Radio and television studio testing

It is reasonable to assume that everybody who listens to the radio or watches the television does so subjectively; it would be delightful if all assessments of the performances of broadcasting equipment could be made entirely in that way. Regrettably, this is not possible owing to human inconsistencies, and so the broadcasting engineer resorts to objective testing. The paper covers some details of such testing. A study of broadcasters´ practices in this matter reveals that the test methods are a mixture of internationally agreed techniques on the one hand and individual (sometimes to each broadcasting station) philosophies on the other. Because of this, the paper inevitably reflects some aspects of testing which are peculiar to Independent Broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In addition, since the internationally agreed techniques are well documented in CCIR etc. papers, particular attention is paid to the less well known concepts.