If anyone thinks mixing broadcast sound for an event of the scale of Glastonbury is easy, then we can only imagine they think putting a man on the moon was easy too. Well perhaps we are overstating the complexity with that comparison, but the task of mixing live music for TV isn’t for the fainthearted.
However, that doesn’t mean the BBC is beyond criticism when things aren’t as they should be.
Tune in to any of the acts on the main Pyramid stage and the quality of the mix was impressive. The drums nice and punchy, bass guitar the same. The guitars were sitting nice in the mix too without any scratchiness and the synths and pianos present and full. It was the same for all the other instruments used by various acts, this included percussion, strings, brass and a multitude of others. It was a great mix in any case, for live it was brilliant.
But, and it’s a big but, when it comes to sung music there’s one star of the show, the vocals. However, for some reason despite all the great work done on the music, the vocals lacked clarity and many of those watching the feeds in glorious HD, or even better, UHD, found themselves straining to hear the vocals.
If this had been for one act, it would be easy to put it down to teething issues, or an engineer who decided the vocals were just perfect. However, over the weekend it was the same for Crowded House, Sam Fender, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Blossoms, and even for His Majesty Sir Paul McCartney.
Grammy Nominated producer David Wrench Tweeted.
“Trying to watch McCartney live but would be nice if someone just gave the vocal fader a nudge up …. Like 6dB minimum!”
Trying to watch McCartney live but would be nice if someone just gave the vocal fader a nudge up …. Like 6dB minimum!
— david wrench (@davidwrench) June 25, 2022
Many agreed with him, he was confirming something that many of us had already thought.
One sound engineer thought humour was a way to explain the problem.
I once had a sound tech noisily eat a bag of crisps at the mixing desk during a CEO's talk in a very quiet room. That was bad. But fucking up Paul McCartney's mic levels while he's headlining Glastonbury on his 80th birthday with Dave Grohl kind of puts things into perspective.
— TC Cornesto (@TC_Cornesto) June 25, 2022
We spoke to some sound engineers who had decades of experience in OB sound, some of it for the BBC, to ask them what they thought the issue was. We discussed several possible reasons.
Some of those complaining have suggested the BBC was simply putting out the sound from the FOH mix. Our experts think this is highly unlikely as they’ve been getting separate feeds, often from the monitor desk, for years. In modern times that is even easier using audio over IP solutions. Our experts also thought that had it been a FOH mix being broadcast that would have sounded woeful, as live sound mixes do not translate well when listened to in any other context.
Another possible cause the experts raised was the fact that some artists have contractual conditions to have their own team mix the broadcast sound. As the vocal level has been consistently down on virtually every act playing the Pyramid stage, they felt this unlikely too.
For our experts the most probable reason for the vocal volume being quieter than it should have been is a production decision made by the BBC. Our Experts didn’t feel it likely that with such a consistently poor vocal mix that this was down to one engineer, especially given the fact that the instrument mixes were so good.
Whatever the reason, when you have the resources and the talent of the BBC, there really is no excuse for poor sound. As one expert said to us, “this isn’t anything that needs a tech solution, it just needs someone to push up the vocals in the mix.”
Discuss.
Photo by James Genchi on Unsplash