Precious Voices
4 Kinnell Street, Thornhill, Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, DG3 4JL
email info@preciousvoices.co.uk web www.preciousvoices.co.uk
Telephone 01848 331999
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Feature:

Playing broken 78 rpm records with lasers!

broken78 Graphic

broken78 Graphic

Download a sample from one of the restored recordings.





www.preciousvoices.co.uk Telephone 01848 331999

 It's not often you get asked to do the impossible, but it does happen. This time with the help of a specialist Laser Turntable, we were able to do the impossible and play a broken record.

Our customer, a former member of staff at the BBC World Service and an authority on the Clarinet, presented us with the broken 78 record (seen to the right) and asked if we could do anything to recover the recording for an important lecture he was giving. He'd located the record in a shop in Prague and asked a friend about to holiday in the city to bring back this rare recording he'd located. His friend, unused to the fragility of 78's placed the record in his suitcase unprotected, with no padding and the suitcase travelled in the aircraft hold! He delivered the record to our customer as you see it, in two pieces!

Normally there would be very little that could be done. Trying to track a stylus across the cracked and damaged grooves would be all but impossible. But what if you played the record without touching the record? Yes, it is possible, using a device called a Laser Turntable, which looks like an overgrown CD player and just like a CD machine uses lasers to play records.

These turntables, hand built in Japan are therefore both expensive and quite rare. We think there may be just 3 in the UK. With the assistance of Les Enstone, former UK Distributor of the turntables, we were able to try and play the broken record; which it successfully did.

As the turntable plays back the recording, its recorded into a computer and stored as an electronic file. Using this raw electronic file we can then apply various filters to remove clicks and filter out the noise of years of wear to produce a finished playable recording as near as possible to the original recording. As with most old 78s, removing all the noise leaves you with a very brittle sounding recording. So some noise and sounds of wear has been left in intentionally.

 

Customer Testimonial


"Bespoke audio processing of old recordings, media conversion and transfer, computer-based filtering, quality and level control, elimination of hum and whistle, noise and crackle, not to mention speed correction, is a niche market. I needed such a one-off facility, to recover the sound of rare broken 78s that did not justify installing a home studio, so the work remained undone for decades. Following a chance discovery on the Internet, I risked a telephone call to Precious Voices with no prior introduction. During a telephone call later the same day, it became apparent that possible solutions to the problem and the techniques involved were understood. The customer’s wishes were quickly assimilated. Clear advice was given on secure posting of the unique source material and once received, frequent detailed progress reports were given priority. The time scale was short, and the efficiency apparently effortless. Without a doubt Precious Voices provides a five star service. Whoever said that money could not buy happiness?"

Mr Bryant, London.
November 2009.
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Precious Voices
web: www.preciousvoices.co.uk
email :info@preciousvoices.co.uk
telephone: 01848 331999


 

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