Re: 78 transfers

[Brian Dichter <dbrian...>]

on 11/10/01 2:45 PM, Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky at yiddish (at) waletzky(dot)com
wrote:

> Dear Matt, Shirli, and Brian,
> 
> Thank you very much for your responses and advice.  I very much appreciate
> it.
> 
> I realize that I didn't name the problem properly in my earlier post.  The
> problem is not a hum that improper grounding causes, but rather the
> scratchy noises that 78's have.  (We know how to deal with hums - that is,
> once the damn record player is hooked up.)  I would like to get rid of the
> scratchiness when I transfer the 78's onto cassettes or CD's.  My husband,
> Josh Waletzky, who has 25 years of professional experience in dealing with
> scratchy 78 recordings in his historical documentaries, says that getting
> rid of the scratchiness without losing the quality of the signal requires
> very expensive professional equipment.  Yes, you can get rid of the
> "noise", but then you will also lose some of the signal, i.e., the voice,
> if you do it on your home stereo, he says.  Using a preamplifier can help,
> but you will still lose part of the range of the voice/music signal, he
> says.  He himself has performed this music transfer in studios several
> times, but it is very an expensive proposition, requiring very expensive
> equipment.  Even professional sound editors don't buy this kind of
> expensive equipment for their editing rooms, but rely on the paid services
> of professional studios.  I was hoping that, since so many new mp3 players,
> home CD-ROM writers, digital recorders, and other audio products have come
> on the market in the last 2 years, that someone here might know of some
> new, affordable solution for home use.  If it available now but not
> affordable yet, I will wait to get this project going in a year or two.  (I
> am already waiting 15 years.)  Some people may be willing to give up some
> of the voice quality to get rid of the "noise", but I am still trying to
> see if such a compromise can be avoided.  We own at least 200 Jewish 78's
> and hundreds of LP's.  Several Yiddish groups I know are trying to figure
> out the same problem.  And gaining a new closet has suddenly become a very
> useful idea.
There is almost no way to get a perfect transfer from any analog medium such
as lps or 78s. Each generation is going to lose some "detail". The best way
to possibly produce a perfect transfer would be to obtain master tapes and
have a professional sound engineer remaster everything. Even then, there's
some likelihood that the transfers may still retain certain "artifacts",
depending upon their original condition.

I've listened to most of the early-century klezmer music available on
CD--they still have quite a bit of noise. I've pulled analog audio from lps
and cassettes into my Mac, messed around with Peak and other editing
applications and learned that there's a trade-off--if you try to eliminate
too much "noise" then you're going to have to give up some of the
information, some of the music. In my opinion, it's better to have a little
noise then to lose any of the music or voice.

The best strategy might be to try copying some of the music onto your
computer and experimenting. Most music editing programs have lots of options
so you can try different things, play the music and decide what you like. Of
course, since you'll be working with digital files, you can go back to the
original, as many times as you like. The result will be subjective and will
most certainly be different for different lps/78s.

You may want to take a look at "The Little Audio CD Book from Peachpit Press
<http://peachpit.com/books/catalog/70897.html>. This book has some useful
information about making CDs from analog sources.

Finally, if you would like a volunteer to help you convert some of your
music, I'd be very happy to offer my time and equipment, free of charge--if
it's legal enough, we can send copies to some of the Yiddish archivists too.
If that sounds appealing to you, email me offlist and we'll talk. 8)


Maybe some of the Jewish group sound archivists could post some information
about the process and equipment they're using for digital
preservation/archiving.

brian
-- 
"The important thing is not to stop questioning." --Albert Einstein

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