[Dixielandjazz] A new thread....old recordings

[Mattias Hallin]

On Tue, 25 Dec 2007 GWW174 at aol.com wrote:

> Yet it was obvious that I was listening to an old recording.  What was my 
> brain responding to that led me to that conclusion?

I certainly won't claim to know why this is so, but it seems to me that a
likely answer might involve things like frequency response in the top and
bottom registers; at least I'm fairly sure that I've read something to
that effect once. Also, as far as I've understood, the reason why the same
note sounds different coming from, e.g., a trumpet or a larinet will sound
different has to do with the exact composite of basic tone and overtone
series, so it seems to me that if older recordings have a weak frequency
response in certain registers, this would be likely to underrecord certain
parts of the overtone series of the music being recorded, and to do so in
a consistent enough manner that you can tell not only that the recording
is of a trumpet but of a trumpet recorded in a certain era.

The above is, it should be added more of an uneductaed guess that anything
else, but it makes sens to me at least...

All the best,

/Mattias

*** Mattias Hallin ** Brussels ** Belgium ** <cmhallin at algonet.se> ***
*                                                                    *
*             "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar!            *
*************      A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!"    *************