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.