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Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to devilhand)
thanks for pointing me to the people responsible for, yes, digitizing and sharing for free all the important early wax cylinders and records of flamenco cante….yet they ruined all of them in the process by sending them through unnecessary Dolby noise reduction filters that removed hiss and destroyed the sound of all the beautiful guitar playing on every single track. These filters, just like modern web cams that I am sure everyone is frustrated about that plays guitar, are designed to filter out any noise that is not in the human voice spectrum, therefore the guitar is like a background noise thing to be deleted. I prefer hiss.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
yet they ruined all of them in the process by sending them through unnecessary Dolby noise reduction filters that removed hiss and destroyed the sound of all the beautiful guitar playing on every single track.
That's terrible indeed. But they must have the original digitization files, before applying filters (surely they didn't apply filters on the fly while digitizing). All they have to do is post those as well. How do we make them?
Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to kitarist)
Like this tin can sound on the guitar here, and the guitar fades in and out. I don’t think you can fix this as if they saved all the original files or something. I could imagine it went into the machine via the filters in place. Just like you can’t fix a web cam video in post. You need to start over with the right equipment starting with what is playing the analog source. I started collecting vinyl flamenco records about 10 years ago, and the guitars all sound great no matter how old the record, and the hiss and crackle pop noise is very welcome.
In the above you can notice an unusual half compas cambio in the Serneta Soleá if you orient yourself at 4:40. Mojama was Moraito’s favorite cantaor.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to Ricardo)
I think there will come a time, in the not so distant future, where noise cancellation will be sophisticated enough to properly clean up these old recordings. It might even be possible now (probably is). That being the case, it would make sense that anyone doing an A/D conversion release the unadulterated version as best practice, and leave the application of noise reduction solely to the end user. Thing is, how to get that out there so it becomes a mainstream sensibility. Maybe not so easy. It might just naturally evolve in that direction, however.
Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to RobF)
Well…this was going on in the 80s already. Dolby was a button you pushed to ruin your cassette if you so chose. Yuk. But then CDs started coming out where the hiss was gone but they were compressing the heck out of stuff to make it “loud”. Ruining dynamics and high end IMO. Audiophiles started going for higher sampling rates and such from analog transfer…but over time average joe preferred automated everything so now a lot of things are “built in” including the hiss cancellation. Unfortunately it is in the hiss frequency range that the guitar actually has nice overtones, so killing those on old analog is just killing the basic guitar tone. I don’t see how the situation can change unless people simply embrace the hiss.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to Ricardo)
It's been a long while since I've thought about this stuff but I believe Dolby originally was a pre-emphasis at source, de-emphasis at receiver scheme. You weren't supposed to run Dolby noise reduction on tapes that weren't recorded with it.
I know AI is an unpopular term around here but signal processing really has come a long way since the days of cassette tapes. It's conceivable that processing could essentially identify and separate noise, although it might also have to recreate (probably with best guess) the original signal to some extent, meaning it wouldn't truly be as recorded. But I don't know, I haven't really been keeping up with this stuff at all in recent years, so no idea about the current state of affairs. It might be that tape hiss is very difficult to deal with but the snap, crackle and pop of old acetate presses might be more manageable. But, again, I'm out of my depth even talking about this so I probably should bow out of the discussion.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
I don’t think you can fix this as if they saved all the original files or something. I could imagine it went into the machine via the filters in place.
It is not supposed to be like that for old recordings; I've done this (with old Argentine tango records) many years ago and you always start from the digital file (once the pure A/D is done) to try and apply any tweaks or filtering - because with old recordings, each one is unique where it pops or crackles (if you are removing these) and ideally you would also let the record run for a bit to get a background hiss (and one-per-revolution repeated pop and crackle, if any) segment without the actual music, to work off of so as to "subtract" as best one can that from the actual signal without losing any signal quality. (meaning that you need the whole recording to analyze and compose your filters or tweaks; can't do it as you go second by second digitizing)
Now with more advanced pattern matching (confusingly called AI) we are starting to see even better results with this, so it is entirely possible to get a very good result if one had the digital file as it came out of the pure A/D conversion. To me, because these are old (and not that many) recordings, it is more likely there is - or was - a pure digital file laying around for each. As Rob says, best practice should be to always release that (along with the filtered/worked-on file, if desired).
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
I started collecting vinyl flamenco records about 10 years ago, and the guitars all sound great no matter how old the record, and the hiss and crackle pop noise is very welcome.
How about this one? It doesn't have to be vinyl. As you can see it's a mp3 file. The hiss noise is still there.
Thanks for posting. This is better than what I've been listening to on youtube. With hiss removed not only is the guitar weaker, but Juan Mojama's voice is missing detail and less present. e.g.
Posts: 15329
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to devilhand)
quote:
ORIGINAL: devilhand
quote:
I started collecting vinyl flamenco records about 10 years ago, and the guitars all sound great no matter how old the record, and the hiss and crackle pop noise is very welcome.
How about this one? It doesn't have to be vinyl. As you can see it's a mp3 file. The hiss noise is still there.
Good find devil!! Well I guess if they are out there someone needs to go back and salvage all of those recordings like this. Notice every note on Montoya’s guitar is crystal and yes the voice sounds better too. The hiss and noise is a necessary evil, but considering the content and historical significance I welcome it. I have all these cds that were filtered and they are junk to me now.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to kitarist)
Some good stuff there. The “Viejo Agujetas” recording is the live one of Manuel’s father that’s been widely available for a long time, but there are two of Manuel that you guys might not have heard. Also, Enrique Morente with Manolo Sanlúcar (good period for his older falsetas), several recordings of Manuel Moneo and an interview with tío Borrico.
RE: Sociedad Pizarras y Flamendro (in reply to devilhand)
There is also Carlos Martín Ballester's channel playing original 78's.
He has digitized some of his collection. Below is the comparison. Though of course listening on a phone/computer to a compressed file on youtube is always much worse than a CD on a decent hi-fi system. https://www.coleccioncarlosmartinballester.com/
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