Recording from damaged 78rpm record

[andrew]

Whilst clearing out the loft at my mother's old house I have come across some records. These were made in America in 1942 by her brother who was training as RAF bomber crew. He died shortly after.

I think they are directly scribed into the plastic which is in poor nick, possibly some mould growth. The discs are "Zenith Universal Recorder" and probably done in some sort of booth.

I shall try and record them directly to wav files but before I attempt that what precautions need I take? I have a problem in that my record deck only has 33 and 45 rpm. Was mono 78 simply an amplitude modulation by depth of the needle?

AJH

[Mike Clarke]

No, the groove wiggles from side to side and needs a much larger needle than the stylus used for 33 and 45's. You could even hear the sound from a 78 by sticking your thumbnail in the groove as the record was going round.

[Jim Lacey]

The stylus tip radius needs to be larger for 78rpm records. I think the only early recordings used "hill and dale" depth recording.

[geoff]

In message , andrew writes

You could always buy one of these

cheaper elsewhere and you can get 78 needles for them

[Andy Dee]

You could record them at 45RPM then use software to speed up the playback.

A

[dave]

They should still play with any stlus I think. However spinning them up to 78 might do them more harm. Have you considered playing them at

33 then digitally speeding them up to 78? You won't need a 78 player and is safer to do.

[Bioboffin]

If you use 'audacity' (free and legal) to record the music from your record deck (or you might consider buying one of those cheap ion 'usb' decks, if you have trouble interfacing with your PC), you will find that you can record at a slow speed and correct to 78rpm speed. Works well - I have done it with a few 78s which my mother bought during the war. You can also use audacity to clean up some of the scratches.(This takes quite a bit of skill and practice). Definitely worth the time to preserve the history.

[PCPaul]

If you don't have the right size and shape stylus, you tend to be playing the muck at the bottom of the groove instead of the sound on the sides.

As others have said, play it at 45 and audio-process it up to the right speed (somewhere around 78 - it varied *a lot*. Also make good use of noise fingerprinting, scratch and pop removal etc. Audacity is a good place to start.

Alternatively there are experts out there with the correct equipment and experience to do it for you. For a fee, obviously.

[fred]

In article , Bioboffin writes

o/p's existing deck through his amp to line out should be a no-cost solution. The 45rpm playback with the existing small needle sounds ok and can be speeded up. I had a 33/45/78 deck with just a single needle yonks ago and made some recordings from 78s which sounded ok.

I was given a usb deck a while back and prefer to use it from the audio outputs in the back, more flexible on lead length than the usb.

[jkn]

Also, the equalisation of 78rpm records is different to that of 45 and

33rpm.

Equalisation is the filtering of the signal according to frequency. When recording, low frequencies are reduced in amplitude and high frequencies boosted. On playback, the opposite occurs.

For 33/45rpm records the formula used for this is the RIAA standard. Prior to this, there were any number of different equalisations standard. You should be able to get an approximation to the one used for recording by applying a filter to the save file (ie. you apply a further equalisation *on top of* the RIAA equalisation that your turntable/preamplifier will have applied, in order to achieve the desired actual equalisation).

I can probably find a reference to sample 78rpm equalisations used, if that's of interest.

also of interest.

HTH Jon N

[The Natural Philosopher]

Think its lateral.

And a fairly big needle

You CAN get compatible needles to plug into standard cartridiges, and there are still decks around that do 78.

[Clot]

Brilliant, thanks for that link. I've loads of LPs that I wish to put on the PC and couldn't be bothered playing with converting. This appears to be just the ticket.

[Steve Walker]

£59.99 at Maplins

SteveW

[John Rumm]

Worth mentioning that you may still get better results from micing up a real 78 record player. The difference in the weight of the tone arm can make recordings from modern decks sound very light and scratchy.

There is also commercial software:

makes quite a good job of automatic scratch removal.

[Devany]

Try posting the same question in rec.audio.pro

You have two issues:

1. Getting the cleanest possible signal (audio) from the 78s

1. Post processing the signal.

The post processing is relatively easy (hm), well you can take as many goes at is without damaging anything.

Getting the originals into digital format is the challenge, but I see you've already spotted that.

I did a similar project recently, and bought a 78 player to make sure I got proper results. What route you go down depends ultimately on the value you place on the recordings.

[geoff]

There are any number of winamp anti scratch plugins too

[Owain]

Or use some pennies and bluetack to weight the pick-up down.

Owain

[Adam Aglionby]

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If you want to get really serious Computer Enhanced Digital Audio Restoration, CEDAR

[geoff]

which he wants to restore in a sort of hobby fashion

Ask yourself if this really might be the best engineering solution, i.e. cost effective ?

I rather think not, don't you ?

[Adam Aglionby]

whoosh....