This is really an interesting story:

"The aged wax cylinder in Carl Haber's hands was cracked and spotted with
greenish mold, too fragile now to be played with a record needle, as it was
intended.

With a vintage Edison Standard Phonograph cranking out tinny Hawaiian hula songs
in the background, he put the moldy cylinder under a microscope and pointed out
the grooves that were still visible underneath the mold and other damage.

"We might be able to fix that," said Haber, a researcher for the University of
California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "There is still information
there."

Haber and Berkeley Lab colleague Vitaliy Fadeyev are working on a breakthrough
way of digitizing and archiving old recordings, such as wax cylinders and
traditional flat records, that are too far gone for a standard stylus. If
successful, the pair may be able to help archivists at The Library of Congress
and elsewhere rescue swaths of recorded musical and audio history that are today
in danger of being lost."

The rest is he
http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5208...?tag=nefd.lede

John

Download the samples and listen to them. I compared the three versions of
"Goodnight Irene", and the one done by the fancy new process sounded worse
to my ears than the one played from the 78 with a needle and *much* worse
than the one from the tape. Weird noise background and lots of distortion in
the audio. And I could clean up the 78 way better than they did with a few
minutes in DC-ART and CoolEdit/Audition.

The process *might* be useful for cylinders and such not playable by a
standard cartridge. But if this is any example, they have a long way to go.

Peace,
Paul

"John LeBlanc" wrote in message
...
This is really an interesting story:

"The aged wax cylinder in Carl Haber's hands was cracked and spotted with
greenish mold, too fragile now to be played with a record needle, as it
was
intended.

With a vintage Edison Standard Phonograph cranking out tinny Hawaiian
hula songs
in the background, he put the moldy cylinder under a microscope and
pointed out
the grooves that were still visible underneath the mold and other damage.

"We might be able to fix that," said Haber, a researcher for the
University of
California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "There is still
information
there."

Haber and Berkeley Lab colleague Vitaliy Fadeyev are working on a
breakthrough
way of digitizing and archiving old recordings, such as wax cylinders and
traditional flat records, that are too far gone for a standard stylus. If
successful, the pair may be able to help archivists at The Library of
Congress
and elsewhere rescue swaths of recorded musical and audio history that
are today
in danger of being lost."

Yah, or they could just suspend the cylinders in a glass jar with a half
inch of chlorine bleach in the bottom, which would kill every single mold
cell in about a week without any damage to the actual material that the
cylinder is compised of. Or do they have some half-million-dollar grant
written that somehow makes it seem unlikely that anyone but them can
accomplish this 'daunting' task?

Send 'em to anyone on this NG and we can have them back to you in a week,
mold-free.
--


Neil Henderson
Progressive Rock
http://www.saqqararecords.com

On Sat, 08 May 2004 05:18:29 GMT, "Paul Stamler"
wrote:

Download the samples and listen to them. I compared the three versions of
"Goodnight Irene", and the one done by the fancy new process sounded worse
to my ears than the one played from the 78 with a needle and *much* worse
than the one from the tape. Weird noise background and lots of distortion in
the audio. And I could clean up the 78 way better than they did with a few
minutes in DC-ART and CoolEdit/Audition.

The process *might* be useful for cylinders and such not playable by a
standard cartridge. But if this is any example, they have a long way to go.

Peace,
Paul


I've came across their page too... and the "Good Noght Irene" sounds
worse compared to the other sources indeed. But things look promising
to me. And you ought to see the gear; I bet that's a kind of the
world's priciest phonograph reproductor -- I don't recall whether this
was a turntable or a table but it looked mighty. It's a high precision
positioning system coupled to a computer.

I'ts an interesting approach and while the first results don't seem to
be optimal, it's good to know that someone is trying different ways in
preserving the old recorded sound and I have a feeling that there are
many opportunities nowadays.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

"Paul Stamler" wrote in message
...

The process *might* be useful for cylinders and such not playable by a
standard cartridge. But if this is any example, they have a long way to go.

The current process does seem a bit "Rube Goldbergish" to me, but it is an
interesting idea. I wonder how long it'll take them to properly "model" the coil
in a magnetic cartridge to give it that "analog sound".

John

"John LeBlanc" wrote in message
...

"Paul Stamler" wrote in message
...

The process *might* be useful for cylinders and such not playable by a
standard cartridge. But if this is any example, they have a long way to
go.

The current process does seem a bit "Rube Goldbergish" to me, but it is an
interesting idea. I wonder how long it'll take them to properly "model"
the coil
in a magnetic cartridge to give it that "analog sound".

If we're really going Rub Goldberg, we should have a mechanism that moves
the needle on an actual cartridge plugged into a tube amp. Or, in the case
of wax cylinders, a diaphram at the base of a bakelite cone.

dtk

On Fri, 7 May 2004 20:31:41 -0500, "John LeBlanc"
wrote:

...

http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5208...?tag=nefd.lede

I didn't see anything I recognized as "high-energy physics," but
maybe the reporter just dumbed down the story so much that it doesn't
contain any technical info whatsoever.

John

-----
http://mindspring.com/~benbradley

"Ben Bradley" wrote in message
...

I didn't see anything I recognized as "high-energy physics," but
maybe the reporter just dumbed down the story so much that it doesn't
contain any technical info whatsoever.

Hello, Ben.

It does take a few clicks to get to the reference to them using a method
"similar to measuring tracks in a particle detector":
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/...-to-blues.html

Also, a bit more information is he
http://www-cdf.lbl.gov/%7Eav/

--John