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What a great project. Whilst the George Blood LP transfers are obviously
well done, there does need to be some sort of quality control for material
sent by others. For instance I have looked for recordings on Archive.org in
the past and found some horrible transfers often with the note "78 RPM
record GRINDING noises is removed (with Goldwave) so that we can hear what
went onto the record instead of nearly a century of misuse". These
recordings have had ridiculous amounts of noise reduction applied and sound
appalling. Searching http://archive.org/details/78rpm  links to many of
these, along with low quality MP3's etc.

The minimum standard should be 44/16 flac with no restoration. although
archival 96/24 is preferable.So I think what Clark was saying is very
valid.

I applaud your idea, but if not transferred professionally by someone who
knows and understands the medium to the proper standard then you run the
risk of devaluing the whole project (in my opinion)

Take these two - taken at random. Both appalling transfers with all the
life sucked out of them by heavy handed noise reduction and covered in
artifacts.

https://archive.org/details/GloomySunday-theFamousHungarianSuicideSong

https://archive.org/details/FredAstaire-31-33

Richard



On 12 May 2017 at 13:32, Brewster Kahle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Clark--
>
> If you are talking about the transfers quality on archive.org, may I
> suggest you look at the ones here:
>
>      https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?sort=-publicdate
> these are the ones we have transferred with George Blood and listed in
> most recently archived first.
>
> These are 96KHz, 24bit deep monster FLAC files, with both EQ and Flat
> versions, and with 4 different styli.    This is to make it so we have
> alot to work with, and I hope there will be debates in the reviews as to
> which is better for which disc.
> They are all recorded at 78.16rpm (I think), but if others would like it
> we can make the player adjustable to make it so there can be runtime
> adjustments.
>
>
> If you are talking more philosophically about digital v physical, I
> think of this as a reference collection, not as a full-on substitute.  I
> hope we can use this project to research transfer techniques, discover
> 78's and experience them in new ways, and show the value in these discs
> so encourage physical AND digital preservation.
>
> -brewster
>
>
>
> On 5/11/17 10:53 PM, Clark Johnsen wrote:
> > A noble project indeed. Just two caveats. There are various ways to play
> > the discs, some better than others, some very poor indeed. Are the latter
> > to stand as the permanent representations? And then one must ask what
> > digital medium is utterly trustworthy? And/or which "cloud"?
> >
> > These questions have bothered me for several decades. To my mind they
> > remain unanswered.
> >
> > On Fri, May 12, 2017 at 12:45 AM, Brewster Kahle <[log in to unmask]>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Today at the ARSC meeting we announced "The Great 78 Project" to
> >> encourage preservation, research and discovery of 78rpm records.
> >>
> >> The Internet Archive, working with the Archive of Contemporary Music (B
> >> George), George Blood LP, and Coast Mastering (Jessica Thompson), we now
> >> have a project website:
> >>
> >>      http://great78.archive.org/    and
> >>
> >>      http://archive.org/details/78rpm where users have uploaded 57,000
> >> 78's and cylinder transfers, and
> >>
> >>      we have started digitizing donated collections.
> >>
> >> The idea is to make this a community project to help bring all of our
> >> collections to light and weave them into the web.
> >>
> >> Please give feedback and please join!
> >>
> >>   * *Share knowledge.* Help us improve metadata, curate the collection,
> >>     contact collectors, do research on the corpus, etc.
> >>   * *Include your digitized collection.* If you have already digitized
> >>     78s or related books or media, we’d like to include your work in the
> >>     collection.
> >>   * *Digitize your collection.*  We’ve worked hard to make digitization
> >>     safe, fast and affordable, so if you’d like to digitize your
> >>     collection we can help.
> >>   * *Donate 78s.*  We will digitize your collection and preserve the
> >>     physical discs for the long term.
> >>
> >> Any ideas or questions:  [log in to unmask]
> >>
> >> -brewster
> >>
> >> Digital Librarian
> >> Internet Archive
> >>
>