Toby Hilder's pic of the cubicle at BBC Essex makes the Mark 3 desk look tiny with all of those monitors nestled around it.
When the BBC moved away from rotary faders to linear ones they designed them to open towards the operator, whereas the rest of the world opened faders away from you. I used to dogmatically believe the BBC way was right and proper and that everyone else had got it wrong. Now it really doesn't bother me which way a fader opens (although secretly I do still know that one is wrong).
In his description to the photo Toby suggests that the BBC designed faders this way so that Studio Managers wouldn't get their ties caught in them, which is by far the most beautiful idea for this that I've heard. Elsewhere I've heard it was to make it harder to accidentally fire off remote started equipment by nudging a fader off it's stop. This is another good idea, but when you remember that most desks at the time were built with two person operation in mind (one SM to do the mix at the panel and another to play the tapes and discs) this seems less likely. I've also heard people suggest that if you want something you pull it towards you, so if I want my mic on I'll instinctively want to pull the fader open.
I don't believe any of these stories. I think the BBC built desks this way because at the network centres the faders aren't opened all the way. The Normal Stop, where pre-fade level matches what you get out of the opened fader, isn't at 30 on the escutcheon plate, but at 23. To accurately open a fader to a setting like this is much harder when you're pushing away, but pulling the fader open needs just a quick glance down to get you there every time.
If you think I'm wrong, or you've another idea for why the BBC built it's desks "upside-down" then let off your steam in the comments.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I've heard two stories about this:
ReplyDeleteThe first is, as you mention, to minimise the risk of remotely-firing something when you reach up for one of the pots on the channel strip.
The second is that it's much more comfortable to balance volume ("fader-w**king") with your hands at the bottom of the desk, nearer your person, than it is at the top of the fader strip. You can rest your palm on the desk and still operate the fader to adjust the volume, whereas you can't do this when it opens away from you.
A lot of these things are benefits of an inherently better design, but I still think it's easier to open the fader to an exact setting when you open it towards you. I've never seen anything in print to prove this, it's just my pet theory, but I think it's the best one. When you look at early desks like these there are no fader starts so that argument is redundant. I think the quadrant faders actually reinforce the point about seeing where you've opened the pot to, as you'd also have to peer over the curve of the fader track.
ReplyDeleteJohnny Longden wrote this in the wonderful Roger Beckwith site - he seems to have been the first BBC engineer to build a desk with linear (actually quadrant but anyway not rotary) faders. He says this:
ReplyDelete"I believe my special projects one-off desks in the 1960s were among the first to use slider rather than rotary faders, and I had to decide which way they should travel to fade up or down. The commercial desks of the day tended to favour UP - away from the operator, and DOWN, toward the operator, as they did in the USA. I adopted UP for OFF and DOWN for ON, simply because our domestic switches do this, the opposite being the case in America.
I was very amused to read all sorts of comments in technical magazines, discussing the difference between BBC and commercial practice for sound faders years later, where various theories put it down to "not knocking the script pages as one fades out…", etc. Why I didn't join in the correspondence I can't remember - but you've read it first here. Johnny Longden."
(see http://www.btinternet.com/~roger.beckwith/bh/cons/consmem.htm for the whole story).
So basically the faders in the Beeb went 'down' because so do our light switches.
Brilliant anon - that's nailed it as far as I'm concerned!
ReplyDeleteThat photo of BBC Essex is wonderful, because the desk still has all its original panels in place. OK, it was taken in 2007, but it still gives me a warm feeling, because I cut my teeth on that exact desk when I was 16 years old and helping out Tim "Timbo" Lloyd on Saturday mornings ;) Sadly, the only button I never got to press was the DESK one for taking control... to this day I've never taken control on a Mark III. I still hope that one day I'll happen upon a Mark III somewhere and finally be able to press that forbidden button underneath the Plastic Flap of Doom ;)
ReplyDelete