Listening past the Snap, Crackle and Pop
Muttmutt writes :
Both Slashdot and Wired recently reported on a guy who’s been digitizing his collection of more than 6,500 78 RPM records. I decided to check it out for myself and discovered a lost world of wonderful music that hasn’t seen the light of day in decades.
So far, he’s managed to digitize more than 3,700 titles into 128kbit MP3 files. There’s nothing sophisticated about his process or his setup. The files have no ID3 tags and are identified only by the file name. He includes the song title, artis and catalog number in the title so it’s possible to look up the individual record in another online database of 78s.
His setup looks like this:
Not very sophisticated, but it gets the job done. His site tells the story of his rig and what it takes for him to record these old records.
The music is pure magic. There is such a depth and breadth of musical styles, artists, types and genres that anything I write here would barely scratch the surface. But let me list a few highlights of the collection that appealed to me.
- Glenn Miller
- Benny Goodman
- Mel Torme (aka The Velvet Fog)
- Frank Sinatra
- Dean Martin
- Bessie Smith
- Sarah Vaughn
- Hoagy Carmichael
- Old Hawaiian music
But no small part of the magic of these recordings comes from the “natural” sound they have. They remind me of old movies and a time when things moved a little slower (even at 78 RPM). In a way, it’s just like opening a time capsule filled with wonderful goodies.
Filed under culture, hack, sites i like, technology : Comments (2) : Aug 16th, 2008 by muttmutt
August 21st, 2008 at 6:04 am
Sounds cool, but this link is down (http://78records.cdbpdx.com/)
August 21st, 2008 at 7:19 am
Looks like Yahoo took his site down again. The story I read was that he paid for an unlimited storage / unlimited bandwidth account that apparently wasn’t. Keep checking. Last time this happened, it came back in a few days.