[ARSCLIST] Early HiFi, was: Re: [ARSCLIST] discography of "direct-to-disk revival"?

[George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad

Hi Tom and others,

you wrote a lengthy response that deserves a well-considered answer.

> 
> By the definitions I've always learned, high-fidelity sound requires frequency
> range at or near limits of human hearing (generally agreed to be 20hz to
> 20khz), 

----- well, that only became the definition when it was reachable. Both 
before and after, the 800 Hz rule still has its use. This says that the sound 
will appear agreeable and balanced, if the frequency response is symmetrical 
(logarithmic scale) about 800 Hz, provided the trailing off at both ends is 
gentle. It is sometimes expressed differently: the product of the highest and 
the lowest -3 dB frequency shall be 640,000. In other words, if you remove 
top, you also have to remove bottom. For instance, 80 Hz to 8 kHz sounds 
better than if you only widen the treble.


low distortion (defined various ways) and certain unmeasurable
> qualities provided by good microphones placed properly

----- one microphone only, sometimes two, were used for 78s

 and a clean signal
> chain recorded properly 

----- the important thing was that the non-linear distortions 
(airgap in particular) as well as the linear distortions (resonances, not the
least their influence on phase/delay) were kept in check from the time that 
feedback was developed for use in cutterheads (we shall remain silent on 
modern Neumann cutterheads at 18 kHz). It was mostly a velocity 
feedback, because the pickup for the feedback was a small, decoupled coil.

----- the early Western Electric, Fairchild, and Presto recording heads were
not feedback heads, but Blumlein's cutterhead was. Feedback was also a way to 
overcome the increased cutting resistance towards the center of the record

----- feedback certainly took care of obtaining precise cutting. The 
contemporary pickup was mostly abominable, and the steel needle getting 
progressively more squat towards the centre where precisely that would be 
even more detrimental to the signal, did not help. 

----- however even modern replay has its problems, and they are not 
automatically removed by using an elliptical (preferably line-contact) 
stylus. The reason is that the shank of the cutting stylus (sapphire in 
aluminum mostly in those days - now they are naked) could and would be 
slightly rotated around its axis in the holder - more so for private lacquer
recording. Also the rake angle (leaning forwards of vertical, vertical, or 
leaning backwards) would be individual to the cutterheads. There was no 
vertical modulation in consumer 78s, so there is no need to consider 
modulation angle. An elliptical stylus only does its work if the "line" 
contact with the groove mimics precisely the trace of the cutting stylus. 
Those two parameters are never mentioned and never actively taken into 
account when early records are reproduced using ellipticals. But they both 
contribute to a distortion that is similar in principle to azimuth error on 
tape and sound film.


on high-fidelity (ie as near as possible to
> input=output) media. 

----- wax was a high-fidelity recording medium. It was still used by Cornell 
University for bird sounds in the 1980s. Mastering could be good - not all 
was. First-class pressing material (Victor Z-material is an example) was good 
when it was new - I fear that ageing may have made even a pristine copy 
slightly more noisy than if we had had modern reproduction equipment then

78's inherently fall down in both frequency range and
> usually in distortion, plus the signal chain before the disk-recording
> equipment was of limited fidelity until the electronic era had some time to
> evolve. The limits of the medium thus make it low-fi. By 78's, I mean the
> disks that were available for purchase (ie the mass media).

----- as you will have noted, I protest against "inherently"

 Metal parts are
> another matter, especially as far as distortion and signal-to-noise ratio.
> Some of the CD's Doug Pomeroy has done from metal parts for BMG/Bluebird sound
> like they came off early tape, and that's a compliment (although this would be
> _really_ early tape since the Ampex 200 was capable of 30hz to 15K response
> and 1% or less distortion with most musical impulses). 

----- I have already cleared up the muddle about the metals - they are 
fabulous, but the consumer Hungarian March was/is good

There are some CD
> reissues I've heard of Noel Coward -- made at the end of the acoustic era, I
> believe -- that sound like you're in the room (if your hearing cut off at 8K,
> so "the room" would have to be coated in drapes and Coward would be
> over-enunciating to cut through the drapes). 

----- loss of high frequency is not usually the effect of an anechoic 
chamber; you would probably be thinking of Coward having a sack over his 
head. But have you heard the originals?

But the 78 mass media was, alas,
> a junk media like 8-tracks. Not approaching most people's definition of high
> fidelity. 

----- actually, it would take quite a lot of educating until you can rely on 
"most people"

LPs came much closer and got better over time (if American companies
> had been more careful about how they manufactured LPs, the mass media would
> have exceeded the capabilities of the playback equipment early on, but I can
> cite numerous sins of short-cuts that led to inferior records -- borne out by
> great CD remasters from the tapes in some cases). [tape discussion cut] 
> 
> I think it's pretty hard to argue with this -- as a mass medium CD's have the
> greatest potential for the highest fidelity in the largest percentages of
> individual units. This is due to an essentially lossless manufacturing process
> and a medium likely to work well right out of the box (remember how many LPs
> you'd take home that were shrink-wrapped too tight and were thus warped from
> the get-go --  or all those records you bought that were drilled off-center so
> they wow). Now, whether the music companies choose to reach the full potential
> (which is hard, thankless work, just like it was with every other previous
> medium) is another question.

----- and in my personal view, very few have the stamina. BIS records from 
Sweden, possibly NIMBUS in Great Britain, had.

> 
> Bottom line, as a mass medium, I think it's pretty hard to call 78's
> high-fidelity. 

----- I think that some are, but the greatest grudge is gritty noise. And the 
systems for removing that last bit of hiss are detrimental to the sound. If 
the hiss is not only pink but also has a line-type spectrum (acoustic 
records), then those systems really f--- u-.

> 
> PS -- [skipped]
> 
> PPS -- whether something is worth listening to in a low-fi medium or not is
> another question. For most people, the answer is yes, especially judging from
> the trend to step back to nearly 78 quality in the digi-compressed formats
> found at iTunes and on iPods. 

----- oh, the phenomena cannot be compared. Please! They have different 
causes and they certainly sound very different. The digi-compressed formats 
are much, much worse than the sounds from 78s. I think you could best compare 
it to telephones: landline versus cellphone (digital). Try to focus on the 
sound in a cellphone: delays of frequency components, falsified attack 
transients, artefacts. Once you have learnt to distinguish the corruptions of 
the signals, you will also find them in many re-issues of early material on 
CD, albeit less prominent. You may want to use real headphones for this, not 
just one ear.

Kind regards,


George


P.S. You will see that I have proposed a change of subject line.