The One Girl ~ Ben Selvin & His Orchestra

[Wolfe]

Thought I'd try jumping on the YouTube bandwagon. My first video, a peppy Ben Selvin tune, though from a less than mint condition disc...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJNJNBspk1s

[JHolmesesq]

You say jumping on the Youtube bandwagon as if it's a bad thing.

I love sharing my collection with the world, and in turn the nice comments people send me about my work

As for the video, really nice transfer - I like it!

[Wolfe]

Thanks for the compliment.

I don't mean getting into YouTube as being a bad thing, just that I'm pretty neutral about it at the present time.

Some people have some excellent 78 rpm channels going, including yours!

Although many of the videos that people put up pass without comment, indicating that, as everywhere else, older music from 78 rpm records is only a niche interest to folks at large.

[syncopeter]

Great record and well transferred. Even though there are no real solos the band swings.
There is not such a niche audience for 78s, I think, it's just that most transfers are horrible, either because they are played on less than average acoustic machines or are restored to death with loads of digital artifacts. That puts a lot of people off.
There is a handful of two of people who get amazing results. In comparison with them you are doing quite nicely, especially as the original has been well enjoyed.

[Swing Band Heaven]

Great video and a nice transfer. I have subscribed to your channel for when you do more As indicated by the above poster some of the sound on some videos is truely horrible. Processed to within an inch of its life. How anyone thinks that they are doing the music a favor is horribly mistaken

But I have noticed recently that the trend seems to be changing and many of the vintage music channels I have visited have trnasfers with quite a good sound which haven't been over processed or sound like they have been recorded under water! I think that with the faster streaming rates now possible with you tube this really shows up the poor sounding transfers. What may of sounded ok at 240bbs is revealed in all its hideousness at 360 or above!

You tube is a great place for looking for vintage music. I use it as a tool for buying 78s. If I see something on ebay that interests me but Im not sure if its the song I like or perhaps its not a band I recognise - I usually do a search on youtube. Quite often its there and I can effectively "try before I buy"! As for popularity of channels some are increadably popular and have hits running into the hundreds of thousands. Mine only has about 16 thousand views although my videos have been watched over 50,000 times! So there is interest out there.

S-B-H

[Wolfe]

Great record and well transferred. Even though there are no real solos the band swings.
There is not such a niche audience for 78s, I think, it's just that most transfers are horrible, either because they are played on less than average acoustic machines or are restored to death with loads of digital artifacts. That puts a lot of people off.
There is a handful of two of people who get amazing results. In comparison with them you are doing quite nicely, especially as the original has been well enjoyed.

I, too, am put off by wishy washy, dull sounding or completely buried in digital NR transfers. I'd much rather leave some noise intact if it means keeping the liveliness and original tonality intact.

This guy does really nice transfers on You Tube, really clean copies of his records, too...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhLHdPdo58U

Great video and a nice transfer. I have subscribed to your channel for when you do more As indicated by the above poster some of the sound on some videos is truely horrible. Processed to within an inch of its life. How anyone thinks that they are doing the music a favor is horribly mistaken

But I have noticed recently that the trend seems to be changing and many of the vintage music channels I have visited have trnasfers with quite a good sound which haven't been over processed or sound like they have been recorded under water! I think that with the faster streaming rates now possible with you tube this really shows up the poor sounding transfers. What may of sounded ok at 240bbs is revealed in all its hideousness at 360 or above!


S-B-H

I've just discovered that, when putting the transfer into conversion for YouTube, that one can keep it in wav file without first converting to MP3. I suppose the YouTube compression will do it's thing anyway.

Thing is, I have a dial up internet connection, so 240, 360, or 480p videos usually load in real time but in degraded quality, which leaves me not at liberty to comment on the sound quality of other people's videos, unless they're in 720 p or better HD. When I played my own videos that I've made in the last few days (there are several now) all but one were converted to MP3 by me beforehand. The most recent one, I left in wav format and it will play over my dial up connection in what I think is full quality, albeit now with some loading time involved.

And, yeah, it's amazing what some people think sounds good. I've noticed that when perusing 78 rpm transfers over at Internet Archive. some of those things are horrific sounding, and actually seem to to outnumber the stuff that sounds at all goodor even halfway decent. Hopefully there would be a new trend emerging, it's about time

[syncopeter]

Many records on the Internet Archive sound like they've been re-processed by Donald Duck. The link to that guy some posts earlier shows that even with relatively simple methods (he uses a 1954 Marantz Consolette) you can achieve incredible results. Here's another link to someone who really treats the old sound with respect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqQsOD_mq_c

[bart1927]

I second the earlier posts. The problem is, and I recall this has been addressed before, many people don't have a clue how a good a 78 rpm record can sound, so they are easily impressed. That's why a guy on Youtube who plays Winifred Atwell records on a crapophone can get raving commentaries.

But even I notice that my taste is changing, and that I'm not as easily satisfied as I used to be. A couple of years ago I invested in a decent turntable with a good equalizer (actually, the KAB VSP is much more than that) and several custom styli. So now I'm doing my own transfers and make my own compilation cd's. I love putting on a record, but changing records every 3 minutes is quite a hassle, so this is much easier. Also, less wear on record, turntable and stlylus.

And now I'm discovering that several professional cd's that I really liked a lot don't sound so good to me anymore. Of course I'm not talking about those terrible Bill Hebden cd's (I disliked those from day one) but even some cd's from labels like ASV Living Era, Timeless Jazz and Renovation. The biggest mistake they make is overfiltering. Setting the click filter too high can lead to distortion on certain brass instruments, and too much continuous noise filtering causes unnatural sounding results. I'm not even talking about that infamous underwater sound, but it sounds artificial nonetheless. I don't mean to brag, there are also lots of transfers out there that sound a lot better than my work, for instance those on Brian Wright's Rivermont label. That guy is really doing a tremendous job.

On my own tranfers I sometimes leave a little too much hiss in, and I don't remove every single click and pop, because I don't want to sit behind my computer all the time and spend 3 hours editing on a single track. But as far as I'm concerned I prefer raw or under-processed files to over processed transfers. Just my 10 cents (or was it 5?)

[syncopeter]

One label that produces over-filtered hideous sound is Dutton's Vocalion. Even if sometimes they have interesting music, I tend to avoid them at all cost.

[Swing Band Heaven]

This is why I track down the records I like so that I can do my own transfer. As stated above I also am happier listening to a less than perfect transfer done by myself rather than something that has been processed to death!

Some of the Living ers and Flapper cd issues aren't too bad but sound a bit dull but then I tend to re-eq then myself to lift those trebble sounds and lift them just a bit higher - just to suit my own ear.

S-B-H