Vinyls
- From: "Kaustubh Pingle" <kcpingle@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 18 Apr 2006 22:08:21 -0700
On a differnet yahoogroup, there was an interesting post by one Mr Arun
Kamat....thought of sharing it with RMIM and maybe start a lovely
techincal/other discussions ?
Regds
KCP
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Bass = low freqeuncies, heard by playing bass guitar, bass drum, bass
port of tumba, dagga (tabla)
Treble = high frequencies, heard when a cymbal is hit with drum
sticks, higher notes of guitars, brass, strings
Just a quick background of vinyls before I try to show you what we
have missed all these years. As all of us know records have been the
source of enjoying music for movies made in 60s to early 90s. Records
produced for bollywood movies in 60s to 70s used shellac (or in
layman's words 'tar'). From 70s vinyl (PVC = poly vinyl chloride) was
used to manufacture records. Hence records of older movies that are
made up of shellac would be more heavy, more wear prone and could
also break partially or completely. I have an LP of Hare rama hare
krishna and can hear lots of clicks, cuts when its played.
There are many points that need to be kept in mind when a record is
cut that HMV (actually Gramaphone Company, Calcutta) did not care
about. There is lot of thought process invovled and its not a simple
formula. To have good mix of stereo, low frequencies (bass), high
frequencies (treble), loudness, prevent stylus jumps etc. many
considerations need made by the record cutting engineers. For example
songs with higher treble should be kept on the circumference or
beginning of the record. One side of a record should at max. have @24
min. of recording for 33 rpm records, 12 min for 45 rpm records with
times for optimal sound as 16min for 33 rpm, 10 min for 45 rpm. I
think these guidelines regarding time limits were still observed by
record companies in those days. Though to have a better bass, records
need to have wider grooves and in such a case the pin or stylus could
jump off to the next track if the groove is too wide - or bass is too
deep. This is mainly due to inertia of the stylus and groove geomtery.
As per RIAA's guidelines, too low basses or transient highs in
trebles could be toned down when the record is cut to avoid jumping
and similar issues and later the record player's preamp can boost
these frequencies at the time of playback.
But !!! If you compare the quality of records that HMV cut, it was
highly inconsistent, most of the times of inferior or sub inferior
quality. Many of their records released in the 60s, 70s did not
follow good standards resulting in poor quality sound. Vinyl of
Yadaaon Ki Baraat was IMO too noisy, used artificial or pseudo stereo
and it was a big mess. Few of you may not agree. For example it
violated basic principle and kept aapke kamre mein (a 15 min song)
towards the end. There could be couple of reasons such as 1 disc has
to have songs from 1 movie, duration of songs etc. But pls note that
HMV/EMI used to sell LPs at 45 to 50 Rs thoughout from 60s till 90s.
40-50Rs was a big amount in those days compared to what they
delivered. Don't want to say what they should have done, but in the
end its we that got low grade products. The climax portion of aapke
kamre mein is just awesome but the sound quality on the LP is
pathetic. Possible recording itself was not good but the record
company too contributed to create a mess of final record.
On the other hand, vinyl of HKKN had a fantastic quality. It is 'The
Best' Indian LP of hindi movies i have heard so far. The side that
had competition no. and qawali was in stereo and the other side was
in mono. All low, mid & high frequencies sounded great if you listen
to HKKN. HKKN LPs had 2 versions, one released in 1975-76 had lyrics,
centre spreads with many more pictures as against that released
later. LP of Shaan too had great quality, but as I remember the
stereo effect was not much pronounced. If anybody could pls check the
stereo quality of shaan LPs that would be great. LP of Rocky was just
fine with some stereo, but the sound quality was still good. In short
my personal review about some of the LPs that I own and that I
remember about would be:
Great sound (if not stereo): HKKN, Sanam Teri Kasam, Satte Pe Satta,
Shaan, Naram Garam (Increco), Harjaee, Alibaba & 40 chor, Rocky
Mediocre: Khoobsorat, Barsaat Ki Ek Raat, Saagar, Indrajeet, Kudrat
(EP), Khel khel mein (EP), ZKDH, Agar Tum Na Hote
Bad ones: Hare rama hare krishna, Aradhana, The Train, Golmaal,
Jawaani, Jawaani Deewani, Yaadon Ki Baraat, MahaChor (EP)
You may pls add to the list. There is also a known fact: vinyl lovers
are used to the warm sound they get to hear as a result of harmonic
distortion which is absent in CDs. So vinyl lovers would definitely
not like to listen to CDs. There also is loss in signal or sound you
would get for LPs on the higher frequency side due to wear, though
the warm feeling on the lower frequency side still would stay!
As picked from em.wikipedia.org: The RIAA has suggested the following
possible losses for vinyls: down to 20 kHz after one play, 18 kHz
after three plays, 17 kHz after five, 16 kHz after eight, 14 kHz
after fifteen, 13 kHz after twenty five, 10 kHz after thirty five,
and 8 kHz after eighty plays.
Hence dynamic range on the higher side of vinyls eventually reduces
over a period of time due to wear of the disc and/or stylus. Also
range on the lower side (bass) cannot be too low else the stylus
would keep on jumping as mentioned earlier. So the next question is
did RD record his songs with lot of bass - i.e. bass drums or bass
sound from tumbas but eventually those low frequencies got toned down
due to poor record cutting techniques? I can hear good bass sound in
Harjaee vinyls but not in ZKDH vinyl thanks to HMV/EMI's
inconsistency. Most of his movies from 70s do not have solid bass
drum or bass tumba sound (ignore bass guitar pls).
Pls note that most of the commercial CDs that we get from Saregama
are pathetic as they are ripped from old vinyls which are in dire
straits, am sure most of you would agree. If Saregama could at least
use a decent quality vinyl + dehissers + declickers to made a CD of
old movies, they could have given us good quality CDs and got awards
from Cedar.. Ideally if they were to burn CDs from master versions of
the songs with more cleaning, dehissing, declicking that would have
been great.
But their intention is to make money by giving rotten quality CDs to
us poor people when the composers, recordists, vocalists and
musicians have slogged out their guts to get great sounds on the
master media. Other alternative is to get horrible CDs from hamaracd
which I have heard break or come off within a couple of months :)
Mogambo khush hua.
Few Japanese companies such as ELP have tried to introduce a concept
of playing records using lasers to avoid wear-and-tear of a vinyl but
since there is no physical contact the vinyl grooves don't get
cleaned up and the dirt gets accumulated, finally sound quality is
not as high as expected. So what we could clean the vinyls manually.
But for some other reasons this laser driven record players did not
get popular. Should check out in the market about such players.
I wouldn't compare vinyls with CDs or spools or cassettes or dats at
this stage, thats not my point.
The summary of my post is that
1) RD composed songs with tremendous wide dynamic range on lower
frequencies and higher ones, also gave seperate mics to almost all
musicians, experimented with mic placing techniques to get great
stereo sound
2)Records is what all of us bought and was prime source of music in
those days
3)Saregama has released many CDs that are ripped from records, added
pseduo stereo in 'Classical Forever' series.
Due to incompetencies of the company that made records in those days
or CDs in recent age, we have not been able to hear the actual output
that we could have otherwise enjoyed. We might be happy with whatever
we have because we don't know what more potentially we could have
got. In short we are the sufferers as in 'ignorance is bliss' !!!
Pls add more inputs and comments,
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One more member there, Mr Arnab added his comments as follows :
I also feel in most cases HMV has provided ACDs with
far inferior quality. For instance, Bemisaal recording
is even worser that the cassette. In many many ACDs of
HMV they have only incresed the gain with high
frequency region of the spectrum boosted resulting in
a complete mess - what is called technically t
"aliasing error".
In brief, w/o any sophiticated means its difficult 2
decode the high(extreme part of a spectrum) frequency
signals, hence these high frequency level
sounds/images are "aliased" in lower harmonics -
something that is called aliasing error.
I feel t recording instruments -
quantizer,digitizer,filtering,compressor,dynamic range
controller that HMV used in ACDs that r released in
India r inferior compared 2 what they do in U.K.
Because I have found UK ACDs sound superb most of the
times. I don't need 2 give examples as members know
better than me in this respect. Its beyond my
comprehension why HMV guys r so reluctant in releasing
good quality audio and t irony is as they r having 80%
of t copyrights we have no 1 else fall upon.
Of late, Saregama has launched a customized
product-portal i.e. Hamaracd. Many of our friends have
already purchased a lot from there. I don't want 2 get
into the quality they r provoding but surely an ACD
@275/- and $10(I am nt sure) for overseas customers r
nt a small amount. Moreover, they hv kept 20-30 secs
clip for all songs so that ppl can listen to what they
r buying. My point is when it is a customized section
a person knows what he is going 2 buy and the clip
that plays in their site is can't b more than 10% of
the
original 1 due 2 t net conection. Instead they can
include many many films which need 2 b released
properly. members know thr r a number of films like
KAUN KAISEY,DHUAN,JAIYATRA,JANAM SE PAHLE,TEESRA
KAUN,SHAITAAN etc etc(t list is too long) that r still
obscure and difficult 2 get. This leads 2
copying,ripping and all kind of improper way of
getting
sound tracks. Still AA GALE LAG JA ACD is nt easily
avbl stuff but its remix has flooded t market. God
knows what service they r giving 2 our gr8 maestros.
Sorry for slightly off-t-track issue.
Although personally I don't own a TT or records but my
experience says they r just pristine. Difference
between an Analog and a Digital output does have some
difference but 2 reach that is nt very easy. But t
quality of ACDs that HMV is churing out these days
have made this clarification too easy as most of t ACD
recording is a sheer disappointment.
Coming 2 panchamda's music, in many songs t
instrumental effects r so delicate and thought
provoking that if 1 plays them in a cheap playback
system he eventually lose t spirit of t songs. For
example, "kaisi lag rahi hoon main" of JHUTHA SACH has
wonderful mix of fore ground percussion with
background
low frequency base guitar that holds t song. Or "tumse
milke" of CHOR POLICE - t ACD version clearly shows t
traces of filtering, it sounds like as if its
forcefully played in hollow place which create some
metallic sound.
.
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