timbo wrote:I feel that FOM does something wrong to the sound on broadcast. When all those vids from tests appeared I thought the sound was not that bad, but on official broadcast it is horrible. Especially on onboards.
I wonder if FOM applies some filtering for whatever reason, and filter settings were not adjusted for V6s.
I'm not sure which test sounds you're referring to whether it's the Sky coverage or fan footage but there's lots of reasons for the difference in sound.
A lot of the fan footage sounded much rawer which is highly likely due to clipping on relatively cheap audio preamps in consumer phones and cameras that can't deal with the dynamic range or volume of an F1 engine. Even the Sky test coverage will have been done in a fairly unsophisticated way with a sound man/mixer recording straight onto the camera which will be no match for an FOM race weekend production.
In a broadcast environment you aren't so much concerned with recreating reality, you can't because your available bandwidth is so much more restricted, you have to focus on getting across a "flavour" of the sound. I suspect the sound of the inboards will have been given a great deal of thought about what the viewer would want to hear. We've gone from a harmonically rich power cord last year to a discordant symphony this year with lot more sounds that have to be balanced for the audience.
You've also got to take into consideration the broadcast specification for sound is quite strict and always like trying to squeeze a quart into a pint pot.