New acoustic recording - report on BBC Radio 3

[2Bdecided]

When I posted this, I didn't realise there was already a thread on the topic. It is in the society news forum...
http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... 15&t=19779

[RefSeries]

It is right to say that "there shouldn't be any" surface noise. However we were trying to do something which hadn't been done for years and to an extent were learning as we went. Duncan made the recording apparatus and blanks from scratch, transporting the lot to the RCM for what was effectively an outside broadcast. We did not have the luxury of a studio with back up facilities, and were making changes from a toolbox rather than a workshop.

We noticed surface noise at the time, and it seemed that the warmer the wax blank was, the lower the noise. Interestingly the noise increased as the cutter approached the centre of the disc, so noise could have been arising from both cutter speed and the disc cooling down. Duncan had made an oven to keep the blanks warm, but this only held six discs (weighing about 3Kg each, and with a fair amount of thermal inertia!) and as we were struggling to capture all the instruments within the recording field of the horn we ran through the blanks fairly quickly so they weren't all as warm as we would have liked when we cut them. We had a good stock of blanks but even so were shaving them frequently to maintain supply - it takes about 20 minutes to shave each one.

The replay heard on the BBC clip was made on site by destructively playing the wax blank, so there may be some noise arising from the replaying process - we didn't have time to experiment with different types of stylus, tracking weights and so on as we only had the auditorium for three days and the orchestra for two. The replays were done to ensure we had a record of each take, and to be able to learn from this to position instruments and players. Volume was a key issue too, and we soon discovered that without a fair amount of sound power the signal to noise ratio was horrible. If we had been recording a singer and three instruments right up against the horn, noise would have been less of a problem, but capturing the more quiet instruments like flutes and conventional violins was difficult, and while we had some Strohs in the orchestra the strings were a bit faint on occasion. One other point is that the recordings were made by playing the recordings into a laptop, and some computer recording software has auto gain features, which may be winding the background noise up in faint passages, making matters worse. I don't know if this was an issue here, but it might be an idea to have a parallel recoding on tape or MD next time, just in case.

Duncan was planning to metal up a take of the first half of the first movement which was not destructively played on the day, and hopefully will produce something which can be played normally. This will allow a better view of the event than the playing of a newly cut wax which is being trashed by the act of playing it. We learnt a lot on the day, and have some ideas for improvements in mind, so there is scope for doing it again. Unfortunately people who acoustically recorded orchestras are few and far between these days, so asking for guidance from experienced recordists is tough.

All in all it was a great opportunity to see the problems of recording orchestras acoustically at first hand. It took a van load of equipment, all made by Duncan, and a very understanding orchestra who were magnificent on the day and understood why we had to have the heating turned up high and to keep doing the same thing over and over again while not being able to move much as they were all jammed together.

Of course it wasn't perfect, but it will get better as we can build on our experience, and hopefully will ultimately produce something which comes closer to the achievements of a century ago.

Keith

[Wolfe]

Recalls some of the very same trials and travails entered by the recording laboratory engineers of yore. Next time we gripe about the limitations of early recordings, let us remember their dedication.

[Lucius1958]

I certainly appreciate the dedication it took to make these recordings!

Bill

[RefSeries]

The Spring 2015 Science Museum Journal has a detailed article on the recording event, which can be found at http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/brow ... recording/. The article includes sound files of what we should have recorded and what was actually achieved.

All in all it was a fascinating experience, and Aleks Kolkowski is to be congatulated for putting it together. It was humbling to try to emulate the achievements of a century ago anfd to discoveer that it was far from easy to come close to their stunning results. Hopefully we will get the opportunity to repeat the exercise.

Keith

[FloridaClay]

Thank you for posting, Keith. A very interesting read.

Clay

[Phototone]

I am quite surprised to see, or at least I think I see, that the acoustic cutter head (as shown in the linked long article) does not appear to be equipped with an advance ball to control the depth of cut. Was this the norm for lateral recordings, the cutter head finds its own depth in the wax blank, based on its weight?

[Wolfe]

,

[Marco Gilardetti]

Odd. If it weren't for what Keith has written above, I would swear that the playback was done with a lightweight moving magnet pickup. The hiss and crackles are typical of MM pickups. I really can't imagine that sound coming straight out of a cylinder phonograph's soundbox and horn.

Anyway, congrats for the success of this recording session and thanks for sharing!