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

[Mike Daley]

I'd love to know the software that the person who calls themselves Grimriper uses to 'clean up' transfers for archive.org. Appalling.



On 2011-10-26, at 10:04 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Good old NoNoise..MCA would turn that on full blast overnight and issue the 
> results. Philips put out a series of historical reissues like some Feuermann 
> and the Prokofiev (or Samosud) Romeo and Juliet Suite that were unlistenable.
> 
> dl
> 
> On 10/26/2011 9:43 PM, Jeff Sultanof wrote:
>> 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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