The Sound of 78s: Show Notes 10/21-25

 Reprocessing 78 Audio - Less Is More

...But you can't have too many Records!

I used to be all about comparing myself to other people. How did I stack up? Am I better than him? Worse than her? I wanted to know. But then I came to understand that comparing myself to others was a fool's errand; there is really no way to make a meaningful comparison without considering all the factors in a person's life. And in the end, the whole exercise is merely an outgrowth of my ego wanting validation, wanting to look good. 

Life is not a competition or some type of race. If it is, it's a pretty unfair race, with everyone running on a different course with wildly varying characteristics. Some are running downhill in the shade all the way. Some are running straight uphill against the wind in 110° heat. Some are wearing bathing suits. Some are wearing overcoats. Some are running hungry while others are overfed. Some have rocks in their pockets. Others have a rocket pack. And everyone has a different start and finish line. In short, life is not an even playing field. There are certain factors that can be managed, but others are out of anyone's control. Sometimes, failure is rewarded and success punished. The world is a random and chaotic place. And that is why I have tried very hard not to compare myself to other people. 

Stay with me here...

And reprocessing 78s is very similar in many ways. How's that for a segue? Seriously, though, it makes no sense to compare your own audio restoration work to that of other people beyond the point that you learn how to get better results yourself. Every record is a little different. Some are pristine, while others show signs of abuse. Some are hardly played, and others are played hard. Some are off-center or warped. Still others never sounded good, even when brand-new. The task is really to make the most of what you've got to work with. 

Just like life. 

As collectors and archivists in the world of our own collections, we all share common goals: to preserve the music and the performances of the past, to celebrate the artistic achievements of the performers and the recording technicians, and to (hopefully) present the historic material as accurately and attractively as possible. 

My specific goal with my collection is to digitize and sanitize as much original material from the Big Band Era (roughly 1920 - 1954) as possible, and make it available for use on the weekly In the Mood radio show. Toward that end, I've processed almost 40,000 individual songs in the last 20 years, much of it right off the original 78 shellac releases. In the process, I've learned a few things, and here is where I share some of my thinking and techniques.

In previous posts, we've already established that we want to play clean records. No point in preserving a bunch of surface noise and scratches, so we wash the record before playing. I wash them on a round drink tray stolen from a hotel hallway 25 years ago. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I wash 78s in tepid tap water using a few drops of Dawn on each record, and a nylon-bristled vegetable brush. Nylon is softer than shellac, so it won't scratch the record. Scrub the record gently in a circular motion, following the groove. I rinse with a little tap water first, then spray with distilled water and dry with a clean, soft towel. Do not let any water evaporate off of the surface of the record, or you will hear the mineral deposit left behind. Yes, even with distilled water.

Now that the record is clean, we will get the best possible sound from it, reflecting the record's true condition. If you are fortunate enough to have a pristine copy to work with, congratulations. But for the vast majority of us, some remedial measures will be called for. The less we can get away with doing to the audio, the better. Less is more. 

I play 78s on our 1935 RCA Type A Transcription Turntable, affectionately known around here as Big Bertha. She's been updated with an Audio Technica AT-1009 tone arm and a Shure M-55 cartridge and Shure N-44-3 78 stylus. I might record the left or the right side of the mono groove, depending on which sounds cleanest. Usually, I use an L+R mix. If there's a lot of surface noise, I may use the parametric EQ on the Mackie board to roll off some top end.

Once the side is on the hard drive, I use Wave Corrector to remove pops and clicks. Adobe Audition also has very good pop/click removal, but Wave Corrector is much easier to use on individual pops left behind by the automated sweep. Then, we employ Goldwave to enhance the audio quality. Depending on the record's condition, I may use a bandpass filter to cut all frequencies below 60 Hz and above 6 kHz. That's about the recorded spectrum of most pre-WWII electric 78s. Everything outside of those frequencies is noise. I'll play around with that upper cutoff number till I get the best compromise between surface noise and reasonably crisp audio. Sometimes, that's enough. I might use a little graphic EQ to shape the remaining spectrum to give it a little bottom end bounce and clear top end. 

But if we still have noise that makes the record hard to enjoy, I might resort to some digital noise reduction. This is a drastic step, and is not taken lightly. It is very easy to do significant harm with digital noise reduction, and our Prime Directive is Do No Harm. There are 3 or 4 different techniques that can be used with DNR: you can manually create an envelope for the DNR to work within, you can sample the noise to be removed and sic the DNR on it, you can have the DNR work off of a sonic sample of the recording, or you can have it use an average of signal and noise relationship. Depending on the specific characteristics of the recorded material and the noise, you may get startling, superb results. Or not. Often, the best answer is to make multiple passes with the the DNR, each time removing a little bit of the noise. This method often reduces the amount of noise artifact left behind by the software. In the end, it's a subjective decision, and it's up to you to make the call. You really have to experiment to see how to get the best outcome in each case...and yes, it is tedious, time-consuming work. I think, in fact, that audio restoration at this level is indeed an art form in itself.

This is where i would normally start talking about the artists featured on this week's show and some of the specific songs that will be included...but this blog has run over time already. Suffice it to say that this week, we will enjoy some great original sides from Glenn Miller, Ray Anthony and the rest of the best Big Bands of the Era. You'll hear some professionally-restored originals from re-releases by the major record labels, plus some nice 78 sides from the World's Greatest Record Library. What you WON'T hear is CDs. We play RECORDS ONLY.  

I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Visit our Facebook Page and get the complete broadcast schedule, including Live Links to the radio stations' Live Streams. 

Be good to one another this week, and above all, 

Keep Swinging! 

Scott

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The 78 Challenge: Show notes 10/4-11

 Success with 78s: the Secret Sauce

Step 1: Do NOT play your records on a Victrola

If the image above makes you a little queasy, I'm with you. That is not something you would do to a record you really cared about. Unfortunately, that's something that's already been done to a lot of the 78s still in circulation, or "in the wild," as some collectors like to say. Those old 
Victrolas were murder on record surfaces. The sound box was ridiculously heavy, and armed with a steel needle that actually had a fatter tip by the time it got to the end of the record. Two factors made this abuse acceptable: (1) lower expectations, and (2) different materials. Records in those days weren't held to high audio standards by the public - everyone was just so amazed at these machines, and, of course, there was nothing to compare it to. So, yes, the record-buying public was considerably less sophisticated than it would come to be. Also, records of the acoustic era were made of tougher stuff than post-War 78s, which could not tolerate more than a dozen or so plays on an old Victrola before it was worn out completely. 

And there it is - our #1 enemy when it comes to 78 audio: wear. When I was a kid, most of my records were 78s, played on all kinds of old phonographs. They all sounded terrible, with lots of scratches and surface noise. I will never forget how utterly stunned I was the first time I heard a new 78 record. It sounded fantastic! Amazing! I never dreamed records could sound so good! And through the years, it has become undeniably apparent to me that the worst thing a person could do to their records was to enjoy them for years and years. For every time a record is enjoyed, it is also degraded. It's a trade-off that cannot be avoided. 

Now, I think of collecting records as one might think of any historical preservation pursuit. But I find a certain romance, an allure, if you will, in the idea that these records, many of which are quite a lot older than I am, are not only a historical document of American musical entertainment, but also a document of the lives of the people who played and enjoyed them before me. In a small way, there's a kinship to be appreciated there, a connection to a continuum that predates me, and will (hopefully) continue long after I am gone from here. 

For now, I choose to be more than a mere curator of these historic documents; I choose to celebrate the achievements they represent, both technical and artistic, and to share them as widely as possible with like-minded fellow travelers. That is why I do the In the Mood show every week - to put these recordings in front of an appreciative audience and acknowledge the artistic and technical heights they represent. 

OK, everything you've just read amounts to a kind of a policy statement, I suppose - a declaration of what I get out of this and the notions that drive it for me. In recent blog posts here, we've discussed my philosophy when it comes to preserving and enhancing 78 audio for public enjoyment. And now would be the time to delve into the technical details of what I do to make 78s sound as good as new. But I'm going to save those gory details for our next geek post. For now, let's simply take a little time to enjoy the superb music we have for you on this week's show. 

Hour 1 begins with a Swingin' Spotlight feature on one of my very favorite groups: the Benny Goodman Sextet. As a swing guitarist, it's easy for me to listen to these super-tight little recordings and identify with the values that brought them about. The melodies are intricate, although simple in form and progression, and the Sextet carries them off with a relentlessly swinging approach. The ensemble passages are immaculate, and the solo work is highly developed and free, but sticks close to the rails. Benny was forever changing the personnel, which gave the Sextet a sound that was never stale, always refreshed by the inspiration of new blood. 

I spent years gathering as many Goodman Sextet recordings as I could, and went through several copies of the 1950 and 1951 re-issues on the Columbia Six-Eye label, trading up to better copies every chance I got. Then, we transferred these LPs to the hard drive with minimal enhancement necessary. I especially love these specific re-issues of this material, as I think Columbia got everything right - the right EQ, the right compression ratios, etc. These cuts stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight! And I think you'll appreciate that aspect as you listen. 

We begin with the seldom-heard Sunny Side of the Street with ingenue Peggy Lee on the vocal, a side originally released by Columbia on its OKeh label in 1941. We hear from a 1940 Sextet that includes Count Basie on piano, Cootie Williams on trumpet and Charlie Christian on guitar; the loosely-swinging I'm Confessin that I Love You; a Capitol side from the late 1940s, Nagasaki; and an all-time favorite from the Sextet's first session in October of 1939. Besides the magic of spontaneous musical creation heard here, I think you will also find the audio characteristics of these recordings exciting and very satisfying. 

We kick off Hour 2 with about 20 minutes of straight-ahead dance music from clarinet and sax playing Les Brown and his Band of Renown. Baritone sax man Butch Stone will sing us a novelty number, we'll hear some of Les's dance arrangements of classical tunes, Joe will jolt one for us, and we'll get a couple of numbers with Doris Day at the mic. 

Of course, we include as many of the great bands of the 1930s, 40s and 50s as possible in every show, and this week, we get to hear some real gems of the Big Band Era from the likes of Eddy Howard, Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Louis Armstrong, Glenn Miller, Ralph Flanagan, Casa Loma, Jimmie Lunceford, Tommy Dorsey, and many more. We will even go back to 1931 for an original 78 classic from the Duke Ellington band. 

I think you will enjoy this show. I certainly did! 

Support your local Band Student! Call a young player and invite them to listen to this week's show with you. It will make their day!

As always, we would love to hear from you with a comment or a request for the show, either here on the blog page or on our Facebook Page.  

Be kind to one another this week, and above all, 

Keep Swinging! 

Scott