[78-L] Pitch shifting

[David Lennick]

A few points to answer. There will be one rant, and I'll keep it brief.

Michael Biel wrote re "equalizing":
> 
> Actually the term was first used in the motion picture industry for
> devices which adjusted the sound quality of one sound pickup with
> another so that the voices sounded "equal" throughout the film.
> Parametric equalizers were used, and the Lang-Pultec was one of the
> later types in the post-war years.  Your definition of using the word
> for pre-emphasis and de-emphasis recording curves is a later one.  I
> don't have the original documents in front of me right now, but I think
> the paperwork that were published in the late 30s by the NAB and RCA for
> their transcription recording and reproducing curves refer to them as
> "compensation" not "equalization".  "Compensator" is the term RCA used
> for its six-position frequency curve modifier in its series 70
> professional broadcast turntables.  They also called it a "filter". 

FILTER settings were noted on the Western Electric test recordings made in 
1923-24 which Mike has seen (and which I handled and transferred when Jim 
Hadfield turned them up in 1992).

> The Columbia-Princeton Synthesizer in
> the 50s did not sound like a real instrument. Listen to the recordings.

The guy narrating on that RCA LP didn't sound real either, but that was his 
problem.

> The sounds of first truly real sounding electric
> piano, the 1983 Kurzweil, were developed from analyzing samples of real
> sounds and building these algorithms into the device rather than
> requiring the user to create the algorithms.     

A fellow named Giorgio Longdo, who had a strange following as a singing waiter 
in Kingston Ontario, turned out a couple of vanity pressings of his 
excruciating tenor voice, giving credit to a Kurzweil on the LP. Kurzweil 
should have sued..apart from the guy's singing, whoever operated it made it 
sound like a calliope.

Re constant velocity records:

> 
> This is the real conundrum -- does the recording need to be speeded up
> or slowed down!  It depends on what speed you played it at as well as
> whether it is a center or rim start.  

I have a World Disc here and it's outside start. ALSO, it says "Speed D fast" 
on the label, so evidently there were different speeds used. The Fred Duprez 
monologue Norman Field has transferred runs about 15 minutes. This disc is the 
Mikado Overture and Der Rosenkavalier Waltz and whoever last sold the disc has 
marked "33-50RPM" on the sleeve. The Mikado side takes up the whole disc 
surface. 33rpm is a bit sharp..taking it down 2.8% brings it into a reasonable 
facsimile of F Major, which may or may not be correct (this is a band 
recording), but the speed change begins pretty quickly. Whether this is normal 
or the fault of recording equipment which often did fluctuate, can't say.
 >
 > Actually, I work more with REAL equipment, which has a heritage
 > and a set of terminology which existed before the computer and before
 > the geeks who design the DAW programs were even born.

Here's where a whole whack of problems exist, and some of them are off topic. 
We face chaos regularly because "the computer is down" or "the Internet is 
slow" or "somebody hacked [insert name here]" and there's no fallback. Just 
this morning there's a story about sensitive information getting into the wrong 
hands because a nurse in Whitby, Ontario lost a USB key containing medical 
information on about 25,000 patients. She reported the loss once she'd noticed 
it, and a security camera shows someone picking up the key and placing it on a 
pillar, but thereafter, nobody knows what's happened to it. The information 
wasn't encrypted. Don't know if it was backed up..but HOLY MOTHER OF okay, calm 
down Lenny, count to ten. The point is that the digital age is only as good and 
as effective as the morons who program it and administer it.

ps..I like Kurzweil. Especially Die Dreigroschenoper.

dl