WGY 4/26/30 Pallophotophone Playback

An early 7-note NBC chimes is heard on a demonstration playback of track 2 of a Pallophotophone film recording of the G.E.Orchestra on NBC via WGY. Introduced by the designer of this reproduce machine, this machine does not yet have the stability to play the films without extreme speed instability and wow. The films will eventually sound better. He stated that he did not know how the films were recorded since they went all the way to the end of the reel. The answer was simple, they used a continuous loop which is why the tracks all run in the same direction. They cut the loop apart for storage. From this angle you can see the capstan which was hidden in the other video that shows parts of this demo. Most of the other 12 films are on dangerous nitrate film which is why this safety film was played. The "Edison reel" he mentions is the recording of Light's Golden Jubilee, Oct 21, 1929 which was also recorded on disc by the Edison company, portions of which--including Edison's speech--have already been available for 25 years

[@zorach13]

Despite speed instability, voices are shockingly lifelike. More, please!

[@mjb784533]

@CassetteMaster Funny you should ask. I am going to be doing a presentation on the subject of Announcing Styles of the 1920s next month (October 22, 2010) at the Friends of Old Time Radio. Announcing was still evolving at the time. Some had regional accents, some declaimed like old time stump speakers, but some tried to be syrupy sweet with pseudo-sophistocated accents. CBS emulated sweetness of David Ross & Frank Knight, NBC Blue Milton Cross, and NBC Red Graham McNamee who was bland.

[@mjb784533]

I was also astonished to hear that the voices suffered little from the wow, but there IS instability in the voices if you listen carefully. The announcer on the B.A. Rolfe Lucky Strike Dance Orchestra program -- who might be Westbrook Van Voorhis -- does not fare as well with the wow as these voices did. We do hope the museum will soon get a grant and be able to retransfer and release the recordings.

[@mjb784533]

There also was an annual award of a gold medal for Good Diction On The Radio sponsored by the American Acadamy of Arts and Letters which was actively promoting the use of radio to teach all Americans how to speak. David Ross won the first award followed by Alwyn Bach, both of whom had fake sweet accents. Info of the convention at FOTR.com and there also will be a talk and demo on the Pallophotophone on Sat morning Oct 23, 2010.

[@mjb784533]

(Part 2) There also was an annual award of a gold medal for Good Diction On The Radio sponsored by the American Acadamy of Arts and Letters which was actively promoting the use of radio to teach all Americans how to speak. David Ross won the first award followed by Alwyn Bach, both of whom had fake sweet accents. Info of the convention at FOTR.com and there also will be a talk and demo on the Pallophotophone on Sat morning Oct 23, 2010.

[@mjb784533]

@Zefrenm No, this makes no sense at all. The Brunswick Light Ray recordings only used the mirror microphone, but otherwise are regular electrical disc recordings. If an optical sound head is focused on too wide a field, you would hear a muffled recording with no high frequencies. The pitch problems are pure wow and flutter from a wavering speed of the film itself. It would be like putting a Brunswick record off-center on the turntable or turning it by hand.

[@CassetteMaster]

I wonder if people on radio were taught to speak that way. (the interesting accent they had on that broadcast) Any ideas?

[@mjb784533]

@phrige 80, but who's counting! Actually he is more of a computer person. He has never done any audio restoration before.

[@Zefrenm]

Since the 78 rpm records of the Light Ray process dont process the wow, i sepect it's because the playback lens is taking too infomation at once, The flim is a outline of sound waves so if lens is focused on too wide a field the sound produced will be an average sounds from of a few mili secs before and after one pecticular moment of sound is on the flim. Think of infinity tracks of sound playback a few milisec apart from each other than averaged out resulting in wow and a crude high pass fliter

[@mjb784533]

@Zefrenm I have done a lot of research on all types of recording including this. The video you reference will tell you correctly all about the light-ray microphone which was called the Pallotrope, and Brunswick/Polydor's use has nothing to do with sound-on-film recording. In fact, the WGY films were not made with this microphone, but by connection to a radio receiver. The wavering pitch on the film is from design defects in the playback machine which they are correcting.

[@Zefrenm]

you should check out Froggmoni's youtube page about it ubnder the title (Burswick LIGHT RAY recordings & Deutsche Grammophon 1926