lot of experience of the real world.

DamagedTrax

ball ox wrote: »

Well, Jools Holland is a show about music. J Ross is not. I think it's quite easy to figure out why the production quality is better on one than it is on the other.......

annie lennox had a decent enough sound on ross last night and was 100% live (still not a patch on the jools show but a step up from standard ross sound)

madtheory

It's because RTE don't respect their staff by paying them properly.

jtsuited

guys you do realise that most big acts on television will bring their own sound crew?

DamagedTrax

madtheory wrote: »

It's because RTE don't respect their staff by paying them properly.

very true (just had this conversation with an rte employee earlier) but then again pat does need a lot of hair cuts and make up.. and jerry cant be expected to go hungry! :pac:

PaulBrewer

old gregg wrote: »

agreed re BBC and Jools, however does anyone else think that they seem to nearly always get it wrong on the J Ross show?

Yes, always a mystery to me why.

My own experience with TV both as a performer and techie on music programs with Chan 4 and the BBC (admittedly in the 90s) was that the whole sound side was farmed out to PA company pros, they were PA people first.

Sound was mixed by the bands FOH engineer.

With regard to RTE TV I recall an incident where two Lexicon Reverbs were both being pummeled with signal so the red lights were on permanently whilst the deaf dumb and blind kid Soundman did not play a mean pin ball at all.

This guy was in his 26th year as a sound op and it was his first show in charge of sound.

He will never know how close he was to getting a chair smashed across his face.

All my and Nabakov's hates arrived simultaneously.

PaulBrewer

BumbleB wrote: »

well the Daniel O'donnell show was spot on .

Back in the mists of time I worked on 10 DOD Tv shows:o ....... I enjoyed it so little it made me desert the studio go on the road with Rock bands!

tweeky

DamagedTrax wrote: »

annie lennox had a decent enough sound on ross last night and was 100% live (still not a patch on the jools show but a step up from standard ross sound)

Ross is taped on a Wednesday and prob has two takes of the song which then are mixed and edited together if needed, so not "entirely live"

DamagedTrax

tweeky wrote: »

Ross is taped on a Wednesday and prob has two takes of the song which then are mixed and edited together if needed, so not "entirely live"

still a hell of a lot more live than miming!

madtheory

jtsuited wrote: »

guys you do realise that most big acts on television will bring their own sound crew?

Not for the broadcasted sound.

deecom

madtheory wrote: »

Not for the broadcasted sound.

But for jools they do!