[78-L] HORRIBLE 78 transfers, on a major label

[David Lennick]

This station wouldn't have been inclined to do anything other than play the CD 
as it came off the shelf. I've heard some other rotten dubs on London but 
mostly on LPs..to be fair, the original 78 may date from wartime when not 
everything was FFRR and some 78s were dubbed from poorly recorded originals. 
But this was so squeezed that the violin sounded like a theremin at times.

I was listening on cable, and their feed is definitely not compressed.

dl

On 10/26/2011 2:28 PM, Kristjan Saag wrote:
> Sometimes broadcast engineers make their own "transfers": they edit the
> CD sound, which may be a transfer itself.
> I do it regularly (being both host and sound engineer for my programme).
> Some early (and even contemporary) CD transfers sound dreadful; usually
> the sound is squeezed, and I have to raise treble, which may work, but
> sometimes there's no sound editing done at all and I have to use noise
> reduction, declicking etc.
> Hopefully I adjust the sound wisely, being used to manage old
> recordings. But most engineers are not, and may well squeeze the sound
> of a really good transfer.
> So we shouldn't automatically blame the CD, if we hear it broadcast, and
> it sounds bad.
> Kristjan
>
>
>
>
> On 2011-10-26 18:53, David Lennick wrote:
>> I just suffered through 8 minutes of appalling 78 transfers, full of wow and
>> squeezed audio, played on a classical request program. And amazingly, according
>> to the announcer, it was a Decca/London CD, not something from Pearl or
>> Biddulph. Ida Haendel playing a couple of pieces by Szymanowski. Oy!
>>
>> dl
>>