From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
Hello,
David Lennick wrote
Some of us are still reeling from the memory of those gawdawful Caruso
reconstructions. Don't forget..the "original room" was designed to
produce
the
maximum amount of oomph and channel it into a horn.
----- that is not entirely true, and very company dependent. For instance,
VTMC used what must be described as a very dry room, because e.g. in 1907
they are reported as having all the windows open during summer.
----- those gawdawful Caruso reconstructions were based on very erroneous
premise by Thomas Stockham in his processes. One was that if we can find a
similar tenor in electrical recording, then we can use that voice
characteristic to filter the original acoustic by Caruso himself and
thereby
get a grip on the difference, which must be what the acoustic process has
contributed. They used Bjoerling, and indeed: if you increase the treble
on
the LP, then you hear Bjoerling's voice as "used by" Caruso, very strange
indeed. But he cleaned up the bass quite efficiently. I do not have any of
the McCormacks that RCA also put out using the Soundstream process, but
here,
at least, the voice was basically the same. Stockham called it blind de-
convolution, and the process works, but the opera record collector he must
have been associated with must have misled him.
Mapleson cylinders would
be
about the only recordings where you might have a vague hope of
reconstructing
an acoustic worth hearing.
----- well, if anything, they were certainly far-field recordings.
However,
the signal-to-noise ratio is such that not much reverb signal is left.
However, with modern signal processing - who knows.
Kind regards,
George