Probably a stupid question, but here it is anyway

[Inigo]

What a beautiful and ingenious device...

[Django]

I found this online. It's the cover of a manual from 1916 and by that time Victor claimed to be recording at 78 rpm. If anyone has anything from Victor that states that the speed is 76 rpm, please post an image. Thanks

[drh]

Oh, Victor lied like a rug about its recording speeds. I often say, the one speed acoustic 78s never seem to run is 78 RPM, and in fact if you match the speed of Victor records against score pitch they usually come out at somewhere south of 78--75 and 76.5 are common values. I've had them, and not so early as to be a matter of "oh, that was in the beginning days," come up as around 72. And here's a dirty little secret that came as a surprise to me once I started really paying attention: Victor kept right on claiming 78 and recording at 75 or 76 for several years after the introduction of electric recording. 78 became fairly reliable only around maybe 1930 or so, at least as far as I can tell.

[MarkELynch]

Good point d!

Notice the wide variety of recommended playback speeds noted for each of the 45,000+ recording listed in the Library of Historic Audio Recordings at i78s.org

https://i78s.org/

The Jules Levy recording I referenced earlier in this thread indicates a average speed of 58.1 RPM not the 60 speed advertised on the back. This brings up the issue that the recording speed can vary across an individual record although this is more common in the early ones.

https://i78s.org/preview/85eb6327d974b9 ... 4d0e113111

Mark

[MarkELynch]

Here is the user’s manual for the Victor I which documents the 76RPM figure.

The entire manual is available in the APS Library.

Mark

[Django]

Here is the user’s manual for the Victor I which documents the 76RPM figure.

The entire manual is available in the APS Library.

Mark


213EC5AC-A5D0-47AE-B09E-80B7D4640DE0.jpeg
4CFCE72A-D4EA-48CC-9053-78FFD1EA3794.jpeg

Thank you for sharing that. So it seems that at some time Victor changed from 76 to 78 rpm as their standard.

[drh]

Thank you for sharing that. So it seems that at some time Victor changed from 76 to 78 rpm as their standard.

"
Their stated standard. Victor kept right on recording at slower speeds long after it started publishing "set your turntable to 78 RPM" instructions all over the place.

Speed creep within sides: the worst offenders I've encountered with that problem are the early electrics from English Columbia. I've read the problem was that Columbia went to electric cutting lathes with weak or poorly regulated motors, whereas HMV continued to rely on gravity weight drive for its lathes. Take that with as many healthy pinches of salt as you consider advisable.

I sent a non-member friend a link to this discussion, and he sent me the following, which may be of interest (he makes no claims it's scientific):

I had my database program generate an index by playing
speed and recording date. Limiting search results to discs for which
Victor recorded the matrix, in my database here are the latest dates
for some popular speeds:

76.0 13 Oct 1926 1285
76.00 8 Apr 1929 8124
76.60 29 Jun 1930 7584
76.6 29 Dec 1930 7393
77.4 9 Jan 1929 DB 1438
77.43 10 Oct 1935 11877

Columns are speed/recording date/record number. Searching the record
numbers in the online EDVR will yield full details.

My friend explains that the figures to one decimal place are by his own testing; those to two decimal places were determined by a noted discographer whom he deems highly reliable.

[Django]

Thank you for sharing that. So it seems that at some time Victor changed from 76 to 78 rpm as their standard.

"
Their stated standard. Victor kept right on recording at slower speeds long after it started publishing "set your turntable to 78 RPM" instructions all over the place.

Speed creep within sides: the worst offenders I've encountered with that problem are the early electrics from English Columbia. I've read the problem was that Columbia went to electric cutting lathes with weak or poorly regulated motors, whereas HMV continued to rely on gravity weight drive for its lathes. Take that with as many healthy pinches of salt as you consider advisable.

I sent a non-member friend a link to this discussion, and he sent me the following, which may be of interest (he makes no claims it's scientific):

I had my database program generate an index by playing
speed and recording date. Limiting search results to discs for which
Victor recorded the matrix, in my database here are the latest dates
for some popular speeds:

76.0 13 Oct 1926 1285
76.00 8 Apr 1929 8124
76.60 29 Jun 1930 7584
76.6 29 Dec 1930 7393
77.4 9 Jan 1929 DB 1438
77.43 10 Oct 1935 11877

Columns are speed/recording date/record number. Searching the record
numbers in the online EDVR will yield full details.

My friend explains that the figures to one decimal place are by his own testing; those to two decimal places were determined by a noted discographer whom he deems highly reliable.

I find all of this interesting and the information is great, thank you, but the original question was in regard to Victor's standard, not their adherence to it. Unfortunately, most of the instruction manuals on the APS site lack dates. About the closest that I could put a date on the change was by seeing that the Victor Victrola manual, (VTLA XVI, Domed lid, probably 1908), said to set the speed at 76 rpm and the Victrola XVI, (L-Door XVI), that was dated 1-15-1912 said to set the speed at 78 rpm. It does appear that Victor used 76 rpm as a standard, but by January 15th of 1912, they decided to use 78 as their standard, but they apparently had a +/-2 rpm tolerance or nonconformance, (maybe a good alternate topic).

Edit: The manual for the XII also says to set the speed to 78 rpm, so that would mean that Victor’s “standard” speed was 78 rpm in 1910. So it appears that Victor quietly changed the speed from 76 to 78 rpm some time between 1908 and 1910.

[MarkELynch]

The change of the markings on the speed control from 76 to 78 may have been done quietly, as suggested, but it is more likely that it was discussed in one of the Victor Executive Committee meetings. The Victor meeting notes are highly detailed and cover a wide range of topics. Things like motor details, production figures, recording contracts, new models, buying new turbine equipment for the powerhouse, changing salaries, payments to widows of workers killed at Victor, etc. There is even an entry that says every employee was to be given a Turkey and cranberries at Christmas. Based on this I strongly suspect that something as important as remarking the speed control would have been discussed and recorded in the weekly meeting minutes.

The Committee notes for many years are available at the Hagley Museum are available on-line. Unfortunately the earliest year posted at the moment is 1914 and makes no mention of the speed markings. Perhaps notes from earlier years exist but haven’t been made available yet. I hope so!


The change from 76 to 78 on the speed dials may have been revealed to the dealers via the Victor dealer magazine “The Voice of the Victor” I looked into this but have very few from the time period in question. Perhaps others here have a more complete library. Hagley has a few from 1909 but they contain no mention of the speed question.

It is also possible, but I think less likely, that it was revealed to the trade in general via the tabloid “The Talking Machine World (if that was being published at this time). Again, I have no issues that might cover the time frame we are interested in.

I would encourage others to explore this further!

Mark

[drh]

Been somewhat tied up since my last posting, but I have some more from my non-member friend to share:

Here's what we know about Victor's standards.

In v. 2, The Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings quotes the May 1912
Victor catalog: All records should be played at a speed of 78.
[Original in italics. Quotation from Victor catalog but not put in
quotation marks to avoid possible confusion with quotations of EDVR
text that follow.] p. xxxiv. Then, [the EDVR continues] "In May 1917, we have the
same old paragraph except that we are told to play all Victor records
at 76.00! This is not merely a typographical error: it is used twice
in the paragraph heading, spelled out in the text, and again the
paragraph concludes: 'Only at a speed of seventy-six can you hear the
actual tones of the singer or player just as they were recorded.'
[Last five words in italics in source.] The July 1917 issue of 'The
Voice of the Victor' ran a correction, saying this statement was in
error, and in November 1917 we go back to the old words, but again all
records must be played at 78." (p. xxxiv-xxxv)

So this indicates Victor's actual standard was 76, but that they
claimed it was 78. When they actually adopted 78 rpm in all their
studios and used it consistently is anybody's guess. I suspect that
will be determined by people pooling their knowledge to the point that
they can say "After [such-and-such date] no Victors have been reported
that play at other than 78.26 rpm."