On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:45:33 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:

In article , Don Pearce
wrote:
On Sat, 11 Feb 2012 10:07:53 +0000 (GMT), Jim Lesurf
wrote:
[snip]

The real question, though, is what - if any - such alterations may be
an 'improvement' when it comes to something like the more 'scratchy'
old EMI recordings.


Well, I suppose you try a few by ear to see how it goes. I don't envy
you a command line interface for this job though? The graphic
environment of Audition makes the whole thing a good deal more intuitive.

But it brings me back to my main question, which I've left unsnipped above.
I am wondering if others have already experimented and formed a view wrt
what kind of alteration may be systematically beneficial for various
classes of material?


I thought I had covered that. Yes I've done exactly that, but I would
say the results were not uniformly good. Using my method I found that
it was a bad idea to go beyond about half of th shortfall for any
frequency band. Beyond that, an unpleasant degree of unnaturalness
overwhelmed things.

In part this is prompted by the BBC CDs I found need Red Book deemphasis.
But also by having bought the 'Decca' box set of 50 classical recordings -
and now also the new 'Living Presence' set - and comparing them both with
old EMI classical recordings. I wonder to what extent each label has its
own 'sonic signature' simply in response terms.

I recall that EMI back in the 60s had a habit, for example, of rolling away
low bass with the reason being "to avoid groove jumping" or increase how
much could be fitted onto an LP side. And 'multi mic' recordings do
sometimes give me the feeling of 'too much presence band' compared with the
'sparse' arrangements favoured by Decca or Mercury. Or is this more a
matter of different mic characteristics?


The problem here is that if you try and recover the bass on vinyl, you
very quickly discover the joys of groove warp and rumble. The
nastiness of multi-mic recording, of course, is just something you
have to endure if that is the performance you want to hear. I'm
willing to bet that they recorded a safety track from an X-Y pair or a
Jecklin disc that is languishing on a reel of half inch somewhere. A
re-release of the old material based on those tapes would be very
welcome.

Whatever the reasons, I was set wondering if anyone else had already
experimented along these lines and come to any conclusions.


My conclusions? If the problem isn't severe, go for it. But you won't
get any joy out of trying to fix something really nasty.

d