pre-war 78rpm archive to r2r

[Tim Gillett]

Tim,

Music reproduction's not about frequency range for me but frequency quality. Almost all my 78s are a capella with only a few having one instrument accompaniment. People's singing voices, including the extremes of basso and soprano, don't need 20hz-20Khz. In fact I find almost every post-war recording too bright. All the new technology allowed voices to be recorded and mixed too upfront in the disc, hence too upfront from the speaker, I don't want the singer standing where the speaker is if you get my drift. In pre-war discs I can hear space, environment, and air in front of the singer, a point I can't stress enough, with multiple singers usually no additional mics the sound was coherent, again the holism, both sonically and musically. Music was subtle and infinitely more profound in my opinion. I too used to scoff at 78s as lo-fi and antiquated music, I wasn't ready for it then. I have thousands of extremely rare un-reissued vinyl LPs, with the clean 'sanitized' sound I used to enjoy. Stereo sounds wrong to me, I don't even like two-speaker mono. One speaker mono is the ultimate in coherence and I can never go back. When I pick up an LP now it feels as light as a CD. There's a reason institutions consider 78s the best archival format ever invented, it really was and is.

Yes, vocals from basso to soprano dont require 20-20khz.

Do the post war recordings sound too bright compared to the pre war recordings or to actual live performance?

If you make a recording only capable of 10khz max and you are recording a vocalist who doesnt produce anything above 10khz, you have captured all the needed frequencies. If you now record the same performance with equipment capable of 20khz it will sound exactly the same. It will not sound brighter.

As to where to place mics in a recording session this is a whole area of discussion in itself. Many swear by the close mic technique and add artificial reverberation later. Others dont add any reverberation. Some capture room ambience at the time, placing the mic further from the vocalist. It's hard to be absolute about these things. If you prefer a distant miced recording, more power to you. Just remember that as microphone technology progressed, the more distant mic technique became possible because the mics became more sensitive. In the early days they had to stand right on top of the mic.

"Lo fi and antiquated music" are two very different things with nothing obviously in common. I listen to music some would regard as antiquated. Some of it was recorded 80 years ago and some very recently. It can be exactly the same song or piece of music.

"Stereo sounds wrong to me". How many ears do you have?

Cheers Tim

 

[Lt. Bob]

Tim,

Music reproduction's not about frequency range for me but frequency quality. Almost all my 78s are a capella with only a few having one instrument accompaniment. People's singing voices, including the extremes of basso and soprano, don't need 20hz-20Khz. In fact I find almost every post-war recording too bright. All the new technology allowed voices to be recorded and mixed too upfront in the disc, hence too upfront from the speaker, I don't want the singer standing where the speaker is if you get my drift. In pre-war discs I can hear space, environment, and air in front of the singer, a point I can't stress enough, with multiple singers usually no additional mics the sound was coherent, again the holism, both sonically and musically. Music was subtle and infinitely more profound in my opinion. I too used to scoff at 78s as lo-fi and antiquated music, I wasn't ready for it then. I have thousands of extremely rare un-reissued vinyl LPs, with the clean 'sanitized' sound I used to enjoy. Stereo sounds wrong to me, I don't even like two-speaker mono. One speaker mono is the ultimate in coherence and I can never go back. When I pick up an LP now it feels as light as a CD. There's a reason institutions consider 78s the best archival format ever invented, it really was and is.

don't bother tanoka ..... Tim's always right and no one else's viewpoints are ever right ...... only his.
Plus it's not ok with him if you have your own preferences .....
Put him on ignore so you only see his posts when someone quotes him.

 

[jpmorris]

This might be of interest to you, it explains the EQ curves:
Tape Recording Equalization

And the actual curves are graphed near the end of this one:
SOUNDFAN - Registratori a bobine e nastri magnetici - Registratori

 

[tanoka]

Yes, vocals from basso to soprano dont require 20-20khz.

Do the post war recordings sound too bright compared to the pre war recordings or to actual live performance?

If you make a recording only capable of 10khz max and you are recording a vocalist who doesnt produce anything above 10khz, you have captured all the needed frequencies. If you now record the same performance with equipment capable of 20khz it will sound exactly the same. It will not sound brighter.

As to where to place mics in a recording session this is a whole area of discussion in itself. Many swear by the close mic technique and add artificial reverberation later. Others dont add any reverberation. Some capture room ambience at the time, placing the mic further from the vocalist. It's hard to be absolute about these things. If you prefer a distant miced recording, more power to you. Just remember that as microphone technology progressed, the more distant mic technique became possible because the mics became more sensitive. In the early days they had to stand right on top of the mic.

"Lo fi and antiquated music" are two very different things with nothing obviously in common. I listen to music some would regard as antiquated. Some of it was recorded 80 years ago and some very recently. It can be exactly the same song or piece of music.

"Stereo sounds wrong to me". How many ears do you have?

Cheers Tim

Tim,

A huge portion of shellac's magic is the direct to disc process. It provides immediacy not available with tape mastering. The early days where singers stood close to the mic was primarily acoustic period. Most my collection's electric late 20's, 30's, early 40's. In post war period with technology, people began adding electric guitars, individual mics, mixing, artificial effects, so on creating a big heaping mess of never-ending signal processing. I'm speaking of music in general not just one genre. More isn't better. My biggest indictment, shared by many other top collectors around the world, is people today simply can't sing the same way. Of course nothing ever stays the same, but if people could sing of equal quality then we wouldn't have to arduously preserve the past to this extent. Since you're not familiar with Joe Bussard then you probably have very little interest in vernacular music, I'm guessing you're mostly a classical guy. Nothing wrong with that, my expertise is in negro spirituals, and some of the best, actually my favorite of this genre were artists raised in the vernacular and trained in the classical. I dare claim it a pinnacle of American and Western history. The genre's been neglected because most white people are only comfortable with blues, and such depth shows illness of modern society. The world's in serious crisis of consciousness, music reveals this. I'm not here to preach, but you've come to this thread with apparent little interest in understanding my purpose or experience. Do you enjoy creating conflict? Water under bridge here for me, I've seen much worse online, but others complain about your attitude. Perhaps you don't see a problem.

 

[tanoka]

don't bother tanoka ..... Tim's always right and no one else's viewpoints are ever right ...... only his.
Plus it's not ok with him if you have your own preferences .....
Put him on ignore so you only see his posts when someone quotes him.

Despite his 'battle' online demeanor, some of his questions did make me think more about the issues.