K.M. Richards New Gig

[cc333]

If a stream were MP3 at 48k, it would be unlistenable for music, and barely adequate for talk.

But AAC-HE at that bit rate is roughly equivalent to MP3 at 96-128k I think, so not as bad as it seems.

c

 

[semoochie]

If a stream were MP3 at 48k, it would be unlistenable for music, and barely adequate for talk.

But AAC-HE at that bit rate is roughly equivalent to MP3 at 96-128k I think, so not as bad as it seems.

c

Is it as good as 78rpm? Nobody complained at the time.

 

[cc333]

Is it as good as 78rpm? Nobody complained at the time.

Hmm, I suppose?

Quite honestly, even such as they are, I would rather listen to a good quality 78 than a sub-128k MP3 stream.

Some 78s – especially more recent ones from the 50s – can sound surprisingly decent when played back on good, modern equipment (disclosure: I inherited my grandparents' and great grandparents' 78 collections, and I've actually listened to some of it).

c

 

[vchimpanzee]

Hmm, I suppose?

Quite honestly, even such as they are, I would rather listen to a good quality 78 than a sub-128k MP3 stream.

Some 78s – especially more recent ones from the 50s – can sound surprisingly decent when played back on good, modern equipment (disclosure: I inherited my grandparents' and great grandparents' 78 collections, and I've actually listened to some of it).

c

Serenade Radio in England still has some 78s, the DJs say. Every now and then, one of them will say the sound isn't that good on whatever recording they have and the DJ talks about possibly getting a new one. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a 78, but with the old recordings that make up so much of the music, it's a problem.

 

[K6JHU]

With the high speed and wide grooves a 78 can deliver some exceptional sound, if you can get rid of the surface noise. The real issue is the poor quality microphones and cutting lathes from that era.

 

[KilowattKat]

Personally, I like the old timey sound of 78's. That's the way people of that era listened to it, and didn't complain. Why does everything always have to sound perfect? If they were made to today's standards, it would be like the colorization of old B&W movies. Something that destroys the way it was originally made.

Bringing this around to radio ..K-BIRD is a station that specializes in playing 78's, even wax cylinders.

KBRD Radio AM 920 am 680 - America's musical museum playing music of the 1st half of the 20th century, commercial free.

 

[davideduardo]

Personally, I like the old timey sound of 78's. That's the way people of that era listened to it, and didn't complain. Why does everything always have to sound perfect? If they were made to today's standards, it would be like the colorization of old B&W movies. Something that destroys the way it was originally made.

Bringing this around to radio ..K-BIRD is a station that specializes in playing 78's, even wax cylinders.

KBRD Radio AM 920 am 680 - America's musical museum playing music of the 1st half of the 20th century, commercial free.

How does that station sustain itself? I looked at the Artist Roster on their home page, and could recognize, perhaps, 25% of the artists. That would mean that their target is mostly people from "The Silent Generation" born before WW II.

 

[cc333]

How does that station sustain itself? I looked at the Artist Roster on their home page, and could recognize, perhaps, 25% of the artists. That would mean that their target is mostly people from "The Silent Generation" born before WW II.

That's a good question!

Maybe they're part of a cluster where other stations with ownership in common are subsidizing KBRD's operating costs somehow?

Hopefully they don't go silent like the generation (is there any person of that generation still alive?) EDIT: I misunderstood; there's still a fair number of people from the Silent generation alive, if not well (the youngest of them are in their early 80s now).

The Greatest generation is close to dead, but there's still a few of them, and KBRD does offer some music for them.

However, I would say the bulk of the music of this station best fits with the Lost generation, which is completely dead now.

c

 

[KilowattKat]

How does that station sustain itself? I looked at the Artist Roster on their home page, and could recognize, perhaps, 25% of the artists. That would mean that their target is mostly people from "The Silent Generation" born before WW II.

They are non comercial. Supported by donations, and underwriting. There is also funding from the Nortwest Rock N Roll Preservation Society. It's amazing how they have been doing this successfully now since 1995.

 

[radiofan2023]

Personally, I like the old timey sound of 78's. That's the way people of that era listened to it, and didn't complain. Why does everything always have to sound perfect? If they were made to today's standards, it would be like the colorization of old B&W movies. Something that destroys the way it was originally made.

Bringing this around to radio ..K-BIRD is a station that specializes in playing 78's, even wax cylinders.

KBRD Radio AM 920 am 680 - America's musical museum playing music of the 1st half of the 20th century, commercial free.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a station playing wax cylinders until now.

 

[cc333]

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a station playing wax cylinders until now.

Me neither.

Did any of the earliest stations from the early 1920s ever play them? Even way back then, wax cylinders were considered obsolete (many of them were, I believe, manufactured in the 1880s and 1890s mostly), so maybe not....

c

 

[davideduardo]

Me neither.

Did any of the earliest stations from the early 1920s ever play them? Even way back then, wax cylinders were considered obsolete (many of them were, I believe, manufactured in the 1880s and 1890s mostly), so maybe not....

Early radio stations did not play phonograph records to a great extent. They mostly had live music, ranging from just a pianist or other soloist to orchestras. There were plenty of vocalists, both solo and groups. And lots of "talks" and news.

Yes, there was some use of phonograph records, but early radio was not based on the playing of records the way it is today.

 

[cc333]

@davideduardo You are right of course.

Nevertheless, wax cylinders have been obsolete for most of the 20th century.

c

 

[semoochie]

Hmm, I suppose?

Quite honestly, even such as they are, I would rather listen to a good quality 78 than a sub-128k MP3 stream.

Some 78s – especially more recent ones from the 50s – can sound surprisingly decent when played back on good, modern equipment (disclosure: I inherited my grandparents' and great grandparents' 78 collections, and I've actually listened to some of it).

c

I didn't realize that 78s had a shelf life into the 1950s, other than Golden Records for children. I had some of those. It seems like they were smaller than a 45rpm.

 

[cc333]

I didn't realize that 78s had a shelf life into the 1950s

Yeah.

Basically, for a time in the late 40s and 50s, they coexisted with 45s, which eventually replaced them because, well, they're better (45s are smaller, have better sound quality, and, unlike 78s, are mostly unbreakable).

In some parts of the world, I think 78s were made for special purposes (children's records, etc) into the early 70s at least, but I don't remember for sure.

c

 

[radiofan2023]

I still have my grandfather's Victrola, and it still works! I inherited it from my brother. I got the wax cylinders converted to digital and they sound good!

 

[vchimpanzee]

I didn't realize that 78s had a shelf life into the 1950s, other than Golden Records for children. I had some of those. It seems like they were smaller than a 45rpm.

Mine were larger. One was green and had "Here Comes Peter Cottontail". Another was yellow and had "Happy Birthday".

The only other 78 I remember was made by some family members in a studio. I guess people did that back then. The sound quality was really bad.

My father did have several "albums" by the original definition. They might have been 78s.

 

[AMRadioGuy]

Yep. I've noticed. I've commented on this many times. It perplexes me that the big streaming platforms used (or owned) by the radio industry haven't yet standardized on 256 or 320 kbit/s AAC-LC and MP3. Everybody under the sun is now continuously streaming videos to their smartphones everywhere they go -- streams that unrelentingly gobble megabits per second. "Audiophile grade" lossy codec bitrates are nothing compared to that, and yet the radio industry continues to believe it's 1997 and that we're all on dial-up.

Yeah, music on AM radio done half heartedly with a processor on a stock setting sounds better than a lot of those securenet streams.

The AMs I regularly listen to music on sound worlds better than their streams do. That’s really unfortunate.
A lot of pirate streams sound far better than streams by actual stations.

I’ll take AM, buzz, hiss, crackle, pops, and a whole lot more before I resort to a super lossy stream or file.

There’s no reason for a station to not have a decent sound stream in 2026 and it’s sad that so many still do.

 

[K6JHU]

I spent a weekend once with a set of wax cylinders and a player and transcribed them to open reel (another almost defunct format). I will have to try and message KBRD and see if they want the tape.

 

[yeoldeschool]

If a stream were MP3 at 48k, it would be unlistenable for music, and barely adequate for talk.

But AAC-HE at that bit rate is roughly equivalent to MP3 at 96-128k I think, so not as bad as it seems.

It is difficult to compare them because SBR adds a second dimension to the comparison. With MP3, smeared, watery, tinkly HF slush is the downside of low bitrates, while with HE-AAC, one-dimensional, gritty HF audioturf is the downside. Some hear neither of those effects, others hear only one, and still others hear both and can't stand either.

The only way to truly please everyone (save the most golden-eared, lossless-only-please audiophiles) is upgrading to 256-320 kbit/s AAC-LC or MP3. But, of course, as my original lament went, most stations seem largely inert on performing that upgrade even now that modern internet mechanics and costs have cleared the path.

This situation actually reminds me of the dilemma distortion-canceled clipping once presented radio stations with -- where heavy clipper action wasn't as fully canceled (masked) for females as it was for males, forcing female-oriented formats to lean light on their clippers and heavier on their less punchy HF limiting instead. Psychoacoustic coding artifacts, by comparison, may not be more or less audible by gender, but there is still a "two listener buckets" situation where you have those who don't hear them, and those who do. And for me, not exploiting modern internet speeds to maximally mask codec artifacting strikes me as the 1990s equivalent of flooring the pedal on an Optimod's psychoacoustic clippers while disabling its HF limiting functionality entirely.

Is it as good as 78rpm? Nobody complained at the time.

Sure, although nobody yet had any superior alternatives to find them lacking in comparison to. I'm sure had 33 RPM vinyl appeared half a century earlier, the era's comparatively inferior-sounding 78 RPMs would have gone out of fashion all the sooner.

Our great grandparents were undoubtedly as keen on good sound as we are now; we just don't think of them that way because they were all wearing hearing aids by the time we came along. Consider, for instance, the history of early 20th century sound technologies Hollywood cycled through in search of ever-cleaner audio following the invention of talkies. Remember all the fancy logos in the opening credits of that period's films, bragging about marvels like the "Western Electric's Noiseless Recording System"? And then there was Armstrong's FM research in the 1920s. I think gramps would have been quite happy having a Bose CD sound system in his 1907 White steamer car, had that been possible. He certainly wouldn't have had any engine noise to mask the quieter parts of his minstrel songs, anyway.

Quite honestly, even such as they are, I would rather listen to a good quality 78 than a sub-128k MP3 stream.

In deed. Noise that is "high entropy," with a gaussian distribution, is much easier for the mind to ignore than patternistic things. Surface noise is like the video grain in fringe analog television reception. Patternistic MP3 artifacts are like the flickering VBI closed captioning bits that get shifted into view by a mistimed genlock. You know, like the ones visible here (if you watch full screen):

Unlike the lossy compression Huell is admiring, that spastic morse code is not amaaaAAAAaazing.

Some 78s – especially more recent ones from the 50s – can sound surprisingly decent when played back on good, modern equipment (disclosure: I inherited my grandparents' and great grandparents' 78 collections, and I've actually listened to some of it).

With the high speed and wide grooves a 78 can deliver some exceptional sound, if you can get rid of the surface noise. The real issue is the poor quality microphones and cutting lathes from that era.

I third this. There are amazing examples on Youtube demonstrating the frequency response and low noise floors of "new old stock" vintage 78s, when properly played back. This one comes to mind, but I have heard way better.

Bringing this around to radio ..K-BIRD is a station that specializes in playing 78's, even wax cylinders.

WOW. Thank you for that! It went straight to my Winamp bookmarks.