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Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

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Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#51

Post by hackingonempty »

derwiki wrote: post #19
mannyv wrote: post #15

The team needs to talk to Charlie miller et al, the ones who have been cleaning up and posting the grateful dead archive for the last few decades. They are audio magicians.

Interesting! Cleaning up digitized recordings or starting from the tape source?

Both.

Grateful Dead has analog reel-to-reel recordings going back to the 60's but most of those have been digitized already or are in the Deads vault.

There are also large collections of recordings on Betamax cassettes made with Sony PCM-F1 digital front-ends which were used before DAT become available. These are digitized versions of old analog recordings and original digital recordings from the 80's. They need transferring and sample rate conversion (they are 44.056kHz) and in some cases pre-emphasis removal.

There is also a lot of digital material on DAT cassettes including analog transfers and digital recordings from the 90s. There are also some CD-Rs where original sources can't be found.

A lot of the cleanup is just figuring out what comes from what show and substituting sources where there are gaps to make complete versions for listening. The archival nature of the endeavor usually limits the amount of "clean up" that is done.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#52

Post by da02 »

selfsimilar wrote: post #14

I saw Aadam at almost every show I went to in the early aughts, and he recorded a few of my shows, too! Great guy!

Did he come from an old-money wealthy family? How did he find the time and money to be an unofficial cultural archivist?

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#53

Post by cwillu »

textfiles wrote: post #43

Shout out to everyone in this thread who seem unable to understand a club might have three unrelated acts on, so each performance is called a "concert" under this collection. Aadam and the crew are focused on making each performance a separate entity instead of grouping them up. Substitute "performance" for "concert" if it helps. Carry on.

You can just say the thing, you don't have to comment on everyone who got it wrong.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#54

Post by ssl-3 »

rectang wrote: post #48
derwiki wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! Cleaning up digitized recordings or starting from the tape source?

Cassettes are a pain. Head alignment is extremely important for analog tape fidelity, and it's always off for home recordings. With pro analog tape recordings (e.g. 2-inch 24 track, half-inch 2-track), you record alignment tones onto the tapes to capture the state of the recording device, and then later calibrate the playback device to the particular tape so that playback alignment matches recording alignment. But th…

Interestingly, the Nakamichi Dragon is/was a cassette deck that can do automatic azimuth adjustment on playback -- without having recorded tones to work with.

In loose terms: It does this with a special read head that splits one of the recorded tracks into 2 distinct signals (for a total of 3 signals from 1 stereo recording). The split tracks' signals are compared, and it adjusts the azimuth (by minutely rotating the head) until the signals from the split track match most-perfectly.

A better overview is found in this sales flyer: https://www.richardhess.com/manuals/Nakamichi/dragon_folder....

(Take note of the pictures of the machine. If anyone finds one sitting around at a flea market or in a forgotten pile of old junk, please rescue it. Nothing like this will ever be manufactured again. Even if the condition is "it looks like someone went after it with a big hammer as part of their anger management process," the bits that remain still have significant value and are easy to sell.)

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#55

Post by textfiles »

cwillu wrote: post #53
textfiles wrote: post #43

Shout out to everyone in this thread who seem unable to understand a club might have three unrelated acts on, so each performance is called a "concert" under this collection. Aadam and the crew are focused on making each performance a separate entity instead of grouping them up. Substitute "performance" for "concert" if it helps. Carry on.

You can just say the thing, you don't have to comment on everyone who got it wrong.

I don't have to do anything.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#56

Post by textfiles »

da02 wrote: post #52
selfsimilar wrote: post #14

I saw Aadam at almost every show I went to in the early aughts, and he recorded a few of my shows, too! Great guy!

Did he come from an old-money wealthy family? How did he find the time and money to be an unofficial cultural archivist?

He just really, really, really committed himself.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#57

Post by slim »

menno-sh wrote: post #5
exossho wrote: post #4

this reminds me of the old internet

I don't know, I also feel like 'data hoarding' is something that's been getting more popular in recent years. Maybe because the ephemerality of the internet is starting to show.

or maybe AI behemoths are driving demand

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#58

Post by piker »

pimlottc wrote: post #23
piker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before then heroine and fame took over Kurt

You (probably) mean “heroin”

lol! yes, typo. I don't blame her, but man Freud might disagree.

Reading that comment again (which I can't edit now), I would like to make it clear I was just responding to the OP's note that the bad was super tight in that set.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#59

Post by DM70 »

It is genuinely hard to create anything in the music area now, even music itself. I grew up as a kid when music reached its peak and started declining - 1990s-2000s. Frankly, it i very sad because new generation is missing on something very big and good now. I listen to some new stuff and its literally created for robots, not humans. I call it zombie music because it is hard to recognize the difference between artist or band - they often us literally the same melody and phrases. I am not sure if tech industry can resolve this problem - the world is losing its music soul. Hence, that's why concerts are possible way to go - back to the ancient basics - personal performance wins - because you see actual perosn doing it and you either get very engage dor not.

Re: Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove

#60

Post by MDCore »

DM70 wrote: post #59

It is genuinely hard to create anything in the music area now, even music itself. I grew up as a kid when music reached its peak and started declining - 1990s-2000s. Frankly, it i very sad because new generation is missing on something very big and good now. I listen to some new stuff and its literally created for robots, not humans. I call it zombie music because it is hard to recognize the difference between artist…

You might find this paper interesting: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11002-022-09626-7

".. preferences for popular music peak during early adolescence or mid-to-late teens, and that newer or older tracks do not command this same level of affection."

Most people generally don't like new music because it doesn't evoke the same emotions as what we heard at that heightened period of our lives.

Musicians haven't stopped wanting to make music and doing whatever it takes to make it, and commercial interests want to profit from that just like they did back then. There's so much good music being put out all the time, in new and old-fashioned ways.

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