[78-L] Speeds and Reissues No. 1

[Michael Biel]

David Sanderson wrote:
> David Lennick wrote:
>   
>> More than ten years ago, I was advised of the availability of a Marantz CD 
>> player with speed variation capability.. .1% adjustments, 12% in either 
>> direction. I wouldn't be without it.

At school I had a Techniques we bought in the 80s for $1200 which was a 
top-loader that had variable speed, and a jog-shuttle wheel with an 
option to hear the audio while in pause and being manipulated by that 
jog-shuttle wheel to enable cueing up.  It was a fully professional 
machine with XLR outputs and was built into a heavy base -- the machine 
weighed a TON.  I used it to demonstrate to classes that the CDs still 
spun in pause and that the rotational speed slowed down as you got 
further along towards the outer edge.  I also could demonstrate that I 
could cue up tighter with an analog disc or an open reel tape because 
the tightest you could cue up a CD was to one revolution which might 
cover two or three notes or syllables.  I can cue up to a syllable 
within a word with analog.  With computers and memory you can now cue 
digital up tighter, but back in the 80s and early 90s you couldn't.  
I've been meaning to check on the model number to see if I can find one 
of them cheap since it is such an early model with old fashioned top 
loading.   There's a window in the lid so you can also see the 
rotational speed.   Such an expensive machine and it was only used for 
these once a semester demonstrations -- it wasn't permanently in a 
studio -- but I also used it for some personal dubbing projects. 


>> Even speech can sound different with variations of as little as 2%.
>>
>> dl
>>     
>
>   

European television can be a real pain on the ears.  Since it is 25 
frames per second, most of the time they run 24 frame film at 25 
frames.  When I first went to Europe in 83 I expected that they would 
pitch correct the sound with an Eventide Harmonizer which had been on 
the market for a year or two by then.  But wherever I went I heard films 
with the audio 4% high.  I was in the master control room of Danish TV 
with George Brock-Nannestad at the moment they were airing a film at the 
higher speed and I asked an executive who was showing us around why they 
didn't pitch correct.  He said nobody notices and nobody cares, except 
for pre-war Danish classic films, and THOSE they pitch correct. 

In the mid-80s I was on a panel at ARSC about pitching records and 
everyone else was talking about music, about using the scores for 
finding the keys or using clues like open violin string sound, but I 
talked about speech.  Most everyone there admitted they were clueless in 
pitching spoken word, but that is far easier for me than instrumental 
music.  I either played or discussed a British documentary on the life 
of Richard Burton which had films, videotapes, and audio that was all 
over the place.  They intercut things that were 4% fast, 4% slow, and 
correctly pitched.  Burton switched from a tenor to a baritone and back 
again between sentences.  It varied depend on if the 24 frame film was 
transferred in the U.S. to video at 24 frames, if the 24 frame film was 
transferred from film to video in Europe at 25 frames, or if film 
especially shot in 25 frames for European TV was transferred at 24 
frames in the U.S.!!!!   (I remember the latter situation happening back 
in the 70s when NBC did a news special with Edwin Newman from Moscow, 
and the film was shot by a Soviet TV crew using their cameras shooting 
at 25 frames not realizing that American TV transfers its film at the 
correct 24 frame rate.) 

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com