A List of Excellent Transfers of 78-rpm Records on CD

Hi guys,

Lately I've really started digging music from the pre-war era and I'm looking for suggestions of good transfers of old 78s on CD.

In my opinion, a good transfer should:
1. have little to no discernible noise reduction artifacts
2. have a natural EQ and no treble reduction
3. have no other effects applied, like reverb or fake stereo.

Here's a very small list for starters:

Everything from Yazoo Records on CD. In my opinion the best transfers I've ever heard. No artifacts, really good tonality. One of their CDs state: "Remastering rare old records presents many difficult choices regarding what direction to take the sound in. Far too often, we feel, the emphasis is to remove most of the noise inherent in surface wear and damaged grooves. This approach results in a deading of the music, both tonally and dynamically. What's left is a hollow shell that has lost much of the music's power and eloquence. [...] If on some selections the noise bothers you, you can mitigate it somehow by reducing slightly (one notch, from say 12 o'clock to 11 o'clock) both the treble and bass and then slightly increase the volume - the only minor ill effect of this is to lessen the music's dynamics a bit."
This is the way 78 transfers should be done.

Early Ellington・The Complete Brunswick and Vocalion Recordings 1926-1931 Very good transfers, same characteristics as the Yazoo transfers.

Robert Johnson - The Centennial Collection A recent reissue, with some discernible noise reduction artifacts, but still very good imo. Hope we will see more like this soon.

Duke Ellington - The Centennial Edition: Complete RCA Victor Recordings This is a big set. There is quite some bass and treble boost going on here, which makes these kind of fatiguing to listen to after a while, but they're still the best transfers I've heard of these 78s, especially the Blanton-Webster sides. Very little noise reduction and you get to hear those stereo sides from '32.

John R.T. Davies
I know a lot of people swear by the transfers of John R.T. Davies and you can find a long list of his masterings in this forum if you do a search. I only heard his Louis Armstrong Hot Fives & Hot Sevens box on JSP and I have to say I'm not that impressed. While most of disc 3 is indeed excellent and beats any other transfers I've heard, the other discs sound weak and too processed. If you compare them to the more recent Sony/Legacy remasters you will understand what I mean. The Sony transfers are not very good either, have too much noise reduction going on, but I prefer them since they show that there is much more clarity present in the recordings.

I hope the future will bring us even better transfers of recordings form the 78 era, since the music is great and there's a lot to be discovered.

 

I have to add:
Classic Columbia, OKeh and Vocalion Lester Young with Count Basie (1936-1940) on Mosaic Records. I don't know if these transfers are from 78s or stampers (I'll have to check the liner notes again), but they're great. I think Mosaic is heading in a good direction with their mastering.

 

While I think John R.T. was probably the best, I agree he wasn't infallible (of course)... I've noticed specifically on JSP discs (like King Oliver '1929-1930' and the Morton set) the kind of quality you refer to. I wonder if it's something to do with that label, post-mastering or during mastering...? They are clearly great transfers, but to me the final results sound a bit "doctored," and lack a certain lustrous ambiance I associate with Victor recordings of that time. For the Oliver and Morton Victors, I'd recommend Classics (594 and 607) and Media 7/Masters of Jazz, respectively.

Jazz Oracle in general is really first class...

http://www.jazzoracle.com/catalogue/index.asp

I have perhaps 7 or 8 of their releases, especially enjoy these:

Curtis Mosby and Henry Starr (BDW 8003)
George McClennon (BDW 8022)
Grey Gull Rarities (BDW 8038)

If you order from Jazz Oracle, be sure to request the free CD 'A Gift From The President' (if it's still available), many rarities and they sound amazing:

http://www.jazzoracle.com/catalogue/BDW_8047.asp

Also, the Frog label is pretty reliable, in particular some of the earlier Davies work... I would recommend:

Thomas Morris (DGF 1)
New Orleans Owls (DGF 2)
Alexander, Where's That Band? (DGF 13)
Johnny Dunn (DGF 33)
Perry Bradford (DGF 56)

 

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These guys do wonders with acoustic recordings.

http://www.archeophone.com/index.php

 

If opera is your thing, everything that was issued on the now defunct Romophone label. Some of that was done by Ward Marston, and I'd say most everything he's done fits the criteria here.

 

Case by case, IMO. Some of their CD's have a lot of NR processing and over reduction of treble.

 

Curious...where do you hear NR artifacts?

 

Are you kidding

Those are treble boosted to the threshold of pain. If you like to hear duke with metallic ringing in the backround from exessive noise reduction, be my guest.

 

A couple of minor quibbles aside, I think this set has some of the best sound I've heard of 78's of this kind of material. Christopher King did the transfers. Yazoo quality or better.

 

These are excellent transfers IMO.

The Boswell Sisters transfers by John R.T. Davies sound sweet to me.

Here's what the Bozzie website says:

Storyville/Nostalgia Arts Vols. 1-5
Hard to find, especially Vols 1 and 5, and often expensive, this collection is a Must Have for the truly Bozzed. There are some weird things about this collection: several songs are repeated with no apparent difference in the tracks. But once you get beyond that wee problem you have got the nearly complete recordings of the Bozzies stretching from their Victor cuts from 1925 through 1936’s swan song I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket. The liner notes that begin in Vol. 2 and run through Vol. 5 are from the Wizard of Boz himself, David McCain. They alone are worth the investment to a true Bozophile. Find 'em, buy 'em, slip on those headphones and enter the nirvana of Boz.

http://www.bozzies.org/buys.html

 

If you want to go back to the very early days of recorded sound, Emile Berliner's Gramophone, the Earliest Discs 1888-1901 on Symposium, has excellent sound, relatively speaking. Best I've heard for so early.

 

I am crazy for properbox sets. They have 4 packed CDs in each set of an artist or group.
One nice feature is where in Jazz so many artists played together... well the Properboxes never duplicate the selections from one artist's box to the next.
I own over fifty Jazz titles in the Proper Box series.
They are very inexpensive too, available on Amazon for from $7 used, to about $18. (a few out of print are higher).
Aside from the complaint they violate the 'extended' American copyright in some items.. (The Properbox sets are manufactured in England, where the copyright has expired, (same as it would have here.. except..)
The other side of copyright is like the Count basie on Decca. Where Count Basie got $75. no other renumeration. So all those years of Decca milking the recordings and who got what?
So aside from the (IMO dubious) claims of copyright, these Proper Box sets of 78 recordings are spectacular. The music is really priceless. The transfer from 78s to CD is well done.

 

I haven't been impressed with the sound of those Proper sets, inconsistent, and tilting very toward too much processing.

 

From the many Proper boxes I've checked out, they're definitely not excellent transfers like crispi's asking for.

 

Lukpac, I can hear some NR during the alternate of "Love in Vain Blues". But I'll be darned, I checked again and was again impressed with the sound of this set. I'm sure they used NR all over, but I can't hear the normal artifacts.

 

True i am sure taht the Proper Box sets are not audiophile quality transfers.
But for dirt cheap tons of music from the 78 era, the music per dollar is pretty hard to beat.
The total time on the 50 Jazz Proper Boxes I own is equal to about 1,750 total 78rpm discs.. Each of the best works of various Jazz artist of the 1920's to the early 1950's
To find replacements for that many 78rpm discs in 'quality sound' would be the work of a lifetime. (and cost a lot more that the money i paid)
I'll keep the Proper Boxes.. they are a treasure, and for the price.. wow.
(not complaining, just sayin')

 

I have many of these sets and indeed, a treasure.

Here's a thread (I started) about Proper Boxes: http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=125266

 

I wouldn't say everything for Yazoo, in strict terms. Some of their CD's, like the Mississippi John Hurt 1928 Sessions or their Joe Venuti CD have some stereo widening effect added, but that was in the late 1980's. Hard to complain about a label that had issued such consistently high quality goods overall, and always seemed to strive for a basically natural sound.

 

Ok.

It's obvious click/crackle removal was used all over, and supposedly some NR was used (for what is unclear, other than a hum on the Dallas tracks), but I can't say I hear any artifacts. I can't imagine there being much more surface noise to get rid of.

 

A 78 played under the analytic high end conditions like they used would have yielded too much noise for transfers limited to only click / crackle removal. Suppression would be the better word, most of the noise up into the high bands was done that way, but not crudely lopped out at certain frequency, like 6K or something.

If you hear 78's played on modern hi-fi gear, the high end noise can get really up there. I've never heard a CD that's so raw that it reproduced all of it, all of them use at least a bit of filtering.

 

Would it? There have been nice full-frequency transfers on You Tube with less noise than the Robert Johnson set.

I don't know...it doesn't sound like it to these ears, and there isn't a trace of the such looking at things in spectral view.

 

Having looked at spectral view on one of the tracks saw a very level point after a certain frequency that gives the eye some indication that it's what the ear also hears.

As far as YouTube goes, without really knowing what process the transfer uploader used, and after the YouTube compression and artifacts are factored in, it's not a totally reliable way to judge. Also, the various 78's from across 50 odd years will vary widely for S/N ratio.

 

That's not what this thread is about, the topic is "Excellent transfers of 78RPM records on CD", not how cheap Proper boxes (or other CDs with stuff like that) are.

 

There isn't much musical content visible above 5k or 6k, which is to be expected, but noise is quite prevalent above that point. There's no distinct cut-off in noise level, unlike on earlier CDs.

The Victor scroll stuff Steve had posted. The audio at 480p and 720p is good enough quality to fairly assess transfers.

If the level of noise varies wildly on old 78s, why would one assume there should have been more noise on the RJ transfers?