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Old Recording Made with Electret Condenser Mics Sounds Nearly as Good as State of Art Current Digital Recordings?!!
I dug out an old Betamax tape I made in 1986 of a 5-piece jazz ensemble
performing at a night club, just to refresh my memory of what I had in my collection of old tapes. I found the experience downright disturbing. Why? Because it sounds so darned GOOD. It has no right to sound good. It was made with electret condenser mics made around 1982, feeding a Radio Shack mixer, driving a Radio Shack model 22 Beta Hi-Fi VCR. I used a Quasar professional series Newvicon video camera for the visual portion of the recording, which looks simply awful by today's standards. But the sound... I could not believe it. I have some state-of-the-art digital recordings I bought on CD that were made in 2003 and they don't sound that much better. In fact, a lot of my newer recordings have a blanket of hiss in the background. This old recording only suffered from VCR-related problems: tape dropouts and a 30hz purring sound caused by the vertical scan rate of the helical recording heads. Aside from that, the transient response, the s/n ratio on the high end and the smoothness of the frequency spectrum was an unexpected delight. The drums were rousing, very stunning with no dynamic compression. The saxes sounded like they were right in the room and the standup bass had a beautiful detailed clarity and a nice full-bodied bass that didn't boom. The piano sounded smooth with no overhanging notes. And during set breaks, I heard no hiss in this relatively quiet venue. So if my best digital recording of a jazz ensemble is a 10, this recording easily comes in at a 7.5 or better. The think that irks me, is that, with today's digital technology, why are we still getting CDs with very audible hiss on them, when a pair of electrets driving an old RS mixer can produce a recording that is much quieter to the point where any hiss is masked by the ambient noise? What kind of signal routing and planning can cause state of the art recording facilities to turn out such a noisy recording? Now that I have much better recording equipment today, fully digital, I am dying to engage another ensemble recording and see how much better I can do than I did in 1986 with the Betamax VCR. But I still can't believe how enjoyable and natural the sound of that old recording is! -- Take care, Mark & Mary Ann Weiss VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . DVD MASTERING . AUDIO RESTORATION Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm Business sites at: www.dv-clips.com www.mwcomms.com www.adventuresinanimemusic.com - |
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