78 rpm Library
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13-Dec-2003

Finally, after 3 years of part time work, every 78rpm disc in Nancy Street has been digitally recorded, cleaned (where possible) and burnt to a DVD collection (see below). There were 51 discs in total, 43 inherited from the Keogh family and 8 from Trudy's family. Trudy contacted me in early 2003 and generously visited with her father to loan me an early 1970s Kriesler all-in-one Hi-Fi system that could play 78s. Without Trudy's help in loaning me this impressive slab of vintage electronics I would never have been able to record the 78s.

I discovered that playing and recording 78s was a very laborious procedure. Each disc had to be washed with dilute soapy water and rinsed and dried before recording. The playing quality of the 78s ranges surprisingly good to absolutely dreadful. The backgound noise and crackle is so loud in many cases that my regular Digitising Vinyl instructions are not applicable. The background noise can be so "noisy" that any attempt to sample it and filter it results in the strange gurgling underwater sound that results from over-filtering. The best I can do is run the files through the "crackle" and "pop" elimintator, which does produce a stunning improvement without degrading the original sound in any noticeable way. Since most of the noise in 78 discs seems to consist of "crackle" and "pops", it makes sense that the removal of this noise produces such a startling improvement. Only about 35% of the 78s were clean enough to sample the background noise and filter it using very conservative settings.

List generated on Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:58:19 GMT

Contents of the DVD of digitised 78s