Shellac vs. Digital

SHELLAC vs. DIGITAL

A while ago, the huge discussion started about sound quality of historic recordings and how they sound in public:

"Blue Drag" German BRUNSWICK shellac pressing

There are many reasons to complain, there are many reasons to love. We all see that some tracks exist in many different editions and „remasterings“ – and almost never those remasterings were made from an original historic (shellac) record.

On these historic shellac records we usually only find  two songs, one on each side (like “singles” in vinyl with 45 rpm). These shellac records are collectables, some are getting very rare, valuable and expensive, they are very heavy and fragile – and they are just lovely feeling and looking different and they are telling “stories” just by the pressing: just to imagine a German pressing of Billie Holiday, Count Basie or Joe Turner from 1939 seems crazy thinking of the political background at this thime...

For a collector, it does not really matter if the record has a hiss and scratches and clicks – the historic value is important, and some collectors (me included) are able to filter away side noises in our imagination just to enjoy a rare recording.

For an audience during a lecture and also for dancers, we need clean sounding music that has not too much distortion, what can become complicated with historic material. This is when digital remastered copies come in, on CDs or on our computers.

My Swedish friends and DJ colleagues Anton Cervin and Gasper Hrovat were right when they found out that many digital versions of a historic file just come from vinyl (LP) publishings from the 1970s to 1990s and remastering in this case means to work over some harsh noise reduction and adding some digital compression: artifacts, digital side noises and a loss of brilliance and seperation are unpleasant side effects – besides some analogue trouble like the dubbing speed (of both: shellac and LP). Some of the shellac records are not recorded at the (from 1932 on valuable) norm of 78 rpm, but at 76 rpm, 80 rpm, 84 rpm, +90 rpm (before WW I). If then the speed of the vinyl pressing is not correctly adjusted, the result may lead to some “Mickey Mouse effect” (too fast) or “boring” dynamics like “somehow nice, but no beat for dancing” (too slow).

For sure, it is nice to play vinyls that also have a historic value nowadays. DJs using LPs start working hard on pre-listening and also choosing the different qualities of the dubbings, but this is worth a completely new thread…

Some dance event organizers, some DJs and also dancers say that there was no difference in between the historic record and a digital version (“it is the same recording”) and they would not mind if a DJ uses a record or a digital version… This happens only until they get confronted with bad sounding historic recordings from badly done digital dubbings – thinking that it was the historic recording in itself that is horrible but this is not true! The recording was made for a different equipment of reproducing (wind-up phonograph with horn, electrical magnetic or crystal pick-up adapted to a valve amplifier that worked at mains voltage). Considering an adjusted reproducing, the historic recording can sound amazing!

My friend and DJ colleague DJ Superheidi R’dam is one of the first organizers and DJs who understood that there IS a huge difference, and some years ago DJ Moskito Hopkins and me had the chance to prove this during some events while “batteling” together… Thanks to Lorenz in Zurich, shellac gets more and more appreciated in Switzerland and Herräng, Sandra and Axel in Vienna started their own shellac collection with support of DJ Marc d'Olimpio and London cultivates shellac dancing nights since a long time ("Mouthful o'Jam" and "Hellzapoppin' Club").

The historian and compiler Marko Paysan (“Swinging Ballroom Berlin” Vol.1 & 2 – Polygramm/Universal, “Berlin – sounds of an era”  Edel) is right by only using historic original record that come from different collections as a team work, his quote is:

“The best filter is a near mint (like new) record and the ideal pick-up matching the (not normed!) groove”.

Since 1989, I am DJing with my old shellac records for different audiences in public (bars, clubs, dancing festivals, street fairs…), learning that Marko’s quote makes working in public possible. Even if the recording quality changes from label to label, from year to year, from band to band a. s. o., this is adjustable with just some little fixing in bass in treble or even switching the pick-up stylus from standard (spherical 65 mµ) to extra customized styluses (elliptical 70mµ, 80mµ, 90mµ). This last adjusting is best for digitizing, finding the best stylus means best dynamics and fewest side noise possible. With this, the less retouching is needed for remastering the sound file.

As it is not possible for us few shellac DJs to always carry around the whole equipment (turntables, pick-ups, styluses, hundreds of heavy and breakable records), we start working with (private) dubbings of our collection, but also checking the digital versions of tracks we like to share, many time to the big disappointment of our collector’s and historian’s hearing habits.

Instead of complaining, I started compiling the small CD-series “Swing forDancers” some 12 years ago starting with “Balboa Swing” and followed by other compilations like “Swing”, “R&B”, “Blues”, “Charleston & Foxtrot”, “Christmas Swing”…

During these years, there was a audible progressing process in my work and technical equipment, but still I am happy with my first publications that are compatible to modern equipment, bigger audience and even make me happy while driving a rental car on a long ride to a Swing Dancing Festival…

A short while ago, DJ Chaton Alex Richard from Strasbourg showed his fantastic work called “1922” in the FB group “DJ Jazz Dance” – it is a great inspiration and we got in contact for starting an exchange of ideas and cooperating about how we like to sound the historic files for a dancing audience. Remastering is always a compromise and a subjective idea that matches the personal preferences and experiences. So we decided to show each other our raw materials for some selected tracks and work on these. The results of our first work (“Blue Drag” by Earl Hines) is quite interesting, and it shows that the most pleasant sounding file comes the best sounding raw material - - - from an excellent shaped original shellac pressing.

The YouTube video shows our two remasterings in a row, they sound both a little different reaching the “ideal” goal from different sides. We are wondering, which version will work best for an audience? Both versions have advantages, both have issues. In case you want to help us with the experiment and play the tracks in public, send me a PM on FB or an email and I will gladly send you both versions in lossless quality, the YouTube channel uses (unwanted) compression and only gives you a glimpse of our work.
Alex and me will be happy to learn about your experiences with our rematered files and get some feed-back from you.

Stephan Wuthe, www.swingtime.de, October 2017