[78-L] (no subject)

[Chris Zwarg]

At 22:16 14.10.2008, you wrote:
>I'm seeing a lot of queries about the playing speed of 78s. It's  
>really only in the US that 78 is an at all standard speed. Many  
>European electric records are 80 or some other speed. It's my  
>understanding that 80 relates to gearing and 50 as opposed to 60  
>cycle.

PLEASE don't repeat this stupid nonsense again (or Mike Biel will suffer a stroke or two...)!!! NO SYNCHRONOUS MOTORS WERE USED IN RECORDING OR PLAYBACK APPARATUS BEFORE THE LATE 1920's (and only rarely later). As I wrote today in an earlier message, both recording and playback motors were freely adjustable at the discretion of the operator.

"78" was not even a *nominal* standard speed for most US records before 1930 or so - Victor was *nominally* 76, Columbia and Pathé/Actuelle were *nominally* 80. Not that this tells us much except as a starting point for accurate adjustment.

> Early records are all over the map and to compound the problem  
>are not necessarily based on tuning to 440. 

Why should they? A=440Hz tuning was invented in 1938 - in acoustic days, the US and Great Britain had 439, Continental Europe was at 435 excepting the Austro-Hungarian Empire were A=446 was often preferred. Military bands everywhere except in France were at A=451Hz; France used "philharmonic" 435 pitch for bands as well as other ensembles.

>Another problem is pitch changing during the playing of early  
>records. Not uncommon. One Russian record I have of a tenor is about  
>80 on one side and and the low seventies on the other. It sounds like  
>two singers if the speed isn't changed. 

This is not a matter of "changing speed" in the sense we were talking about it, but rather a matter of both sides being recorded on different occasions, by engineers who obviously had different ideas which speed should be used for best results in cutting a record. Very often an overlong song or aria was a reason to slow down the machine exceptionally if the musicians weren't willing or able to speed their performance up. Sometimes the change was forgotten about, and all sessions cut in the same studio for several weeks might then run slow. To pitch anything accurately, it is always helpful to have adjacent matrices at hand, especially if these are of *different* performers and musical genres - if a common speed can be found at which a whole series sounds OK, you can be pretty sure about its being correct.

>There are two electric  
>records At Yale made in Russia and if I recall correctly, one is  
>recorded at 110 and the other at 120! It's also been my experience  
>that some lps are at 33 and some at 33 1/3. I have encountered a few  
>that are higher or low than these speeds.

The German Industrial Standard for high fidelity equipment (DIN 45500) allows a maximum of +/- 1.5% deviation from playback speed, so in the worst possible circumstances you may encounter records playing 3% (that's a quarter-tone!) sharp or flat on your equipment. Specs for 78rpm equipment, if any, probably allowed even more leeway. A pitch-pipe or (better) a stable digital tone generator is indespensable when attempting to play or transfer any analogue discs (or tapes) to most natural musical effect.

>There's no easy answer to this. What is a shame is when a CD is  
>issued with no effort to copy old records at the right speed. There  
>are examples of this.

I second this last comment wholeheartedly. One reason for this is having people believe in things like "standard speed" - too many engineers (let alone amateurs) transfer to CD at quartz-controlled 78 rpm *because that's what is printed on the label* and seriously think that way everything must sound exactly like it was recorded. I had more than one indignant letter from customers of my carefully pitched CD transfers (in which I always try my best to take all variables into account to arrive at a plausible pitch) because they sound (sometimes very) different from the original discs as played at 78 through a modern RIAA-equalized turntable, and therefore are "not authentic" and "don't sound like the voice I am familiar with" (they shouldn't, when the correspondent is talking about 1902 De Lucia G&Ts that he usually plays at 78!)....

Chris Zwarg