Re: [ARSCLIST] Cedar

[George Brock-Nannestad <pattac@xxxxxxxx>]

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