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In Reply to: I would definitely call this vintage;... posted by J. S. Bach on January 13, 2007 at 18:55:18:
It probably does really well at 1KHz. I'll bet THD is less than 1%.
High Fidelity once did a review of the original Edison phono. As expected, frequency response was a little limited, but 1KHz performance was surprisingly good.Not only that, but there are no electronics to cause harshness and edginess to the music.
Had people been dafter back then, you could just hear it: the new electronic amps in phonographs are sterile and edgy. A $1000 Edison acoustical phonograph, with jewel bearings, stainless steel fittings, imported teak wood cabinet, and hyper pure aluminum bronze horn precision machined to a perfect exponential shape, will beat the pants off a phono with an electronic amp. The electronic system may have better specs, but we listen with our ears, not to specs.
Actually, I did read, in an Intro to Hi Fi book by Hans Fantel, that dating from the 20's, IIRC, people would be fooled by live versus recorded tests played behind drawn curtains.
Follow Ups:
I did several years ago at a place in Houston that specialized in selling old Victrolas and Edisons. The recording was a voice with orchestra, the orchestra sounded pretty dim and distant but the voice sounded like the guy was singing through the horn. Remarkable feeling of liveness! Horn coloration of course but still - very striking! One of these days I'm going to get one with a few recordings, just to have one.
...there was only one pickup in those days of no mixing boards and the horn was placed right in front of the singer. He or she had to literally scream into the horn as it was attached directly to the cutting head (direct to disc is not a recent invention!) and was cutting the grooves into a wax master. The marriage of the telephone transmitter to an amplifier had to be a great boon to the singer.
Dave
Later Gator,
Crank up your talking machine, grab a jar of your favorite "kick-back", sit down, relax, and let the good times roll.
Yes, that's true, but what I meant by that was that it sounded almost like the guy was singing at the other end of the horn, i.e. it sounded like a live guy was just on the other end. Quite remarkable, and unexpected. Not too much noise either (as opposed to electrical reproduction where it seems like all you hear is snap, crackle, pop, although I'm sure a large part of that is the acoustical horn rolled off the noise.
...for some reason, the acoustic recordings seemed to sound better on the Victrola than they did on the 1952 Capehart. However the electrical recordings sounded better on the Capehart. BTW, watching the Capehart play both sides of the record was a show all by itself.
Dave
Later Gator,
Crank up your talking machine, grab a jar of your favorite "kick-back", sit down, relax, and let the good times roll.
When Edison introduced his acoustic disk machine that played acoustic recordings in 1915, he put on a tour of live vs recorded demonstrations, and even some music critics said that they could not tell the difference. We'll go back to that in a few years when rolling blackouts and brownouts become more common.
People were daft back then, I have read many accounts of critics shunning the early electric reproducer in favor of the acoustic
type. the general criticism was that the electrics were bass heavy
and unatural.
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