The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I have just started to try and transfer some of my collection of acoustic 78s onto CDs. I am using an ASUS laptop with Windows 7/Adobe Audition 3 with a Tascam PC interface and a Shure 57B mic. The problem?.... the recording sounds..well "tinny" or "hollow" as if the record and player were down the hall or you were standing outside listening thru a window.

I am doing editing using mostly the"restoration" functions at this point as I am trying mostly to remove background noises such as pops,cracks, and hiss.....which seem to work at this point.

The acoustic machine I am using is a portable Brunswick with a resonator of unknown manufactor. Perhaps if I rebuilt/restored my Columbia may improve things at that end.

So, any tips,thoughts, comments welcome, thank you

Try putting the mike on the horn opening. That way you'll have less surface noise and more bass. It was the first way I recorded 78s and the result was quite satisfactory. A second had modern player with a 78 stylus will give far better results though.

The way you place your mike will not make use of the reflection capacity of the lid too. That plays an important part in enhancing the wound. Just move it a yard further from the gramophone already should improve the sound.

Putting the microphone as close or better into the horn should indeed give the best results. However, practically each of these methods will result in a somewhat tinny sound due to the acoustic playback.
It has it's charm but to my personal opinion there is no better way than to use a modern playback equipment of our days for digitizing.

Here are two examples I once did with a mic in the horn:

[youtubehq]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P_RgH1gw-8[/youtubehq]


This was done on my upright:

[youtubehq]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reP2a-uKj1I[/youtubehq]

It actually doesn't sound too bad. The virtual extra bass of the 101 is more resonance than real I think.

Well, glad to report progress has been made. Early attempts are much improved given that I ahve not just set up for the OLD records but can also do other recording as well.

I plan on the recording path to be acoustic player with reel-to-reel mic in soundhorn > reel-to-reel player > Tascam PC interface > Adobe Audition software/Asus laptop > burn CD.

Thanks to those that responded. I will try to download my results to this site in the future.

OK, just posted a response to this thread BUT, I forgot to sign in so will post this image of my set up to record acoustic records as suggested.

As shown, reel-to-reel player mic inserted into sound horn > reel-to-reel has counter/volume/headphone(makes things easier)> reel-to-reel > Tascam PC interface > Adobe Audition software.

Thought about going through amp/receiver for the bass/treble control but for now will work this way.

That's a very nice setup you have. I also use a Tascam for most of my digital transfers by now as it is much more reliable than any computer running other things the same time.

Btw. do not upgrade to the latest Adobe Audition CS 5.5. They got rid of more than half of the filters and do not support DirectX plugins anymore, rendering it totally useless for me. I'll likely stick to 3.0 as long as possible.