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View Full Version : The Sound and the Story - an interesting video!


Marco
20-01-2011, 18:42
http://www.archive.org/details/SoundAndTheS

Enjoy!

Any thoughts on the video would be appreciated :cool:

Marco.
MartinT
20-01-2011, 19:27
That's wonderful and incredibly nostalgic. Don't you just love that radiogram with its spindly legs?

Charles Munch made some fabulous recordings (his Saint-Seans Symphony No.3 is superb) and this shows that good microphone placement and simplicity of signal path must have had a lot to do with it.

Don't you think that the cutting lathe and mastering technique have changed the least in all of the steps taken? However, production is the skill that is in the most demand today when old pressing plants are brough back into service. I read somewhere that it takes at least six months to shake down a press before commercial LPs can start rolling off. Getting the right kind of vinyl is also apparently problematic.

How about being a record tester for eight hours a day?

"...and finally, a lot more copper". LOL!
Mr Pig
20-01-2011, 22:28
Don't you just love that radiogram with its spindly legs?

Had one very like it in my bedroom when I was a kid! Slightly different style but the same size and configuration. That was my first music system, came with a pile of 'old' records, which were actually all the original Beatles, Stones etc singles! That was the very first music I listened to as a kid.

The arm that holds the records before they drop onto the turntable was great. You could put a stack of singles on and it would play them one after the other. If you put too many on they would skid. I worked with LPs too.

The speaker was underneath and I discovered that if you lay on the floor with your head under the thing you could hear better. I was destined to be into Hi-Fi! ;0)
goraman
21-01-2011, 03:43
Radiogram?
Dose it have a wave guide?
I want to hear what I've been missing...
theophile
21-01-2011, 06:21
That was great Marco.

The weak link in our present vinyl resurgence,is in the analogue recording and analogue record cutting,plus the pressing.Too few engineers are familiar with dealing with analogue in any form.Those who are and the facilities which can deal strictly in the analogue realm are respectively dying and closing-down.

Analogue is the technology of yesterday to the vast majority of the recording industry.The media I love is essentially produced by an industry which has all but vanished.The playback side of the equation looks healthier than it did 15 years ago.Unfortunatley,the pressing and especially the all analogue mastering and cutting sides of the equation are the rapidly disappearing elements.
keiths
21-01-2011, 12:52
What an enjoyable 24 minutes. Seemed like a depiction of a long-ago age, but it was only 6 years before I was born.
Mr Pig
21-01-2011, 15:53
Radiogram?

It has a wireless built in.
Lodgesound
21-01-2011, 15:59
Really nice way to spend half an hour....................nice to see those Ampex tape recorders as well...

I deal with high end magnetic recorders on a daily basis in my job so still have the joys of full analogue line-ups and checks.
Alex_UK
21-01-2011, 20:40
It has a wireless built in.

And only weights a teenie amount.
Barry
27-01-2011, 23:06
An excellent link - most enjoyable. Thanks Marco.

One thing that puzzles me is how the metal stamper is separated from the metal mold? I suspect that a lot of detail was excluded, as well as a lot of the problems - the film made it look far too easy. In its heyday, a record pressing plant would reject several thousands of records a week, due to imperfections.
theophile
27-01-2011, 23:14
An excellent link - most enjoyable. Thanks Marco.

One thing that puzzles me is how the metal stamper is separated from the metal mold? I suspect that a lot of detail was excluded, as well as a lot of the problems - the film made it look far too easy. In its heyday, a record pressing plant would reject several thousands of records a week, due to imperfections.

Indeed Barry,

Most of the processes needed an operator who was inimately familiar with every aspect of the process,particularly the idiosyncracies of the machinery and the tricks and tweeks which were like juggling different factors to arrive at the best result.

The real assests of the factory were not the machines,rather the operators.The same applied to every step.There were individuals who mastered juggling all the aspects,and others who scraped-by.Most of the talented ones are long dead,having had no-one to pass the skills onto.This will really be the death of vinyl.The eventual non-existence of good pressing plant staff.