How do you get late 30s tracks to sound brighter at dances?

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Haydn
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How do you get late 30s tracks to sound brighter at dances?

#1 Post by Haydn » Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:53 pm

I haven't DJ'd myself recently, but have watched other people. When a 30s track is played, it often sounds dull and flat - which is not what you want for dancing. Examples are Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Barnet.

How do you get these tracks to sound brighter at dances?

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Bob the Builder
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#2 Post by Bob the Builder » Tue Nov 28, 2006 5:24 pm

Can I ask for more information?

When you say brighter, is it that you have heard one person (DJ) play a song and it sounded great, and another person play the same song, and the sound quantity was not so good? And thus, how did the first DJ make the sound better in comparison to the first DJ?

Sound Quality comes down to the following items.

1- Original recording,
2- Original mastering,
3- Transfer Quality,
4- Remastering Quality,
5- Playing media quality (CD/MP3/Vinyl)
6- Playing device quality,
7- Output of the playing device
8- How good the amp is,
9- How good the speakers are,
10-Cable quality
11- Acoustics of the room and how much EQ control and knowledge the DJ has.
12- How noisy the room is.

I could mention so many other steps in-between as well that affect quality. I recon I could come up with another 12 items on top of these ones that affect the sound quality and your understanding of the brightness of the track.

Brian :D
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Haydn
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#3 Post by Haydn » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:35 pm

Bob the Builder wrote:Can I ask for more information?

When you say brighter, is it that you have heard one person (DJ) play a song and it sounded great, and another person play the same song, and the sound quantity was not so good? And thus, how did the first DJ make the sound better in comparison to the first DJ?
It's a general problem with 30s tracks that I hear at dances. As far as I am aware, the main cause is the poor original recording quality - poor dynamic range, all the instruments sound as though they are together and it sounds 'flat'. For example, 1930s Ella Fitzgerald tracks sound poor compared with 1950s ones. It's the same with Charlie Barnet recordings.

If we accept that this is a general problem with 30s tracks, I'm interested to know how to make them sound brighter at dances. One option is vinyl - I've heard 30s tracks sound good on vinyl. But without going the vinyl route, how can the sound be improved?

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Bob the Builder
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#4 Post by Bob the Builder » Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:03 pm

You Can't.

What you can do is:

Do the research to find which are the best re-mastered recordings available.
Use the best audio gear you can get your hands on, and if on laptop non-compressed files.
Make sure you EQ the room.
Tell everyone to "Shut up" and be quite. (I've DJed rooms where there was only about a 40dB range because of talking. That alone has killed half of the dynamic range.)

Brian :D
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Eyeball
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#5 Post by Eyeball » Tue Nov 28, 2006 8:20 pm

By "flat" do you mean that the high ends sound limited as compared to 50s hi-fi recordings?

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#6 Post by Haydn » Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:35 am

Sorry - I realise I should have posted this in the DJ Skillz forum. Perhaps it should be moved?

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#7 Post by Haydn » Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:41 am

Bob the Builder wrote:You Can't.

What you can do is:

Do the research to find which are the best re-mastered recordings available.
Use the best audio gear you can get your hands on, and if on laptop non-compressed files.
Make sure you EQ the room.
Tell everyone to "Shut up" and be quite. (I've DJed rooms where there was only about a 40dB range because of talking. That alone has killed half of the dynamic range.)

Brian :D
Thanks.

By 'EQ the room', presumably you mean play some tracks and work out the best EQ settings for playing them in that room?

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#8 Post by Haydn » Wed Nov 29, 2006 4:48 am

Eyeball wrote:By "flat" do you mean that the high ends sound limited as compared to 50s hi-fi recordings?
Yes, the high end sounds limited. And there is little 'depth' to the sound, so the middle and bass are limited as well. It's as if a thick blanket has been put over the speakers.

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#9 Post by Bob the Builder » Wed Nov 29, 2006 5:38 am

What I mean by "EQing the room" is adjusting the equalizer to allow for the acoustic properties of the room not the track.
You really only get the chance to do this if you are setting up the Audio system and have a good Equalizer, like a Parametric or 1/3 octave Equalizer. You would use a modern familiar high quality recording to EQ the room.
Assuming the Mastering is good on the vintage track you are playing, you shouldn’t have to change the equalizer.
However, in reality due to bad mastering and bad audio set ups, we end up having to adjust the equalizer.

Brian
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#10 Post by Bob the Builder » Wed Nov 29, 2006 5:47 am

The weakness of vintage recordings was the actual recording equipment itself. The mics of the time where fantastic, with great dynamic ranges and frequency response curve (Pick up from 50Hz to 15KHz and an almost flat response from 100Hz to 10KHz).
However much of the recording devices only had a range of about 120Hz to about 8KHz. (this changes depending on the recording method and device)
No mater what you do to a recording, you are not going to retrieve frequencies that are outside the recording devices ranges.

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#11 Post by Eyeball » Wed Nov 29, 2006 5:54 am

Haydn wrote:
Eyeball wrote:By "flat" do you mean that the high ends sound limited as compared to 50s hi-fi recordings?
Yes, the high end sounds limited. And there is little 'depth' to the sound, so the middle and bass are limited as well. It's as if a thick blanket has been put over the speakers.
Principally, it is merely the difference that between 10 - 20 years of recording advancement will make.

You'll be hard pressed to find anything from the mid 30s that has the depth of a hi fi recording from the mid 50s.

I know that blanket effect that you can hear and it is far more pronounced when you wind up using overly remastered LPs or CDs over pristine 78 rpm copies....impractical to use 78s in this day and age for DJing.

Also depends which 30s material you are using as some companies had better sound and studios back then, so some bands sound better than others, sonically simply because they have better facilities.

Once you get into he 40s, things really begin to sound much more life-like, especially on (then) Columbia studio sessions who apparently were using brand new recording equipment under ideal conditions. Their stuff from late 1940 onward is amazing in fidelity...when they have not screwed up the sound in later years....which happened a lot.

Also Capitol Records usually sound fantastic in the 40s. They were using the C.P. McGregor studios in Hollywood and I suppose they were also using state of the art recording equipment as they also did a lot of transcription work for radio use.

But in the 30s - just a bit too early for across the board high sound quality w/o that 'blanket', 'muffled' or 'pinched' sound. It just varies from original company to original company to reissue to reissue.

I have heard some amazingly great remastering over the years - stuff from the early 40s that is hard to tell from 50s hi fi sound.

I think all you can do is look for the best sounding source material and/or the best sounding reissues and then us the tools at your command to make then sound as good as you need them to be.

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#12 Post by Eyeball » Wed Nov 29, 2006 6:04 am

Bob the Builder wrote:The weakness of vintage recordings was the actual recording equipment itself. The mics of the time where fantastic, with great dynamic ranges and frequency response curve (Pick up from 50Hz to 15KHz and an almost flat response from 100Hz to 10KHz).
However much of the recording devices only had a range of about 120Hz to about 8KHz. (this changes depending on the recording method and device)
No mater what you do to a recording, you are not going to retrieve frequencies that are outside the recording devices ranges.

Brian
I think it was John R.T. Davies who said that the 'weak link' in the recording system at the time in the 30s was the cutting lathe which simply did not have the dynamic ability to vibrate as freely as it needed to....or something similar.

Other factors come into play, though.

There is a whole series of Victor label recordings circa 1932 - 1933 that have a sound fidelity that is so high as to be amazingly life like and with incredible presence. Apparently, historians have still not figured out what Victor was doing on these sessions b/c I brought up this topic on another forum and was 'warned' that I was opening a huge can of worms of debate....though none appeared, sadly. Some dance band sessions and a few small washboard band sessions come to mind, with a Leo Reisman backing Fred Astaire (or Clifton Webb...of all people) is likely the most accessable on LP . and/or CD. Title escapes me at this early hour

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#13 Post by Bob the Builder » Wed Nov 29, 2006 3:16 pm

For recording history this and this is a great referance site.

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Re: How do you get late 30s tracks to sound brighter at danc

#14 Post by trev » Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:19 pm

Haydn wrote:When a 30s track is played, it often sounds dull and flat - which is not what you want for dancing. Examples are Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Barnet.
A quality restored/remastered release of Charlie Barnet's 30s work in particular is not currently available to my knowledge. I'm hoping that a label like HEP or Mosaic takes up the challenge.

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#15 Post by Campus Five » Wed Nov 29, 2006 9:40 pm

I'm pretty sure you're asking how to make the tracks you already have sound better - or "brighter."

The only thing I can say is that there is no magic bullet. Basically your only tools (at least without being a sophistocated audio engineer) are EQ and compression/limiting/normalizing. You can try to boost the high frequencies of the recording, of course that will also amplify the hiss on the recording. Its a similar story with the rest of the frequency spectrum - you can boost or cut frequencys, but you also cut or boost noise and other sound with it.

As far as dynamic processing, you can cure some ills with compression/limiting/normalizing. On some recordings, "I'm Beginning to See the Light" by Harry James, the dynamic range is too great - so the quiet parts can't be heard over the din of a club or car, and if you turned if up enough to hear the quiet parts, the loud ones would be too loud. By compressing the dynamic range, you make the loud parts less loud, and raising the overall volume you can get the quiet parts over the noise floor.

More advanced tools would include really complicated EQ effects, and EQ dependent compression - where different frequencies are compressed at different rates, which is often used in modern mastering.
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