[78-L] True in Sound, was Cassettes

[David Lennick]

I'm sure we all have favourite examples of fabulous sounding 78s. I was amazed 
the other week to find a vinyl pressing of HRS 2004, Rex Stewart's Big Seven: 
DIGA DIGA DOO. Without the surface noise the shellac pressings had, it really 
does sound as if you're right in the studio.

dl

On 10/21/2011 10:10 PM, Steve Williams wrote:
> I'm sorry, I think painting all 78s as not being high fidelity is totally
> incorrect.  One has to define what the term actually means..  Listening to a
> pristine laminated late Okeh Electric, such as of Louis' Ballroom orchestra
> with "Tight like This," is an experience that can't be recreated.  The
> single mic picks up the ambience of the recording studio perfectly, and with
> a decent playback system it seems like the band is right in the room.. It is
> a simply lovely sound - and an accurate representation of what the band
> probably actually sounded like live.  Many Okehs have that "you are there"
> quality.  Also, while different, mid-30 HMVs have a gorgeous rich sound to
> bands such as Hylton's.   And there's the stepping Tones label, whose late
> 30s recordings have transients and range equal to any modern stuff.  Even
> today tube electronics is preferred over all-solid state for cutting.
>
> A little thing about noise, the middle ear REQUIRES just a bit of noise to
> act as dithering to keep the bones mobile during soft passages, otherwise
> the sound seems to come out of a sound-deadening limbo. Literally it's the
> biological version of "crossover distortion." In fact, any cleanup or even
> just playback from CD of the above-mentioned Okeh sides loses that ambient
> immediacy..I've never heard any CD of "Tight.." that was as good as the 78
> disc on a V15MkIII elliptical.  I'm not dissing digital, 192/32 and 92/24
> through a good Da retains the source qualities near-perfectly, CD just
> doesn't have high enough sampling, plus it's what is done in post-production
> that is the problem.  Yes the Umbrella label and others put out good DD
> LPs...
>
> And cassettes are no comparison with direct-to-disc 78s.
>
> ..  Steve Williams  ..
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:48:09 -0700 (PDT)
> From: DAVID BURNHAM<burnhamd at rogers.com>
> Subject: [78-L] True in Sound, was Cassettes
> To: "78-L at 78online.com"<78-L at 78online.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<1319230089.46802.YahooMailNeo at web88616.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Kristjan Saag wrote:
>
>> So why do we play those noisy, hissing, cracking, warping 78's? Bit of?
>> nostalgia involved, too - no?
>> Besides: being an audiophile (lover of sound) does not necceseraly mean?
>> you define audio
>> fidelity (true sound) as a measurable entity. That's?
>> why it was perfectly reasonable that many audiophiles, in the early?
>> digital era, claimed that LP:s sounded better than CD:s, despite the?
>> surface noise, which usually is absent in the concert hall or recording?
>> studio. Some audiophiles still do.
>>> Kristjan
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>> I was surprised nobody had mentioned this before in this discussion, that
> we 78rpm collectors also collect a medium which, by today's standards, is
> lower fidelity and>noisy. ?A good audio cassette recorded on a properly
> alligned machine can have superb sound quality and background hiss which is
> less obtrusive than reel-to-reel tapes. ?>But that being said, I have no
> desire to record on or listen to audio cassettes again. ?One reason we
> collect 78s is because they were state of the art in their day,>whereas the
> cassette was not introduced as an improvement in audio reproduction but as a
> convenient sound carrier. ?
>
>> Audio fidelity doesn't exactly mean "true sound", it means "faithful
> sound", (which, I guess is roughly the same thing). ?If you want an
> expression meaning "true sound",>you need "Orthophonic" or, a little less
> accurately, "Viva~Tonal".
>
>
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