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

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well...electrically-recorded 78's do have a surprising degree of
fidelity...for quite logical reasons. Acoustic recording effectively
cut off the low frequencies around 200 Hz or so...where even the
fundamentals are well within the range of the human ear...while
electric recording, even in its early years, could record much
lower frequencies (and did). I have pipe-organ recordings on
Victor and Columbia, made in the twenties...which actually provide
the sort of bass response beloved of present-day "music" lovers...
bass you feel rather than hear. The weakness in that era was the
effective 8Hz top-end cutoff; however, that only removes the top
octave from the recordings! I suspect that twenties record buyers
were more impressed by the bass (which they had never heard...even
if it could have been recorded, it wouldn't have been reproduced!).

Steven C. Barr