[78-L] True Sound

[DAVID BURNHAM]

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  ..

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't know why you're sorry, you'll get no argument from me.  I have several 78s which have astonishing impact and impressive frequency response.  I have a laquer of Ella Fitzgerald singing "A Tisket A Tasket" which sounds about as Hi as Fi can get, and even more mainstream 78s, like Tommy Dorsey's "Hallelujah" on Victor has a trumpet solo near the end which sounds like the player is in the room.  The medium at its best was capable of superb recording quality, but you must admit that by and large, 78s generally are noisier and frequency range restricted compared to modern recordings.  78s which aren't first generation are particularly weak, like Deccas and Columbias or Victor dubs of earlier releases.  But when you hear their CD reissues where they have gone back to the first generation master, they belie their age.  This can be heard on the Decca Operetta series, (Desert Song, Red Mill, etc.), or the Columbia Musical Heritage series, (the
 Mitropoulas recording of Mahler's First Symphony is a miracle to listen to and their Paul Robeson CD sounds like it could be a good tape from the '50s).

As far as the middle ear requiring dithering noise, it is pretty difficult to find an environment which doesn't have some noise.  Even an empty soundproof recording studio will have some ambient noise, never mind your average home listening room and I would think that is more than enough to fill the dithering requirement.  Dithering in digital recording is an entirely different matter.

db