[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: [ARSCLIST] Fwd: Peter Copeland on RCA Victor recordings (1941)
Dumb question again..were a lot of late 40s Victors compressed and EQd beyond 
all belief because of something opposite in the players they were manufacturing 
at the time? I once heard Freddy Martin's Managua, Nicaragua played on a 1947 
Victor machine and it sounded fabulous. Most Victors made from December 1944, 
including Toscanini and Henri Rene and Spike and Tommy Dorsey, are impossible 
to EQ (and they get even worse in Canada because they sent up production 
masters which were re-dubbed in Montreal, complete with wow, clipped first 
notes, chopped last notes, and more wow). This seems to end around 1950-51.
dl
Michael Biel wrote:
Tom Fine wrote:
You can hear that Victor was doing compression/limiting for sure by 
the 40s. Listen to Spike Jones "Popcorn Sack" for instance, or other 
material if you prefer less corny. 
Spike Jones might not be a good example to use because a lot of his 
masters were dubbed.  The ledger sheets note some specific examples 
where it was done because a gunshot or something overloaded the 
recording, but I have a feeling that a lot of the release masters were 
routinely dubs.
Actually I think the question is not whether Victor was doing it, but if 
it was done simultaneously on each mic individually.  It could be that 
they were doing it selectively on a particular mic, or, of course, on 
the composite mix.  And considering your father's technique of 
simplicity and single-mic recording, I would love to have found out what 
his opinion would be of having all these electronics compressing a half 
dozen mics separately!
Mike Biel  mbiel@xxxxxxxxx