The Great 78 Project over at the Internet Archive has been professionally digitizing old 78 RPM records for a while now. These records were all made between 1898 and sometime in the 1950s. Over 20 collections have been selected for digital access and physical preservation with the help of George Blood, L.P. and the Archive of Contemporary Music. So far about 26,000 of the 78s have been added to the Internet Archive. Each disc has about 3 minutes of audio per side. Most of the discs are made from shellac and really quite brittle, perhaps even more brittle than today's digital formats.
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(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday August 14 2017, @02:16PM (2 children)
I hadn't heard of the project. Hearing over to archive.org...
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday August 14 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
Hah!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 17 2017, @01:39PM
Fat figners!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:21PM (1 child)
and i'll sing you a song
i will try not to sing out of key
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:45PM
Hey! Those words are copyrighted! You owe us for every eyeball that has or will ever view your post!
-RIAA
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:38PM (2 children)
... in 3.. 2.. 1..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:43PM (1 child)
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday to You
Happy Birthday Dear Anonymous
Happy Birthday to You.
From good friends and true,
From old friends and new,
May good luck go with you,
And happiness too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:35PM
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/music/birthday-dirge-faq/ [faqs.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @02:44PM (17 children)
A few years back, I digitized a couple of 78s, and it's an interesting process. First of all, you have to do the actual digitizing, which requires having something that can play those records. Back then, I had access to a record player that could only play records at 33 and 45 RPM, so I connected its output to the input socket of a computer's sound card, played the record at 45 RPM and speeded up the recording by 78/45. I think I didn't even have a mono needle, so I recorded in stereo and kept only one of the two channels of the recording. Surprisingly, this worked quite well. You then have to apply some sort of equalization. There are various presets for each record manufacturer, but the fun lies in trying to figure out which manufacturer is behind each record label. In my case it was easy. The records were Greek, and all Greek records were recorded at the Columbia factory, so Columbia presets it was. Finally, you apply a pop/click filter, to remove the noise introduced by surface scratches. Now you can hit "play" and listen to a long-forgotten song come alive!
The Internet Archive does not do any of this filtering, so you can have some of the above fun yourself.
As for 78s being so brittle, those that I digitized never felt like they would come apart in my hand. They were made a lot more recently than 1898, so perhaps they were not made from shellack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @02:49PM
When we were kids 50 years ago we used to toss 78s like Frisbees. I wonder how much they would be worth now.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Monday August 14 2017, @02:54PM (7 children)
Last time I Google this stuff, you could just scan in the record at high DPI and there was a bit of software that would perfectly reproduce the audio from it (by following the tracks in software alone, and forming even a stereo LP image - and LPs store their data in a format denser than a 78, which is why they can spin slower).
Why a preservation project would try to rotate these brittle, antique things, and then run a needle across them and try to capture an analog waveform, I can't fathom.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Monday August 14 2017, @03:44PM (2 children)
Not even close! Sure, you can get the sound off the record using optical scanning (and in some cases it even sounds fairly good) but it is nowhere even close to "perfectly reproducing" the audio!
Something tells me you have no idea what you're talking about, as far as sound quality goes. Have you ever even heard the audio output from an optically scanned record of any type?
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday August 14 2017, @05:52PM
You mean it'll be worse than this:
https://t.co/QM4hc0rVCf [t.co]
(One of Project78's examples).
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday August 14 2017, @11:03PM
A laser turntable would probably be the right solution. (Though that's probably not what the grandparent was talking about.)
This sort of optical system would be ideal for archiving the records, at high fidelity, without introducing further wear.
(Score: 4, Informative) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @05:24PM
Actually, there was an old project that involved scanning records (in pieces, then stitching them, as LPs don't fit in a common A4 scanner), then trying to get some sound out of the scan. I don't think the project went anywhere other than a proof of concept, and certainly did not perfectly reproduce the audio.
On the other hand, there are record players that use a laser instead of a needle to reproduce the sound from records. Interesting idea, as this does not damage records, unlike scratching them with a diamond-tipped needle. I have no idea what kind of sound these record players produce, though.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anotherblackhat on Monday August 14 2017, @06:34PM (2 children)
Some math;
Assuming
78 RPM
3 minute length.
4 inch radius (10" record, with a 2" diameter center)
78 RPM * 3 minutes = 234 revolutions
234 / 4 = 58.5 tracks per inch.
If your scanner can do 1200 DPI, that's about 1200/58.5 dots or 20
log2(20) = 4.3.
So less than 5 bits per sample, which is way better than I expected, but I'd call 5 bits per sample "lousy" not "perfect".
Those old records were designed to have a heavy needle resting on them.
Modern pick-up heads are so light by comparison that they are unlikely to cause noticeable wear after one or two plays.
Laser Interferometry can measure about 10-12 meters.
That's 6 orders of magnitude better.
Enough to get 25 bits per sample, which is probably better than your ADC.
(Probably better than the vinyl used to make the record, too.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @03:36AM (1 child)
Some 78 RPM records were made of vinyl, but shellac was much more common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:09AM
...as mentioned in the summary.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:10PM (1 child)
Sounds (sorry) like you have a good process going. Why not share it with the Archive,
http://great78.archive.org/join-us/ [archive.org]
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Monday August 14 2017, @05:29PM
Actually, I followed the instructions on a howto article that I found using google, when I was asked to help digitize those 78s!
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday August 14 2017, @03:26PM (3 children)
You might have got a slight improvement by averaging them.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @04:31PM (2 children)
> You might have got a slight improvement by averaging them.
Or not, if they were slightly out of phase (esp. at high frequencies)...
Getting a good mono signal from a true stereo pair is not trivial, adding them together often kills off a lot of the high frequency information as the distance from a "point source" may be slightly different for the two mics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @05:31PM
One could use frequency filters to average the lower-frequency end of the channels together, and use only one channel for higher frequencies to avoid the "alignment" problems you mentioned. Of course, that complicates things. But if you want professional or high-quality results, experimentation is warranted.
Post-recording phase adjusters could also be used to align higher frequencies. It's also possible that if dust or a scratch is on one stereo channel but not the other, then it could be subtracted out from the final result altogether rather than averaged in. One could set a "difference threshold" such that if the wave-form difference between each channel differs too much, then only include the channel with more "normal looking" wave set, based on surrounding wave patterns.
Laser-scanning of the grooves to recreate a 3D model of them could even be better than 2 channels, if it has enough resolution. It would be easier to identify (estimate) bad spots. One figures the original wave bumps took up most of the groove's shape. Scratches and dust would either take up just a portion of the "valley", or not fit the typical grove profile. A lump of dust would be convex instead of concave, for example. And, scratches would either mostly be on the upper parts, and/or make diagonal patterns, which are unlikely in the original. It's kind of like digitally patching up a beat-up statue: you know mostly what it's supposed to look like based on common sense and similar statues of the time, and thus can make pretty good guesses about where to put the stucco. Of course, some guesses will be wrong, but a having a clean statue may be worth it.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday August 14 2017, @06:24PM
That's not the case here though. The original recording was also mono.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @04:07AM (1 child)
> I didn't even have a mono needle
There isn't a different needle for mono. There is a different needle for playing 78 RPM records (33-1/3 and 45 RPM records have a narrower groove).
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Tuesday August 15 2017, @10:48AM
Apparently there exist both mono and 78 RPM cartridges for record players, both kinds quite expensive. E.g.,
Mono cartridges: https://www.lpgear.com/category/MONOCART.html [lpgear.com]
78 RPM cartridges: https://www.lpgear.com/category/78RPM.html [lpgear.com]
I would assume that mono cartridges are for monophonic 33 and 45 RPM records such as this one. [discogs.com]
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:08PM
digitize me!
rock rock rock rock rock rock
digitize me!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @03:43PM
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I don't care how many burgers and fries you sell everyday,
THIS IS SOYLENTNEWS and I CAN SAY WHAT I WANT ABOUT YOU!
Next it's Yelp.
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I felt her erect penis brush against me. I followed Wendy out of the bathroom
during her break and not only was she smoking crack RIGHT ON THE SINK,
but she was jacking off in a stall. After I reported this your "manager" named
Stan wouldn't do anything. No refund of my money, no sorry, nothing.
Thanks for nothing.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DutchUncle on Monday August 14 2017, @06:14PM (1 child)
It was all the rage for a while, laser scanning the record groove rather than physically tracing with a needle. No contact, no damage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @03:15AM
Never became popular due to the expense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @07:23AM (1 child)
Apparently copies of many of these records might be infringing some crazy old statutes.
-- http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm [cornell.edu] , scroll down to the Sound Recordings section... (anchors, what anchors?!)
Of course now that we have the ever-so-lovely DMCA, copyrights are forever thanks to DRM you can never legally open...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 15 2017, @01:34PM
That's only certain states in the US, and usually only when the audio is combined with something else, like moving pictures.