The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

A roll off does not mean a cut off at 350hz and a less than flat recording response does not mean that the voice cannot be recorded just that it will be modified by the recording and play back system.
Also there will be voices that work well which is why tenors and light baritones predominate in the acoustic repertoire.

The telephone system also restricts transmission to this reduced bandwidth but we still recognise the voice at the other end.

Vocal recording also tends to be closer up to the horn so the close coupling of the horn to the source reduces the loss at the lower end to some extent a bonus and problem as singers need to learn to draw back on high notes at which time you can some times hear the volume and tone change.

The other thing to consider is the psychoacoustic effect where it can be shown that on hearing the harmonics the brain fills in the fundamental so we recognise a tuba without all the fundamental being present even in old recordings.

And just like we are predisposed to see faces with reduced information ( on Mars or on a piece of toast) we are programed to hear human voices under noisy or less than perfect conditions.

[quote="recordmaker"]The other thing to consider is the psychoacoustic effect where it can be shown that on hearing the harmonics the brain fills in the fundamental so we recognise a tuba without all the fundamental being present even in old recordings.[quote]

Well, you can infer the fundamental, but that's not the same thing as actually hearing the fundamental pitch. It is, of course, true that instruments are identified by their individual upper partial profiles (subjectively, their timbre or tone quality); the fundamental is not usually sounded. An exception would be, for example, in the case of brass instruments, the so called "pedal tones," which are indeed the fundamentals of their respective harmonic series. I can tell you that when you hear a trombone solo by Arthur Pryor playing pedal tones, you are actually hearing, not inferring, those fundamental pitches. IOW, those low pitches are actually present in the recording and in the playback, pitches as low as pedal F (43.6 Hz).

Other examples of fundamentals actually sounded by musical instruments would be the pitches produced by the open strings of string instruments.

The point Henry makes is in line with what I suggested and where there are powerful instruments like the trombone to record it is normal for them to over come the lack of sensitivity of the system at frequencies below say 300Hz and it is common (I just did frequency analysis of a Columbia record to be sure) for acoustic recordings to have effective audio output in the 100Hz region but at 20 or 30 dB lower than the mid range which is a big reduction.
I am inclined to think that in these cases the sound we hear contains a all the frequencies of the instrument but in different proportions.

I'm not good on TLAs but I assume IOW = In Other Words? not Isle Of Wight

The frequency response of the magnetic cartridge is supposed to be relatively linear from what I always understood. What happens with a standard LP record is that they apply extra volume to high frequency sounds on recording, and reduced high frequency sounds on playback, which results in less hiss and surface noise, and also allows for more uniform groove size on the records. This is all done with electronic filters in recording and playback. When you play a 78rpm record back through a standard RIAA equalized preamp, it’s going to sound off, because it’s not replaying all frequencies at correct volume, *and* the magnetic phono pickup is able to reproduce the high frequency sounds much better than any acoustic machine can do. I saw some info yesterday about the best of the acoustic reproducers on gramophones we’re capable of reproducing up to about 2.7khz at best. I think electrically recorded 78’s have sound info recorded at higher frequencies (maybe up to 5khz??) so this extra higher pitched sound would make it seem like the magnetic cartridge is non linear and favoring the higher pitched sounds of what you are used to is an acoustic sound box and reproducer.

Check out these two pages for more info:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

http://www.victor-victrola.com/Soundbox%20Article.htm

anchorman wrote:The frequency response of the magnetic cartridge is supposed to be relatively linear from what I always understood. What happens with a standard LP record is that they apply extra volume to high frequency sounds on recording, and reduced high frequency sounds on playback, which results in less hiss and surface noise, and also allows for more uniform groove size on the records. This is all done with electronic filters in recording and playback. When you play a 78rpm record back through a standard RIAA equalized preamp, it’s going to sound off, because it’s not replaying all frequencies at correct volume, *and* the magnetic phono pickup is able to reproduce the high frequency sounds much better than any acoustic machine can do. I saw some info yesterday about the best of the acoustic reproducers on gramophones we’re capable of reproducing up to about 2.7khz at best. I think electrically recorded 78’s have sound info recorded at higher frequencies (maybe up to 5khz??) so this extra higher pitched sound would make it seem like the magnetic cartridge is non linear and favoring the higher pitched sounds of what you are used to is an acoustic sound box and reproducer.

Check out these two pages for more info:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

http://www.victor-victrola.com/Soundbox%20Article.htm

No, the magnetic cartridge has a rising response of +6 dB per octave. Have a look at my article that I linked earlier, which in turn contains links to a much more technical explanation than I could ever manage. As far as I know, only one phono preamp (the Graham Slee Accession, subject of the aforementioned article) addresses this issue head on.

recordmaker wrote: I'm not good on TLAs but I assume IOW = In Other Words? not Isle Of Wight

You got it, mate! The first one, that is.

I’ll go back and read again. Looks like I’m getting two separate but interrelated issues conflated in my understanding!

drh wrote:

anchorman wrote:The frequency response of the magnetic cartridge is supposed to be relatively linear from what I always understood. What happens with a standard LP record is that they apply extra volume to high frequency sounds on recording, and reduced high frequency sounds on playback, which results in less hiss and surface noise, and also allows for more uniform groove size on the records. This is all done with electronic filters in recording and playback. When you play a 78rpm record back through a standard RIAA equalized preamp, it’s going to sound off, because it’s not replaying all frequencies at correct volume, *and* the magnetic phono pickup is able to reproduce the high frequency sounds much better than any acoustic machine can do. I saw some info yesterday about the best of the acoustic reproducers on gramophones we’re capable of reproducing up to about 2.7khz at best. I think electrically recorded 78’s have sound info recorded at higher frequencies (maybe up to 5khz??) so this extra higher pitched sound would make it seem like the magnetic cartridge is non linear and favoring the higher pitched sounds of what you are used to is an acoustic sound box and reproducer.

Check out these two pages for more info:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

http://www.victor-victrola.com/Soundbox%20Article.htm

No, the magnetic cartridge has a rising response of +6 dB per octave. Have a look at my article that I linked earlier, which in turn contains links to a much more technical explanation than I could ever manage. As far as I know, only one phono preamp (the Graham Slee Accession, subject of the aforementioned article) addresses this issue head on.

Re-read again, and hopefully with better understanding this time. Very interesting stuff! Wondering if I can re-create this with less expensive DIY preamp? Too many projects already to mess with this any time soon.

anchorman wrote:Re-read again, and hopefully with better understanding this time. Very interesting stuff! Wondering if I can re-create this with less expensive DIY preamp? Too many projects already to mess with this any time soon.

If you can, your electronics skills are far, far in advance of mine!

Mind you, achieving that distinction is not terribly hard to do.

Kidding aside, that line about "magnetic cartridges are inherently flat linear" has been such widely accepted wisdom for so long that grasping "it ain't necessarily so" is not easy--Graham Slee himself said as much, that he needed years of rethinking to realize what was going on, and he's the guy who finally debunked it. I, for one, would never have suspected the conventional wisdom was open to question had I not had a bit of correspondence with Mr. Slee in connection with my purchase of a Jazz Club preamp some years ago, followed by reading his blog entries on the subject and also an earlier TNT review of the Accession, and even then I found the whole concept hard to grasp at first. Nowadays, having latched onto a used Accession to replace the review sample once my time with it was up, I play all my acoustic 78s through it.

Isham Jones - Aunt Hagar's Childrens Blues has remarkably low bass for an lateral acoustical record. The other side of the record, not so much. Play the side on good electrical kit to see.

For bass, none of the hill & dale records seem to excel there, rather, it's the midrange.