[78-L] BACKGROUND ARTIFACTS

[Royal Pemberton]

Are the GA and WJS sides worse than Victor 20291, 'Hello Bluebird' b/w
'No wonder she's a blushing bride' by Jim Miller and Charlie Farrell?
Both sides were recorded 28 October 1926, and are really faint.  A V+
copy sounds like a hailstorm.

I've noticed quite a few of the earliest electricals seem to have been
recorded at lower levels, at what looks to me like what levels they
would have obtained recording the same material acoustically.  Almost
as if they recorded small groups as quiet as they'd be compared with a
large orchestra, in reality.  I've wondered if some of that was to
help them not seem so different to their technical predecessors too,
trying to keep the electrical cat well in the bag?  (But 20291 was a
scroll label issue from the get-go.)

On 4/18/09, Randy Skretvedt <forwardintothepast at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> One of the best examples is the Victor Gene Austin record of "Me Too," where
> a thunderstorm is raging outside the studio!
>
> By the way, why were so many Victor records by Gene Austin, Whispering Jack
> Smith and Helen Kane recorded at such low levels?  They all had quiet
> voices, you'd think the engineers would have increased the recording volume.
>  Does this have something to do with the characteristics of period
> phonographs?  For all three artists, one needs to find pristine copies if
> you're going to hear them at all, as the weak signals are easily obliterated
> by even moderate surface noise.
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