Hi,

In many movies you can listen to the sound of old 78 rpm shellac recordings.
Is it possible to listen to this nice sound on modern digital equipment?

--
Frank Klemm

Ehm..i love you.

LOL !!

I guess, everything is possible Frank. I'm sure you could implement such a killer filter pretty easily.

However, whatever you do, *PLEASE* don't enable it by default in mppdec

hmm.. i dont know what you mean, frank. if you want to re-create the sound characteristics of old records, try izotope vinyl (freeware)

http://izotope.com/products/audio/vinyl/vinyl.html

if you are looking for a program that creates the "warmth" of analogue recordings, i suggest psp vintage warmer

http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/vintage.html

Uhmm.... what's a shellac?

shellacs are records.
edit: look at post below

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=shellac

Well, I've worked on replicating the Shellac sound ever since I've had ears surgically grafted on my head after that accident with the vacuum cleaner. I've come to the following conclusions:
-at least 57 bits are required
-a sample frequency of 140mhz is required.
For this I've created a brand new codec, which I will name "Puff" (after me, puff, who made this codec!), based on brand new psychoaccoustic models involving the theory of Creationism. It is already much more transparent, in regards to the original Shellac record, than mpc in the 40 to 50 mbps bitrate range.

Next up is the challenge of replicating the perfect sound of wax cylinders. For that I suspect I will have to update my algorithms to take into account the moon cycle (hope you don't mind me stealing that part of your code).

Haha I see. Think I'll go to the local record store and find out what this "warm" thing is.

do shellac recordings beat the LP's in the '© warm and fuzzy ®'™ department?

i'd like to check them out if they do.

Where I grew up, "shellac" literally meant "a bunch of junk", kind of like the random stuff you would find at a yard sale, or on the floor of a slobby college student's bedroom. Maybe it's a rough translation of something from Hebrew or Yiddish... I wish I had my Jewish book of slang with me.

Shellac is the material the 78's are made from (note, they are fragile and can be broken pretty easily just using hand pressure -- my grandmother used to have some).

A link to a 1952 article:

http://www.shellac.org/recording/record5.html

(P.S. no, I don't listen to 'em )

I can tell you it's not from hebrew. Probably Yiddish.

This is probably impossible....
What if I copy them to DVD or HDD lossless with 96 kHz 32bit IEEE float?
Will I lose quality and 'warm fuzzy feeling'®?
Will my grandma be happy with the sound?
She is a real expert, can distinguish MP3 from exactly 1 nautical mile (no less, no more).



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What shellac really is.

Follow the links on this page...

Did you know that shellac is sprayed on fruits to keep them fresh?

I am sure you can recreate the sound of 78's in the digital domain. Why? They sound like crap. Lots of surface noise, limited dynamic range and low fidelity. They break easily, are often off-center and carry about three minutes music on a 10" record; maybe 5 minutes on a 12" record.

The analogy would be to take a new car, detune it, remove the computer functions which make it run efficiently and economically to experience the feeling. Having listened to 78's when that was all there was, believe me when I say today's technoligy is way better.

But, YMMV.

L8R

We all know that Shellac feeling © can't be reproduced by digital, do we?

Re: the car analogy, you forgot to add a crank start.

I've got a bunch of 78's I want to get around to transcribing, but I have to
dig up a suitable cartridge and stylus. I already have an old preamp with
a bunch of equalization choices (from before the RIAA standard)

Maybe just wind up a victrola and put a mike on the horn for that real old-timey effect?
The cat's pajamas in the old days was a stylus made from cactus needle.

you would need such a player, then sample the same song multiple times ™ so the dust&scratches&warmth ™ would get randomly distributed, next you would need a player that would pick a random sample of the same song when it is ready in the playlist (the more samples, the more belivable it would be i guess).
(or is that cheating since there is no dsp's?)