I think Jamaica Inn was different, it was the actual sound mix that was low whereas Strictly is perfectly OK on some listening setups so it is a technical problem.

It has happened on STV and Channel 4 (watch Channel 5 even less than those channels).

Is it me / Have I missed something or are the BBC no longer broadcasting in Dolby Digital 5.1?

I'd swear it was on Friday but not yesterday.

Can anyone enlighten me please?

Thanks

I watch it in HD on Freeview using a sound bar for the audio. The music I though had excellent sound qualities, that's all that matters to me.

On Friday night the voice-over from Alan whatisname sounded as if he was in a tin box. Basically, awful. Later in the show it improved in quality and on Saturday night it was perfectly fine. It seems to happen every year on SCD. Sound balance is inevitably poor, for example, when they go to Blackpool, for and they correct it on the fly through the show. Surely those issues should be sorted on the run through before transmission.

However, on a more positive note, the earlier poor sound quality on Friday did tone down the incessant, unnecessary and distracting clapping. If the dancers are dancing to the music, I would have thought that would be their preference rather than listening to an often slightly off the beat hand-capping. (Otherwise, cut the orchestra and let the audience do all the work - for free.) The one good thing of course, is that during the course of the show they all get tired and towards the end the clapping is almost, almost but not quite, bearable.

In our humble abode we tune to watch and enjoy the dancing, hear the music and the Judges. We do not tune to watch frenetic and pointless hand clapping that overpowers everything else.

Quite surprised reading this. I had absolutely no sound issues on Friday or Saturday night. The broadcast sound I received was perfect.

It was 5.1 on both days on Freeview HD

I watched it on Sky BBC One HD, and didn't notice any issues.

As did I, and, as I posted originally, the initial quality was awful on Sky + HD

this thread is not as enlightening as it could be, is it?
To provide a proper insight, we need to know things like
- what channel
- what resolution or bitrate it was
- what audio setup was used. E.g. Dolby 2.0, Dolby 5.1, unspecified stereo, etc.
- what provider or carrier it came through- sky dish, cable, satellite free to air, DVB aerial, iplayer?

still sounds to me like it might be a downmixing problem from a HD source to lesser audio setups contributing to veiling spoken parts which were easier to pick out on a system with a separate centre speaker. But I wouldn't know because I only get it in stereo.