BBC Radio One FM: On The Net

Martin Russ tunes into a very different BBC Radio One...

Television, magazines, and newspapers have been hyping the Internet for at least the past six months, and so when the BBC's Radio One schedule boldy claimed that they were going 'interactive' during the evening of Sunday, 26 March 1995, I was definitely intrigued. The combination of radio and computers is an interesting mix, which arguably makes the best use of both media. So what was this interactivity all about?

Stephen Bennett's 'Networking For Musicians' article in SOS November 1994 is useful background reading for anyone interested in the 'Information Super‑Highway' and 'surfing the Net'. Probably the most important thing for any musician to be aware of is that the Internet computer network is already used by vast numbers of people all over the world for entertainment, personal communications, information and advice — and recent advances in software make it relatively easy to use. The 'World Wide Web' (see sidebar panel) is the new, friendly face of global computer networks, replacing reams of text and laborious typing with on‑screen graphics and mouse clicks. The Web is best thought of as an anarchic global electronic magazine, which is capable of being accessed by an estimated audience of more than 30 million people. (Not a bad circulation...)

Radio One

The Radio One side of the event included simple verbal explanations of what the Internet is, advice on buying a computer, what you need to get connected, and so on. There was plenty of music too, from celebrity Net‑surfers like Belly and the Beastie Boys, whilst technological comment came from Internet gurus and musicians like Peter Gabriel and Future Sound Of London. To demonstrate that it really is possible for an ordinary person to use computers and the Internet, Radio One had persuaded Rob Newman to make the transition from a rather droll complete novice to a very droll surfer, albeit with a little help from an expert.

In between the DJ's chat and the music, there were several references to the other aspect of the evening: the interactive part. The measured and cultured voices of the BBC coped well with techno‑speak such as www.bbcnc.org.uk/ online/radiointeract/, although I suspect there may be complaints about all those slashes being read out on air! What all those dots and slashes referred to was the address of the computer‑based part. With the aid of some software, a computer, a modem and a connection to the Internet computer network, it was possible for listeners to call up a set of specially created interactive 'pages' on their computer screen (some of which are printed here).

Interaction

Unlike the 'sit there and let it wash over you' approach of TV, interactive computer programs do nothing particularly interesting unless you initiate it. The pages in the Radio One area were linked to additional sources, like the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA), and almost everything available from these links was of a musical nature — freeware samples and loops from well known names, for example, and lots of pages to explore on just about any musical topic you care to mention. It was like opening a very large encyclopedia, only to discover that it is full of only music‑related information.

The usual explanation of 'multimedia' is that it is a combination of audio and visual elements, which is often just an excuse for a bit of animation or an audio soundtrack. Of course, audio is where the medium of radio excels; there are no pictures to distract your imagination, and so 'the special effects are much better'. (Which is probably why the Hitchhiker's Guide... worked so much better as a radio series.) But where radio falls down is in permanence and repeatability; if you miss the part where they tell you about who supplied the music samples, then there is no easy way of going back and finding out. But this is where the interactive part comes in — computer screens are excellent at displaying text and images. So by making the background information and additional resources available on a screen, you get the best of both worlds: audio with extra information.

The result is unlike television and makes much better use of both types of media: audio and visual. If you like what is happening on the radio, then you keep listening, but if the radio is droning on too much, then you can follow up the bits that were interesting by exploring information pages on the computer. This hopping back and forth between the two media is very different from television or video, where your attention is held by the combination of sound and picture. In fact, it is arguably a better use of multimedia than the current fashion for putting moving video pictures onto computer screens.

Music On The Net

The concept behind the 'Interactive Music Night' seemed to be one of introducing ordinary Radio One listeners to the possibilities of using computers to access the Internet and thus extend their involvement with music culture. Using a word like 'culture' may seem strange in this context, but that's exactly what is happening on the Internet. The available information is loosely structured, constantly changing, and very diverse — rather like a fanzine or a club. But the potential membership is very large, and geographical separation does not matter — you can participate from the comfort of your own home.

The computer allows the listener to extend their experience and knowledge beyond merely appreciation of the music. If you like 'Band X', say, then you can probably use the Net to find out about their discography, their interests, influences, likes and dislikes, look at pictures of them, view their favourite pictures, and even send e‑mail messages to them asking about the next album... Unlike a fanzine or fan club, where the ratio between creators and readers is very large, the Internet provides the means for anyone to contribute. If this sounds more like talking to schoolmates who are in a band, rather than the more traditional 'buy records from famous but distant celebrities', then that is precisely one of the major advantages of Net music. It can bring the musician and the listener much closer together — buying music becomes a part of the interactivity, not all of it.

Netmare

The Radio One webzine / e‑zine / i‑zine (the names are still evolving) used for the Interactive Radio Night was produced by Netmare, a London‑based company who specialise in providing expertise on the Internet to a wide range of customers. The interactive magazine included an archive of low resolution (8‑bit) samples and loops which had been donated as freeware by people like Coldcut, Brian Eno, The Orb etc. Full pieces of example music were available on the Internet as downloadable MPEG‑encoded data files. Also accessible from the electronic magazine were the all‑important bits of freeware and shareware software (eg. MPEG players) which would enable users to replay these audio files on their own computer once they had downloaded them.

Netmare brings together four people with diverse interests:

• Dean Frederick — audio‑visual producer who used the Yamaha ProMix 01 digital mixer to help encode the audio samples and loops into MPEG format files.
• John Bains — a fanzine producer who virtually ran the Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) on the www.southern.com site for six months, and was instrumental in making it the 'Coolest UK Web Site', according to votes from the readers of Vox magazine.
• James Stevens — a QuickTime expert, who also showed me some novel applications of the latest version of Netscape, the WWW browser program — including some very clever background graphics.
• Kim Bull — who described herself as a 'content provider'.

Dean explained that Netmare were part of the fledgling 'Internet Providers' Association' (IPA), which aimed to provide a code of conduct for anyone producing material by self‑organising, informing and self‑regulating. Netmare started out providing consultancy and are now helping companies make the most of the Internet.

Always keen to learn about unusual applications of musical technology, I spoke to Netmare's audio specialist, Dean Frederick, about how the ProMix had been used in the preparation of samples for the Radio One interactive project. The goal had been to create a low resolution sample archive from which anyone could download sampled loops of music, and then play about with them using computer software to splice them together, re‑loop them, and so on. In addition, these samples act as 'adverts' for the full resolution CD quality music, and provide a good way of listening before buying.

The ProMix 01, it seems, proved very useful for optimising the audio samples into MPEG format. The combination of powerful onboard signal processing with storage and recall of mixes enabling rapid comparisons to be made between the original, unprocessed audio and the processed output signals.

SOS: You said that you were using the ProMix to do A/B comparisons — does this mean that you were switching between source (uncoded) and processed (MPEG encoded) signals using just a simple path change? Or was it just moving the faders?

Dean: The simple path change technique seemed the quickest, with some attention to constant volume levels, of course. I have since acquired Cubase for the Power Mac, so no doubt MIDI control will now take over and make everything much less time consuming.

SOS: Processing‑wise, how did you optimise the HF and LF boosting so that you didn't run into clipping/dynamic range problems? Did you use the ProMix to help here?

Dean: We used careful stereo compression to keep the distortion away without ruining the musical dynamics. The MPEG processing seemed to spuriously enhance certain mid‑frequencies, depending on the overall frequency content of the source. I have not yet tested MPEG with anything better than a Power Mac 7100, so this is possibly due to the limitations of the 7100 sound chip. The worst mistake I made was adding too much very. high frequency (16‑18kHz) boost — the results were appalling and were hastily binned!

SOS: One problem with A/B comparisons is that they are very sensitive to level differences. Presumably you used the ProMix to 'level' your two inputs (source and processed) — did you automate this at all?

Dean: Yes — it's very easy to do this accurately with this box of wonders [the ProMix 01].

SOS: Did you investigate hooking into the ProMix at a digital level?

Dean: The ProMix 01 has DAT‑digital (or CD) and ProMix digital interfaces, which makes it gloriously noise‑free. I used the digital output to go back to DAT, although very often the next stage was to the Power Mac 7100, which as yet has no digital audio input. Any changes to the sound were most perceptible (though still small) at this stage, revealing the limitations of the Apple sound chip!

SOS: Did you consider reverse‑engineering the MPEG coding? MPEG splits the input into frequency bands, codes those, spreads the quantisation noise away from the loudest band (noise‑shaping) and then adaptively looks at the difference between the current and previous samples. So splitting the source signal into several bands with wild EQ settings, tweaking those (a little compression here, some gating there, perhaps) and then recombining them might be interesting...

Dean: Yes, but time was limited. Now that the BBC rush has dwindled I shall definitely take a few days out and explore this. I knew the ProMix was ideal for noise‑shaping, and only wish I'd had a lot more time to really use it on the low resolution samples. Those gloriously ropey 8‑bit samples are so short that it occurs to me that it would be a good place to start, by doing the pre‑processing on the ProMix in 16‑bit stereo before reducing them down to 8‑bit mono.

The Future

For the musician, the Internet opens up all sorts of additional opportunities. With the end product no longer restricted to CDs, vinyl or cassettes, the wider aspects of an artist become available. It is very probable that the convergence of audio, video and computers will be accompanied by 'media artists' who combine the roles of musician, artist, video producer and computer programmer. The risk for anyone who does not get involved is that they will start to look rather one‑dimensional as their audience becomes hooked into multimedia. When even the BBC start to get involved in mixing computers and music, perhaps now is the time to explore what the Internet can do for your music.