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

Fri Dec 28 22:54:27 PST 2007

Absolutely right Mark.  When I was young I listened to many hours of music 
on equipment that would be a joke today.  I remember how proud my brother 
was when he got his first Hi Fi about 1957 or 58.  It had a 12" woofer. How 
cool that was.  It could actually play 12" LP's.  Any ipod can blow that 
sound away today.  We didn't have anything to compare it to so it sounded 
great to us.  Man I had actual 5 x 9 rear speakers in my car in 1960.  I 
thought it was incredible but my car stereo today makes it look like a 
crystal set.  Digital reproduction is sometimes too good like when you can 
hear the guitarists fingers sliding on the strings or the keys clicking but 
I would rather err on the too good side.   The trouble today is that some 
music is over enhanced and tinkered with.  Live doesn't sound as good. 
Sometimes it's just too clean and slick.
Larry
St.L
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marek Boym" <marekboym at gmail.com>
To: "Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis" <larrys.bands at charter.net>; 
<Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] A new thread....old recordings


> You wrote "I bought some CD's from Time-Life of  50's music that had
> been enhanced;"  Wrong, Larry, the word should be "DISENHANCED!"
>
> I have a Jabbo Smith LP that has been "cleaned."  On one track there
> is a solo by an instrument I could not identify!  AA friend acquired
> an uncleaned version on Biograph, and lo and behold - the clarinet
> comes through loud and clear, albeit with some of the scratches on the
> original used!
> Cheers
> On 26/12/2007, Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis
> <larrys.bands at charter.net> 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?
>>
>>
>> Old recordings sound "old" because we like to hear a lot of stuff in 
>> music
>> that early recorders just couldn't reproduce.  It's a lot more than just
>> frequency response but a whole bunch of things that are inter related. 
>> It's
>> a lot like cooking.  Everyone has his own separate tastes but everyone 
>> would
>> notice if something is left out of their favorite recipe and know that in
>> fact something is missing even if they didn't know exactly what it was.
>>
>> When recording studios try to dress up old recordings they often first do
>> some sound enhancement which might involve boosting or cutting certain
>> frequencies.  When a studio uses a notch filter for example to cut out 
>> hiss
>> or scratch noise it leaves a sound hole.  You can't see it and you can't
>> definitely hear it but it's there.  Then, at least early on, they tried 
>> to
>> make mono into stereo.  That usually involved shipping certain 
>> frequencies
>> to one speaker or the other.  The result was just never satisfying.
>>
>> I bought some CD's from Time-Life of  50's music that had been enhanced. 
>> I
>> listened to the first couple of disks and found them just to be lacking
>> something.  In the 50's we were used to that sound but today we can very
>> definitely hear what is usually called presence.
>>
>> As we get older we don't hear high frequencies as well as we did when we
>> were 15 but that doesn't mean we can't hear them at all.  I'll bet 
>> everyone
>> of us can tell the difference between a clarinet and an oboe.  The 
>> primary
>> difference is in the overtone series of each instrument.  If you couldn't
>> hear those frequencies you would not be able to tell the difference and 
>> be,
>> in effect, sound color blind.  Older recordings are partially sound color
>> blind and we can tell it.
>>
>> I compare it to when they started colorizing old black and white movies.
>> The first attempts were really crude back in the 20's.  They had improved 
>> by
>> the 90's but you could tell they had been colorized.  Today they do it 
>> with
>> computers and they are really good but still not perfect.
>>
>> Maybe someday sound technology will be able to fix the re mastering 
>> problems
>> but it's really unlikely.  The human ear is really amazing in what it can
>> do.  You can't fool mother nature.
>> Larry
>> StL
>>
>>
>>
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