Glenn Miller - In The Mood

PopArchivist wrote: I think anything from the 1940's, especially the early part of the decade comes from 78 transfers.

Yeah, recording tape didn't exist for commercial use in the U.S. until 1948 (we got tape recorders from the Nazis and brought them back to the U.S.) and were not regularly used by the record companies until 1949. One of the earlier pop hits that was recorded on tape was Frankie Laine's "That Lucky Old Sun" in mid-1949. (Which is curious, since it was for Mercury Records, and Mercury continued to record primarily onto lacquer disc until 1953.)

For these reasons, most songs prior to 1950 are going to be from either 78s, original lacquer discs (which is what they were actually recorded on), or metal stamper masters that were used to press the 78s. There is not (and never was) a master tape for any record before 1949.


Edited by Brian W.

PopArchivist wrote: That's because most people outside the Hit Parade and comp series that were put out don't have an interest in the era before 1955. When CD was first coming out those people who wanted the 1940's and early 1950's were only 35-45 years old and had disposable income for CD's. Now that same age group is 75-85 and those kind of compilations don't see the light of day anymore on CD since they make nothing for the labels.

I'd say the audience for that era is older than
that...my mother graduated high school in 1945, which
would put her right in the middle of the "hit parade"
era, and she's 94! I'd say the 75-85 age group would
be more first generation rock & rollers.

BSharp wrote: As much as I can appreciate the Big Band Era, my 1970s- era ears would rather hear a clean, note-perfect recording of a big band song vs. an original version dubbed from a 78-RPM record.

I see what you're saying, but that's like saying that
the remakes of rock era songs (Roy Orbison's "In
Dreams" collection, the Everly Brothers' re-recordings
of their Cadence hits for WB, Chubby Checker re-
recorded his hits in stereo, etc.) are "superior" to
the originals. Maybe to someone who's never heard the
originals they're OK, but to anyone who "was there"
they just sound "off".

Granted, it's a different situation with a the pre-50s
material and a lot of the originals are long gone (or
the few copies that still exist sound "well played").

I myself haven't been a fan of CEDAR (used on the Steely Dan Citizen box set in 1993), NoNoise (plaguing the entire 1980s output of the TM Century library), or noise reduction in general.

But, I haven't dealt much with tracks that really need noise reduction. 1980s-era tracks are just fine as-is. 1970s-era tracks may have a little tape hiss. 1960s-era track may have even more hiss from bouncing tracks to get everything to work with the limited number of multi-track tracks that were available. In my experience, virtually everything from the 1960s onward works just fine without noise reduction.

I understand that using a 78 as source material would be orders of magnitude noisier than the tape-based material that I usually deal with. That's one of the reasons I originally asked for opinions on what works well for these old, pre-tape tracks.

I know that several Robert Johnson sets were released over the years, with varying amounts of noise reduction from set-to-set. I don't know if there was any consensus on what worked best for Robert Johnson's catalog, or whether that would even apply to the 1940s and 1950s tracks that were also lifted from records.

Thanks for the discussion - please keep sharing your thoughts on these older tracks.

Edited by crapfromthepast

crapfromthepast wrote: I myself haven't been a fan of CEDAR (used on the Steely Dan Citizen box set in 1993), NoNoise (plaguing the entire 1980s output of the TM Century library), or noise reduction in general.

I would have never guessed that the Citizen Steely Dan set had anything but some really good examples of NR. I personally own the set, (Have for several years), and
it has been my default Steely Dan collection. I have to assume at this point that there are some of us that really appreciate when the NR is applied in areas where
noise has been a distraction to the content. I got my whole indoctrination to Steely Dan from this box set.

Sure, sure everyone knows all the songs that hit the top 40 charts, but I got a real in depth appreciation for Donald and Walter along with all the session artists that
came with the collection. (And maybe some of the TM Century inventory too.)

The point being that I might have had a different perspective of all those songs, had they not had the NR applied. I guess if I really wanted to buy all the albums that the
collection covered, I can still do that and then decide if the NR was worth the effort. So, maybe it's a good thing you bring up the whole NR conversation on these albums.
It gives me something new to look for should I decide to buy the original albums. But, I probably won't do that.

Thanks Ron, I think we always need to have opinions. It definitely keeps things interesting.

I knew a guy at one point that was pulling audio off the original metal master parts (not the technical term for them, I'm sure, lol) and the sound he was getting from the masters for these old 78s was extraordinary! I was hearing high end I never knew was possible in those decades.

Sadly, I'm not sure anything ever came of the project... or if he's still with us. I'll have to do some digging and see if I still have any samples he sent me and / or if he was able to commercially release what he was capturing.