78s have forever been my preferred format. Forget others opinion; their sound is boss. Particularly 50's R&B and R&R sides. Woww! Nothing beats them!

I agree, been playing 78's for years...I have a 1947 Magnavox Winsor Imperial, completely restored...the 78's from 1937-1958 sound wonderful! The awful stuff is the crap that passes for music today!!

@JamesIrwins78s

2 жыл бұрын

Agreed!

@thedinobros1218

9 ай бұрын

Also agreed!

I have a cheap old wind up portable phonograph and some of my cleaner 78s sound amazing through it.

Of course 78rpm records sound good! (Excluding acoustically recorded ones) Ever heard some of the RCA Hi-Fi series from 1932-1933? Those records almost sound like they were recorded with much modern technology! By the way, nice restoration of this Blue Barron tune!

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! I agree that is is intuitive that 78s can sound good if you've ever heard one on period equipment, but not many people have in the modern day. Apparently, as discovered by another, this song needs to be sped up by around a half step to be truly accurate, but I too was amazed by the reproduction abilities of a dinky little $11 turntable cartridge from Amazon. It took a lot of adding back bass, reducing treble and noise, and removing larger pops, but it came out alright in the end.

@Stelios.Posantzis

2 жыл бұрын

I disagree: acoustically recorded ones have an immediacy and vibrancy that is quite unmatched. Granted, the sound may not be on par with electrically recorded ones in some respects but it trumps them in others and of course, the music or even recorded is much closer to the live event.

@CPorter

2 жыл бұрын

nope, INCLUDING acoustically recorded ones, if taken care of properly. A lot of 78s sound better than 45s and 33s by a long shot by default.

@Stelios.Posantzis

2 жыл бұрын

@@CPorter well said!

@benz185

2 жыл бұрын

@@CPorter Some acoustic records actually do sound really great, I must admit (especially later Harmony records or Caruso ones), but I don't know, they have boxy quality and a really artificial sound (but then it comes to personal preferences, and everyone can express their own opinion); and yeah, some heavy eq and compression could give them quite a bit more life to the sound.

There are several things that produce this clean sound on electrically recorded 78s of the 30s and 40s. First the audio source is not processed like modern recordings, The sound from the microphones were simply mixed for balance between the band and vocals, no EQ and just the sound of the studio, which was designed for this music (not a dead studio). The sound went straight to the recording lathe, so they are direct to disc. The disc itself has a frequency response of about 100 to 13KHz, any sound above this is record noise. For that reason they sound best with a good full range speaker, tweeters just boost the noise. The 78 speed creates a louder play back because of the high velocity, so a cartridge that is intended for microgroove records will have a higher output. Their main draw back is that the large groove and the material they were pressed on, is noisy. It was intended to maintain backward compatibility with the old Victrola, near the end of the 78 era they used unbreakable plastics, which were less noisy, but could not play on the old acoustic machines. Todays recordings are so processed that we no longer know what live music sounds like.

I owned a copy of that record at one time.This was some fifty odd years ago.Blue Barron sounded just like Sammy Kaye.

Clean man

Sounds great through headphones! Nice tuba in the background!

It sounds pretty good

My parents owned a Silvertone combination television set and phonograph. The TV set wore out years early, but the phonograph lasted much longer. It played 33, 45, and 78 RPM records, since it was an early-1950s model. The phonograph had a very good speaker, and the 78 RPM records sounded just as good as the 33 and 45 RPM records on the phonograph. Yes. record condition is important, but the quality of the phonograph and its speaker system can go a long way to improving the sound quality of 78 RPM records.

@LaptopLarry330

Жыл бұрын

It also had a built-in AM/FM radio, which was unusual in that FM radio stations were not available in most radio markets in the 1950s.

Bluebird and Victor shellacs are some of the cleanest sounding discs I have.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

I agree wholeheartedly

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Even the ones from the teens actually sound decent!

@Cont0rt

Жыл бұрын

They're a shitload better than 90% of my NZ/Aussie HMVs. Aka, another reason why I wish I lived in the states smh.

A great record

Pretty good for shellac. Not a patch on a well-engineered compact disc, obviously.

Recorded on September 25, 1940.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

How can you contribute with such accuracy?

@fromthesidelines

2 жыл бұрын

With accurate sources, my friend.

Yes if you can find one that’s clean, and almost perfect condition. I find that the Bluebird labeled 78s have the clearest sound. Especially with Glenn Miller!

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

I agree, and it is all the more interesting when combined with the consensus that bluebird was RCA Victor's 'budget' label.

@JamesIrwins78s

2 жыл бұрын

@@lucaslac124 Yeah, that’s an interesting point. Really makes you think.

@CPorter

2 жыл бұрын

try Viva-Tonal Columbias from the mid 20s to early 30s. Absolutely superb

@JamesIrwins78s

2 жыл бұрын

@@CPorter Oh yes, they are the clearest sounding 78s from the 20s that I know of!

Most folks don't know, but it's the same effect that you get with a reel-to-reel tape. A standard home machine has three speeds: 1 7/8, 3 3/4 and 7 1/2 ips. The fastest speed gives the best fidelity and frequency response. With 78s there's an additional consideration and that's signal to noise ratio. Because they have such a wide groove compared to 45s and LPs, sound from a clean 78, especially on the vinyl ones, is unparalleled. Combine that with the Hi-Fi audio developed in the early 1950s and nothing can top a well-preserved 78. I find the like-new ones quite thrilling. And here's another thing I've always felt: these shellac discs are like people, fragile. Here and suddenly gone. They are so easily broken it's incredible that any have survived the decades. My KZread channel is primarily devoted to 78 rpm sides, in particular obscurities that aren't already at KZread in multiple uploads. I often get comments on my channel from descendants of long-dead musicians and singers who thank me for ending their quest to find a rare song by their beloved relative. It makes the work so worthwhile. To date, I have over 3,000 recordings on my channel, not all 78s, but mostly.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

That's great to hear, and I agree! I am attempting to do some similar level of archival, but evidently nothing as extensive. What stylus do you use to record your 78s?

@AnnieVanAuken

2 жыл бұрын

​@@lucaslac124 It's a multi step process using non-audiophile equipment. Meaning: toys. A TEAC combo unit with turntable, radio, cassette player and CD player/burner that cost under $300 a few years ago is the start. I mist the record's surface with a spray bottle used for plants. This dramatically decreases surface anomalies.Go from turntable to a basic INSIGNIA brand amp ($179). A critical step is listening to each channel separately and choosing the better of the two. That signal is then divided between L and R for a pure mono sound and sent to an old SONY twin cassette deck, but only after making bass and treble adjustments and taking advantage of these by going from the amp's headphone jack to the cassette deck's inputs. This is how I can emphasize bass frequencies while diminishing white noise. A tape is made, then played with bass and treble all the way down to -10. Again out from the INSIGNIA's headphone jack to the TEAC's inputs to burn a CD. Each video is shot with a $100 cam by mousing through a row of chosen image tabs from a THINKPAD laptop PC. The PC is flanked by a pair of polk audio bookshelf speakers with audio played through a second same model INSIGNIA amp, bass and treble adjusted for a final time, what I call the AVA triple filter process. 1. TEAC to cassette. 2. cassette to CD burner. 3. played "live" for a cam. Every step in this process naturally reduces audio problems. Using lower fi equipment is part of that trimming of high frequency distortion. Admittedly, the additional hiss of "air" in the room is a final mask. To answer your initial question, that TEAC has a basic ceramic cartridge with a 78-only stylus. No electronic processing (like the dreaded Dolby) used. Mine is a pirate operation resulting in a video that simulates pretty well sitting in front of my PC and speakers. Here's an example: kzread.info/dash/bejne/e6ypzcakaZrYg5c.html

Actually it’s not bad

@emiliopolanco8587

Жыл бұрын

@32discodave why?

The best sound quality today is a 78 RPM record recorded on traditional vinyl (and therefore compatible with modern turntables as long as it has a 78 speed option).

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

So, higher speed = higher quality reproduction! Well, with several asterisks, I agree.

Isn't this because of the running speed and groove spacing allowing such a loud recording?

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Sort of, but limitations in recording equipment and the stereotypical portrayal in popular media have eroded this.

@ss51-857

8 ай бұрын

​@@lucaslac124you mean ended this

Sounds awesome because was electrically recorded!

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, but before 33.3 rpm mastering!

You're playing 78 rpm with RIAA curve and they weren't made to sound like this. You need a variable curve preamp or at least one that allows you to switch between RIAA and a generic 78 curve. Actually you have your bass boosted around 6dB at 50Hz and drastically reduced by 8dB at 10Khz.

@lucaslac124

Жыл бұрын

Yes, I equalized it to what I thought sounded good, not exactly to either curve, though RIAA was used as a reference. I also fiddled around with ways of reducing surface noise in post- processing.

it always baffles me how people in this day and age can say that "78s don't sound good". Because it's always clear as day that there only experience with one was either something caked in mold or otherwise with heavy swish, and probably played it with improper use like with a 33rpm stylus, etc. It's the same logic of playing your average LP on something you built at home for a science project using a pencil and an electric drill. 78s were a medium that were regularly used across 8 decades for a REASON, not because people had no idea how to use others. Plus, just because they sound bad on your machine played raw audio, doesn't mean it can't be transferred for better quality quite easily. TL;DR being surprised that 78s sound good if played a good way is like going to a desert and being surprised that it's hot.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

My hope with this video was to communicate this fact in a fast and understandable way.

Yes. provided they have not been played many times using hard needles, i.e. those made of steel or other durable materials e.g. modern cartridges with diamond-tipped styli. At these playing speeds, the shellac is worn away by the stylus tip or the needle leading to progressive record degradation. Fibre needles is the only way to play these records (mechanically that is) that will help preserve them in good playing condition.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Then it will pain you to know that this very transcription was conducted with a diamond stylus, because it sounded the best.

@Stelios.Posantzis

2 жыл бұрын

@@lucaslac124 I don't doubt it but I'd urge you to use caution. The only way to find out the damage caused is to play a record many times and compare the sound between the first and last time. Unless you have multiple copies of the same record I would not recommend this exercise. Then again there are records you can afford to do that with: I heard there are some recent 78rpm pressings but I doubt they're shellac. There were also pop music 78rpm shellacs produced late in the 20th century at a time when the same records were issued in 33.3 rpm vinyl elsewhere. I have a few sapphire cartridges for 78rpm records and only one diamond cartridge and I thought "why is sapphire used for 78rpm?" Then I learnt that the sapphires can only last a few plays (between 3 and 10, I think) and this somehow got me thinking. In any case, did you try out thorn or fibre needles too? Not all soundboxes are made to accept these - assuming you recorded off a gramophone that is. On a record player I assume you have no other recourse but a normal cartridge. I'd be tempted to experiment with recording the shellac record played at, say, half speed and then reproducing the recording at double speed. At least with a digital recording this should be relatively painless. I say relatively as I've never tried it...

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Actually, this song was recorded at 33 rpm and sped up after the fact. It increased sound quality by basically no amount and made everything take several times longer, but my intention was to cause minimal harm to the record. None of my 78s are particularly rare or valuable, so I feel comfortable sacrificing a few as a learning experience. I have 78 rpm records made of all sorts of materials, but modern styli don't sound decent on really old ones, so it is mostly 40s records that I have recorded.

@Stelios.Posantzis

2 жыл бұрын

@@lucaslac124 It is great to know that recording at reduced speed and speeding up reproduction worked. I reckon this gives most archivists a way to go, especially since recording at reduced speed provides a lot more data points which should help with processing later (e.g. applying emphasis, de-clicking, de-noising etc.). It also makes it easier to adjust the reproduction speed more precisely. I wonder what sort of stylus shape you used. It has to be matched to the type of record and it is tricky to select the right one. Regarding really old records, is there a possibility of the grooves of your records being very worn when you got them? It also depends on what you mean by "modern styli". If they are not of the right size, they will be riding quite low in the groove picking up a lot of noise from the groove dirt and imperfections. If their shape is not appropriate, they will be riding in the worn out section of the grooves' banks so you will get poor sound but sometimes grooves are worn so badly that you cannot do anything about it.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

Great point. I was using a normal and inexpensive LP stylus, I would like to use a proper 78 rpm stylus and see if that improves anything.

Sounds clean for a 78, but there's quite some distorsion, which accentuates the high frequencies creating some artifical "vividness" to the sound. I think you should analyise the frecuencies and filter the "parasite" frequencies, low and high, to obtain a cleaner and "purer" sound. But don't overdo it or it would sound muddy and hollow. Plus there's some compression artifacts, probably from the program you used. I got the same artifacts when I used mono files in Movie Maker Edit: And no, you shouldn't just add 30db of bass to eq a 78. To properly eq a 78 record you should look up the actual equalization curve that Bluebird used in their records, in the year that your record was made. Audacity has a fantastic page showing these eq curves, per years and per labels, I'd add the link but maybe this comment will go to the spam section if I do. You just download the package of curves, import them to Audacity, remove the RIAA curve if you used it to capture the record, and then apply the adequate curve.

@lucaslac124

2 жыл бұрын

The compression is youtube, and I agree that it is distracting. As to frequency parsing, I didn't take the time. Also, the record was in pretty terrible condition. Ideally, the 78 rpm record can sound better, but due to the highly annoying audio compression limit of ~192 kb\sec on youtube, there is some lost in the scratched high range of the record.

@VinylComeback

2 жыл бұрын

@@lucaslac124 I upload mono files directly from WAV to KZread, so that can't be KZread's fault. Maybe it's the de-clicker from Audacity, or the program you used. But yeah, I agree that the compression from KZread is criminal. Knife-sharp 15,5Khz cutoff? That alone is trash.