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

[Jeff Sultanof]

Dan Morgenstern tells the story of being invited to RCA with some other
writers and historians to hear the No Noise transfers of the Benny Goodman 3
CD set of the 1935-37 band back when that set came out in the late 80s. They
were appalled; notes were missing, cymbals were missing, and some recordings
sounded like they were recorded under water. After some questioning, it was
clear that those who 'cleaned up' the recordings were computer programming
people and not professional engineers. Several tracks had to be redone, and
the new ones weren't much better if we remember that set.

Paul Goodman once told me that he'd worked on the Glenn Miller complete CD
box, and several tracks were run through No Noise as a test. He said that
the result was so poor, and a completion deadline fast arriving, that
everyone decided to clean the recordings up the old way and not do digital
cleanup.

Jeff Sultanof


On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:10 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:

> 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
> >>
>
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