[guyfawkes303]

The records I clicked on have this notice

Digitized from a shellac record, at 78 revolutions per minute. Four stylii were used to transfer this record. They are 3.8mm truncated conical, 2.3mm truncated conical, 2.8mm truncated conical, 3.3mm truncated conical. These were recorded flat and then also equalized with NAB.

The preferred version suggested by an audio engineer at George Blood, L.P. is the equalized version recorded with the 2.3mm truncated conical stylus, and has been copied to have the more friendly filename.

I'm trying to guess but can't imagine what the reasoning for this is. I've tried A/B/C/D testing a few tracks on some crappy speakers and can't discern any difference.

While it's certainly admirable to try and digitize it as thoroughly as possible, I just can't see how a difference of 0.5mm in the stylus width is worth increasing your work load 4x times over (having to record each record 4 times rather than just once).

[enzanki_ars]

From http://great78.archive.org/preservation/:

"During the 78rpm era there are no standards for speed, stylus size, or record/playback equalization. Within the trade there is broad agreement that optimizing playback requires both knowledge of the documentation that’s available on these parameters for each label over time, and some amount of judgment. There are many reasons why judgment is necessary. One reason is that the disc may be worn from being played many times with the correct stylus size. Better results may come from using a different (“the wrong”) size stylus because it sits in a portion of the groove that is in better condition. But there’s no free lunch. Using a smaller size may mean a noisier transfer as it plays a less cleanly molded part of the disc. Using a larger size may increase tracing distortion that is the result of the larger size not fitting all the way to the bottom of the smaller grooves of higher frequencies. [...]"

[KC8ZKF]

I remember having a 78 rpm only Victrola, and it having an assortment of different sized styluses.

[johtso]

Looking at the "about" page for the project, it explains that they're using a special turntable with 4 styli that can record simultaneously. So it doesn't really increase the workload by 4 times to archive in this more thorough way.

https://archive.org/details/georgeblood&tab=about

[stordoff]

That's extremely cool. With decent headphones (ATH-M50x), there is a noticeable difference between the styli, so probably worth the extra work for archival.

[leoc]

The next step up would presumably be a 3D-scanning method like IRENE: http://irene.lbl.gov/

[guyfawkes303]

Now that is cool.

[komali2]

I can't tell which is which from the filename, but I did a basic layman listen to https://archive.org/details/78_baby-its-cold-outside_frank-l...

1. "friendly filename" sounds good, little static/pop, etc

2. Super loud squeal thing in the background, yuck. Voices sound poorly equalized

3. Quieter than (2) but way more noise than (1), voices causing weird audio artifacts in my headphones (as if they're blowing their available range) and are radically changing volume in the middle of a line

4. Weird squirrely noises on high-volume peaks, sounds like crap on the loudest parts. Right channel is like, totally f'd in the A man.

5. Seems to be same as (1), but with the standardized filename. I gotta agree with mr audio engineer, it just sounds the best.

[jerf]

This may help you refine your intuition about why it could matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuCdsyCWmt8&t=5m0s It's an electron microscope animation of a needle passing through a record's groove.

(I would note that due to the way the recording is made, it may be the case that a real needle would jerk around a bit more. On the other hand, it wouldn't have to jerk around much before this entirely stops working, so I'd guess in the end it's probably pretty accurate.)

[thecrazyone]

Wow! Those were very good demonstrations of the storage formats

[jrowley]

They aren't really incresing their work load by 4x because their turntables have 4 arms, as pointed out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14961307

[scrollaway]

"Better safe than sorry" is a token mindset when archiving, especially when archiving lossy things.

[e12e]

> I've tried A/B/C/D testing a few tracks on some crappy speakers and can't discern any difference.

You might want to try with a half-decent usb dac and a set of good headphones if the goal was an a/b test?

[hunter2_]

And you'll need to be well past "crappy speakers" land for the DAC to matter. A good DAC helps with things like lower noise and better EQ at the extremities of the frequency range, and we're talking about 78's. Anytime a transducer (mic or speaker) is involved, it's the vast majority of your coloring right there.

[ehnto]

It's possible you just got a good record as well. The benefits may be more prominent on records that are worn or otherwise have playback peculiarities. There has always been an often subjective art to vinyl, both in it's production and it's playback.

[simcop2387]

While I'm not sure about any specific record, the reason they'd use different styluses is probably because they don't know which particular style was used to cut the original media. The closer you are, the better the reproduction should be. Too narrow a needle and you'll wobble in the groove too much. Too wide and you'll end up ignoring higher frequencies and loose content. I'd also imagine the state of the media to be relevant, i.e. scratches and other defects will be picked up differently on each size of needle so you could even piece together a composite of each needle if one picked up a scratch and the others didn't.

[amelius]

If you really want to do this thoroughly, you'd probably have to sample the same recording from different records several times. Then you can use a "consensus" algorithm, that reconstructs the original audio in some optimal way. (But better yet to publish the original recordings, so others can still try different algorithms).