[Oistrakh]

I generally try to stay away from really old recordings, but if its a violinist I like (like menuhin), sound quality isn't that big of a deal with me, just the voice of the violin...

 

[Vicious Tyrant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif If you think that historical recordings can't have thrillingly vivid and lifelike sound, you've never heard a Caruso record played on a contemporary Victrola. The main problem with acoustic recordings is electronic playback. An acoustic record played back on an acoustic gramophone is an amazing experience. See ya Steve

I still owe you thanks for all your input into this old thread of mine:

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showt...historic+opera

That was great! Someday I'll make it out to your neck of the woods and hear it for myself!

 

[bigshot]

I missed answering your last question in that thread. High end phonographs, like the Victor Orthophonic Credenza can cost in the thousands, as can external horn machines; but the standard cabinet Victrola can be found for as little as $400. That's an amazing price for something made of solid mahogany in 1917, but they made so many of them, it's a buyer's market, particularly on the East coast. Victrolas are fairly simple. Aside from the mainspring, just about everything is user serviceable. It's pretty easy to take a dusty old phonograph that's spent sixty years in an attic and get it back to new condition.

I have two phonographs. One is a budget model cabinet in tiger oak- the VV-X. And the other is a suitcase Orthophonic model- the VV-2-65. I paid $700 for the VV-X and $300 for the 2-65. A little bit of cleaning and a soundbox rebuild and they were as good as the day they were originally sold. Records for acoustic phonographs can be found for as little as fifty cents apiece. Needles are good for one play only and cost about 2 cents.

It can be an expensive hobby, but it doesn't have to be.

See ya
Steve

 

[vcoheda]

Two quick points:

1. A historical performance does not always mean that the sound is bad. A great number of recordings from 1945 forward are actually well recorded and in good sound.

2. A lot of older recordings are just better performances than modern ones.

 

[JayG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Here are a couple of performances from the mid 1930s that you'd be hard pressed to match with modern recordings. Who sings AND acts out each word like this today? Lotte Lehmann / Walter/ VPO 1935 Wagner: "Die Manner Sippe" Die Walkure http://www.vintageip.com/records/VIP-OP-1002Trk12.mp3 Lauritz Melchior 1937 Wagner: "Hymn to Venus" Tannhauser http://www.vintageip.com/records/VIP-OP-1002Trk12.mp3 See ya Steve

I think you mistakenly linked the same track twice.

-Jay

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vcoheda /img/forum/go_quote.gif Two quick points: 1. A historical performance does not always mean that the sound is bad. A great number of recordings from 1945 forward are actually well recorded and in good sound. 2. A lot of older recordings are just better performances than modern ones.

I'm not really referring to recordings that have good monophonic sound. I'm talking about those really old prewar and wartime recordings, some from radio broadcasts which really have awful sound quality. I've heard the old Caruso recordings and I passed on buying them because I know that they will stay in the box 11 months out of 12. For me, many of the very old (I should term them "antique") recordings are more of a curiousity or a reference. Once having heard them, I don't want to listen to them frequently. For me it's like preferring to look at poor quality, black and white snapshots when the living person is still around.

 

[Vicious Tyrant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif The main problem with acoustic recordings is electronic playback.

Steve, I just noticed this sentence. Can you explain?

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayG /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think you mistakenly linked the same track twice.

I fixed it. Here's the Melchior link. It's sure to produce goosebumps.

http://www.vintageip.com/records/VIP...01BonusTrk.mp3

See ya
Steve

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vicious Tyrant /img/forum/go_quote.gif Steve, I just noticed this sentence. Can you explain?

In the era of acoustic recording and playback (pre-1924), the companies that sold records also sold the machines to play them on. They had the luxury of being able to modify their recording techniques to suit the playback machines and vice versa. This meant that a Victor record sounded better on a Victrola, and a Columbia disk sounded best on a Columbia Graphanola. The major labels had laboratories where they experimented with horn shapes and soundbox construction to come up with the optimal sound quality.

When we play back one of these records on an electric turntable, the results aren't as nearly good as on an acoustic gramophone. There are a lot of acoustic reasons for this... I list a bunch of them in the thread linked above. Unfortunately, most people only hear these records today in electrical transcriptions on CD. The sound of an acoustic record on CD is distant and thin compared to the sound on an acoustic phonograph. When I play a Caruso record on my Victrola, you can hear it a block away.

I tried to come up with techniques to capture the acoustic sound using digital means. It took a ton of work to find the proper equalization and get the noise level down to the smooth way it sounds on a phonograph. Here's a song called Porcupine Rag by Prince's Band recorded in 1909. If you play this fairly loud on good speakers, you'll get an idea of how an acoustic phonograph sounds. It isn't faint or scratchy at all.

http://www.vintageip.com/records/VIP-RP-1001Trk18.mp3

Here is another acoustic recording from WWI.

http://www.vintageip.com/records/VIP-RP-1001Trk11.mp3

See ya
Steve

 

[Vicious Tyrant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif It's sure to produce goosebumps.

It did, absolutely beautiful. Did you do the capture-thing on that too?

Bunnyears, have you heard it? If so, what say ye?

 

[SiBurning]

To put a different spin on these old vinyl records, I listen to old, noisy jazz recordings because (1) that's often the only way to hear the original artists playing the music, (2) a lot of it is actual "period music", recorded when the music was fresh, new, and popular, and the musicians spoke the music properly, (3) there are some great jazz musicians that you can only hear off scratchy old vinyl, and (4) there are some excellent performances that are worth listening to, even with the noise.

I think (1) and (2) are related, and maybe not quite the dominant factor in classical music, although there's about 40 years worth of classical music recording history that might be counted as prewar, so it certainly applies to music of that period. The other reasons certainly apply to classical.

To put it closer relation to historic classical music, the Preservation Jazz Band comes to mind of an example where the musicians aren't quite old enough to have played all of the period music, but might have heard it from those who were. I'd certainly want to hear how those guys played in the fifties, even if it means listening to snap, crackle, and pop. (Okay, so maybe most of them really are that old.)

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vicious Tyrant /img/forum/go_quote.gif It did, absolutely beautiful. Did you do the capture-thing on that too? Bunnyears, have you heard it? If so, what say ye?

I think you are fooling yourself if you think this is the way the musicians actually sounded in or out of the studio! I recognize that the quality of this clip is much better than what I have heard on a cd transcription of an old recording. I also am pleased that there is no scratchy noise overlaying the music. However, compare this to a modern digital sacd recording of a band comprised of the same instruments playing the same music and you will see a world of difference, and "thin" is only one of the modifiers you will use to describe the sound on these old recordings. For me, the value of these clips is to remind me of how my grandmother heard music in her parlor. It is a reminder of an age of primitive technology that our children can barely imagine.

Let's face it, technology has improved vastly over this. If it hadn't improved we would still be using the older technology. It's monophonic sound for one thing so it can never have the sculptural quality of stereo which also does not completely capture the experience of live music. What we can get from this recording is information about tempo, dynamics, phrasing, along with the outlines of the melody and harmonics, etc. It's like looking at a black and white snapshot of a beautiful woman taken by a camera with a decent lens. We can see the smile, the background, her figure, her hairstyle, her clothing, etc., but there is no way it conveys the texture of her skin, the color of her eyes or the highlights in her hair. A color photo in turn cannot convey how she moves in space. A motion picture shows us the movement but we can't tell how tall she is or how she displaces the space. Music is like that living and breathing woman. Live is the best, and after that as close as you can get to the sound of the live instruments is second best. These recordings are attractive on their own terms but they are not the quality I want when I need to hear a Mahler symphony or a Bach cantata. They are like a ghost of the performance, while I crave the warm, breathing flesh.

 

[bigshot]

Listen to the singer, not the recording. You'll never hear singing like that anywhere else but in historic recordings. Melchior's in a totally different league from any current singer, and the recording fully illustrates that. Any recording is an approximation of a performance. The fact that Melchior can transcend the limitations of technology and grab us like that 75 years later is magic of the first order.

The world was lucky enough to have three "once in a century" tenors all at one time. They all recorded in the 78 era- two of them in the acoustic era. If you limit yourself by focusing on technology, you'll never be able to appreciate how great they were and how lucky the world was to have them.

I'm just talking about tenors here, but the same goes for contraltos and violinists, and conductors, and jazz musicians, and big bands, and country music...

Judging historic recordings by sound quality is like rejecting a volume of Shakespere because there are no pictures, Citizen Kane because it's in B&W or City Lights because it's silent. You miss a LOT.

See ya
Steve

 

[Bunnyears]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot /img/forum/go_quote.gif Listen to the singer, not the recording. You'll never hear singing like that anywhere else but in historic recordings. Melchior's in a totally different league from any current singer, and the recording fully illustrates that. Any recording is an approximation of a performance. The fact that Melchior can transcend the limitations of technology and grab us like that 75 years later is magic of the first order. The world was lucky enough to have three "once in a century" tenors all at one time. They all recorded in the 78 era- two of them in the acoustic era. If you limit yourself by focusing on technology, you'll never be able to appreciate how great they were and how lucky the world was to have them. I'm just talking about tenors here, but the same goes for contraltos and violinists, and conductors, and jazz musicians, and big bands, and country music... Judging historic recordings by sound quality is like rejecting a volume of Shakespere because there are no pictures, Citizen Kane because it's in B&W or City Lights because it's silent. You miss a LOT. See ya Steve

Sorry, but I don't buy that! There are great singers who crop up all the time. Lauritz Melchior was a great singer but that doesn't mean that Luciano Pavarotti was not equally great. Styles of singing have changed, but mourning Melchior eternally is as silly as dismissing him out of hand. Of course I am grateful for any recordings we have done by him but they are not the "ne plus ultra" of the opera world. I might just as well weep that Farinelli died before anyone could record his singing because heaven knows there aren't going to be any more castrati. The attitude that all greatness lies in the past is as silly as it is destructive. I know that somewhere there is a great heldentenor waiting in the wings to wow the world, and he will be recorded in sacd multichannel, dvd-a or whatever the best technology the world has to offer when he arrives. Btw, if you are pining for a great male voice, let me offer you Thomas Quasthoff who although not a tenor is certainly one of the greatest of all time. Btw, don't confuse singing styles with having a great voice. Nowadays singers elect to use a much more natural style than they did in the old days. Opera was changed by Callas (whose greatest work is only available in monophonic high fidelity) who showed that an opera singer who actually acts her part rather than reciting it and then declaiming the arias is much more exciting.

I don't reject historic recordings, but for me those ancient recordings are more of an occassional treat than daily bread. Btw, comparing those old recordings to a b&w film like Citizen Kane is not fair. Welles would have happily made Kane in color but he wasn't given the budget; moreover the use of b&w is often an artistic decision independent of technology (for instance Schindler's List). What would be silly would be insisting that you can't enjoy Citizen Kane on dvd on a widescreen high definition tv when the picture is clearly superior that way than on an old standard definition b&w tv which was state of the art when CK was made.

And for you information, I would rather see a Shakespeare play than read one, and that's the ultimate Shakespeare with pictures.

 

[PSmith08]

Hey, hey.

I like historic recordings as much as the next person, and I am not sure whether or not there will be a Heldentenor like Melchior again, but I think one has to recognize that there are singers of different-but-equivalent quality captured in good sound. James King, for example, was captured in both Siegmund and Parsifal in excellent sound. The Keilberth Ring from the '55 Festspiele is proving, to my satisfaction, at any rate, that the Golden Age really was that shiny.

That having been said, things were not so much better then than they are today. There is a crop of really splendid singers, Domingo, Heppner, among others, who are being captured in really splendid sound. Give me Heppner's life-of-Siegfried best-of over Melchior's recordings any day. The orchestra is better and - like it or not - technology is better.