Acoustic Recording - 2013

[Gordon]

What did boarders make of this? It reconstructed the Berlin PO and Nikisch recording Beethoven's 5th on November 10th 2013. An event was held at the RCM last December to discuss this recording. Nikisch also made some recordings for HMV at Hayes at about this time.

Here's a shot of the RCM acoustic horn used together with a similar one used by HMV for Elgar in January 1914. Note the cramped conditions!!

Note also the tape wrapped around the HMV horn, presumably to damp resonances in the horn itself. None visible in the RCM metal [Tin I think they said - Aluminium after another listen] horn which has a marked acoustic transition as well. I doubt this will catch on!! Never say never: AMcG said in the run up that sales of vinyl topped a million last year; it sounds a lot but pales into insignificance in the general volume of music sales - 118 million albums in 2013.

[umslopogaas]

I enjoyed listening to this. There is a very funny reminiscence of recording into such devices in Gerald Moore's 'Am I Too Loud?' in the chapter entitled 'Recording in the Brave Days of Old.'

"They had great trouble with me because I tried to play softly. Mme Chemet and I were dealing with a Berceuse but Arthur Clarke, opening his kennel window, insisted on my playing forte at all times. I protested that it was impossible to bang out the notes of a lullaby; I should wake the baby. The result, in the test played back to us, was that I was unheard. I did not relish this. The piano could not be placed any nearer than it was; already the violinist had hardly enough room for her bowing arm between the trumpet and the piano. In the last reckoning I obeyed official recommendation and clattered my part of the lullaby like a charge of cavalry, to the approval of all."

"But the recording of duets provided me with the greatest fun. It often developed into a free for all between the tenor and bass, or the soprano and baritone protagonists. Each wanted to shine, each wanted to hog the trumpet, and the charging and pushing that went on made me marvel that they had any breath left for singing. Victory usually went to avoirdupois, a welter being no match for a heavyweight. The recording staff and I would exchange delighted winks while these tussles were under way but I had to hide my enjoyment from the singers, for each would come separately to me and whisper: "What am I to do with this fellow? He doesnt give me a chance." I was strictly non-partisan and always gave the same advice to each - "Shove him out of the way."

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have those early Elgar recordings, but I never imagined anyone would try to recreate that recording method 100 years later.

[frankwm]

The 1914 piccie may be a horn-short - as that's possibly just the treble horn: there was a flared version for bass - which you can see alongside, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_Concerto_%28Elgar%29#mediaviewer/File:Elgar-Beatrice-Harrison-HMV-November1920.jpg

.. albeit that's 1920 @ Hayes, not 1914 @ City Road...so the C.21 version may be based on a combination of the 2 types?

[Gordon]

The 1914 piccie may be a horn-short - as that's possibly just the treble horn: there was a flared version for bass - which you can see alongside, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cello_Concerto_%28Elgar%29#mediaviewer/File:Elgar-Beatrice-Harrison-HMV-November1920.jpg

.. albeit that's 1920 @ Hayes, not 1914 @ City Road...so the C.21 version may be based on a combination of the 2 types?

Can we assume then that there was some kind of manifold near the cutting stylus/diaphragm that combined the horns in a kind of acoustic crossover? The balance would have to be carefully managed. A large aperture horn is needed to capture enough air to generate the force to drive the stylus with shaped narrowing to increase sound pressure at the diaphragm that does not alter the timbre of the original sound. It's a kind of transformer. Because there is no equalisation [like RIAA] in acoustic systems sensitivity to bass is always going to be problematic. The horn itself has natural resonances which will colour the sound. A thin metal tube will probably resonate quite a lot unless damped either with tape on the outside or some treatment inside.

To do something like RIAA wold need some fancy trickery with tuned acoustic chambers along the horn and or stylus cavity which may well affect sensitivity. I have seen no record of that happening and was perhaps superseded by electrical methods. It would also need the complement at the player which would complicate the playback horn.

[frankwm]

You'll have to delve amongst Google Patents for the various methodologies; but a flared horn would have (relatively) augmented the bass...hence the playback horn shape. HMV's recording method altered around 1910 so that cutter motion/amplitudes were anyway constrained.

All part of the experimentation, then: the assumption now is that just one horn was utilized; just as early electrical recordings 'used one microphone' (Sargent's G&S were multimiked in late-20's).

[hmvman]

I enjoyed the item this morning. I know the engineer, Duncan Miller, through my membership of the City of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society (CLPGS) and worked with him some years ago on a recording project for the society (although I wasn't directly involved with the acoustic recording process and I'm not an expert on it). Duncan is a very competent acoustic recording engineer with a lot of experience and would've used the best-shaped horn for this orchestral recording to achieve the sound he was after. On the project I was involved with we were recording music hall songs with a singer and pianist and after some test recordings, Duncan settled on two horns, one for the singer and one positioned close to the soundboard of the upright piano to achieve a better balance. The horns were connected to the soundbox cutting head by jointed rubber tubes as I recall.

Andrew McG referred to the 1913 Nikisch records as being "78s" but is it certain that they were recorded at that speed then? I'm not sure whether even HMV had standardised recording speeds at that time (78rpm didn't become the standard speed for recording until 1928).

One other thought: this year sees the 90th anniversary of the first commercial electrical recordings. I wonder if CDR, or any of the record companies, will mark the occasion.

[Pabmusic]

I recall reading that 'french' horns often sat with their backs to the conductor at such sessions (looking in a mirror) so that the sound could be picked up. (I can't recall where I read that, though.)

[Gordon]

....Andrew McG referred to the 1913 Nikisch records as being "78s" but is it certain that they were recorded at that speed then? I'm not sure whether even HMV had standardised recording speeds at that time (78rpm didn't become the standard speed for recording until 1928).

The term "78" is a catch all. Before the mid 20s speeds were variable. In the very early acoustic era speeds varied partly because of hand cranked lathes and playback turntables; they could be as low as 60 and as high as 120 rpm but it seems the cluster was around 70. Playing time and disc diameter have to be traded. The speed would also vary across the disc too until regulators came into common use. EMI Abbey Road used the falling weight method to keep lathe speed constant [see picture below]. Electric motors did help in standardising speeds.

There was a system that never got into wide use where the speed was deliberately varied from inner to outer groove to give a constant groove speed which is what CD does. The coming of sound on film led to a standard speed [33.3] so that the separate 16" discs carrying the sound were turned by gears from the film frame pull-down mechanism that needed 24 frames per second [in 1925 to improve sound, before then 16 frames per second was more common]. Look at this for more detail: you need section 5 in general and 5.4 in particular

http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/sound/anaudio/analoguesoundrestoration.pdf

One other thought: this year sees the 90th anniversary of the first commercial electrical recordings. I wonder if CDR, or any of the record companies, will mark the occasion.

Good idea!! Don't hold your breath though!! Everybody used the Western Electric system under licence - with royalties on each disc pressed - until Alan Blumlein got around the patents in about 1933 when EMI became independent of WE. See the picture: Note that the legend is reversed because the original is reversed - see the reference number written on the image!!

Pabmusic: I recall reading that 'french' horns often sat with their backs to the conductor at such sessions (looking in a mirror) so that the sound could be picked up. (I can't recall where I read that, though.)

This was mentioned in the programme and if you look at the pictures on the CDR web site you'll see the horns at the back.

[frankwm]

There was a system that never got into wide use where the speed was deliberately varied from inner to outer groove to give a constant groove speed which is what CD does.
{WORLD RECORD]

Everybody used the Western Electric system under licence

..errr...actually not (at least early-on).

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4643

[Gordon]

..errr...actually not (at least early-on).
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/vie...php?f=2&t=4643

Well, yes, this was microphone system that needed a "conventional" cutter ie a mechanical means of inscribing wax with a groove using a sharp stylus coupled by some linkage method to an activating electrical driver rather than an acoustic one. It did not survive into commonplace use partly because of the invention of condenser and other microphones. It also had some sensitivity problems and was subject to vibration. Others developed microphones too but not necessarily whole systems [Neumann did].

What I meant was that in the early/mid 20s, the early years of electrical recording, the WE system was in common use by the major record companies. It is interesting that it was a corporate telephone/telegraph company, the US Bell System - not a record company or an independent inventor like Edison or Baird - that developed the system in its labs using highly qualified scientists that approached the problem systematically as an R&D project. WE itself and its owners Bell simply made money from manufacturing equipment and technology licences rather than selling records [they did make some experimental Stereo discs with Stokowski as part of an R&D project].

The "Bell" was of course Alexander Graham Bell who was involved with Edison in early work on sound recording and held some early patents; later the company Edison- Bell company did make records.

The WE was the only complete system around in the late 20s but companies, irked by the expensive royalties, did as much as possible to avoid them so they tinkered with the components, as did WE itself. It would be hard to police some of the patents anyway, eg the cutter damping method, without intimate knowledge of the processes used by an infringer. Another system element that was tinkered with was the equalisation curve which became unique to each company until the 1950s.

If you read the ref in my last post [Peter Copeland's Manual] the other variant systems are mentioned/described - see 6.26 for the Brunswick/DGG system and US/GEC's 3 patents [GEC was partner in RCA with Bell and Westinghouse]. See also Copeland's comment that the GEC damping system would not work and that the British patent office refused their mixer idea!! There was one by the Lindstrom company [Parlophone] that used a modified damping mechanism that is close to the original WE. RCA had an alternative too but also by development of the basic WE system. As long as one could demonstrate non-infringement of WE patents one could claim a valid alternative system even if the basic mechanical processes are the same.

Blumlein's damping was electrical not mechanical - the fact that one had a resonance to damp is fundamental - and was a moving coil not moving magnet design. One could argue [I would not] that Blumlein's system was fundamentally an improved "WE" system.