GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site - The Nimbus' Prima Voce bindles?

Horn-Loaded Speakers
Topic: The Nimbus' Prima Voce bindles?

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Posted by Romy the Cat on 02-14-2010

Stefano Bertoncello from Italy posted at his blog an article about Nimbus’ techniques to play old 78s.

http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2010/02/nimbus-prima-voce-series.html

http://www.wyastone.co.uk/nrl/pv_transfer.html

I think have problems with it. The upper frequency response of the old 78 is somewhere around 5kHz -8kHz. The horn looks like a hyperbolic 70-80Hz horn from 1.5cm-3cm. This type of horn shall act as low pass filter and shall roll off a few dB even at 5kHz. Generally I is a good idea to get out of the 78s sound as much HF as possible. So, I do not like the idea that Nimbus' proposes. In my view a full spectra of 78s bandwidth can’t be handled by a single horn. It is fine to pick up sound from horn with microphone but I would like to see different method. The sound from the disk shall be recorded via microphone twice. First run with short HF horn and second run with bass horn as Nimbus is doing now. Then the timing marks of the first (HF) and second (LF) runs need to be synchronized and signal dubbed as sum of both runs. The key in it is to find the right analog high-pass filter for the HF run. In my view with proper setting of this filter and with very high level of speed stabilization I think it would allow to get an ultimate 78s reading…

Rgs, Romy the Cat

Posted by twogoodears on 02-15-2010

Roman:
interesting point of view and alternative to Nimbus' approach. It's my opinion the people at Nimbus wanted to enhance and replicate a better gramophone-like rendition of the classic vocal and instrumental performance of decades ago...

In their literature they strongly bring whole attention to the 78 RPM as both a media and a goal - i.e. the best ever reproduction of these old musical fossils - with utmost attention to the most correct cutting speed and the like.

I remember a picture of Toscanini in NYC in front of a captating large horn feeding a cutting needle and a lathe similar to the link here below... seems to me Nimbus tried a reverse process to this, so, in perspective, more related to the way as 78 rpm recording was cutted - with all that bandwidth limits and limitations - than (too bad...) to the performance itself. http://twogoodears.blogspot.com/2010/02/acoustic-recording.html

Makes honour to Nimbus having approached those worthwhile, otherwise lost or hidden musical and sonic heritage in a maybe flawed way, but using classy gears and not penny-pinchers digital "X-tool" programs, thus destroying the music zestness in the name of a noise-free lifeless-ness.

The result, also to the in-a-hurry listener, is - at least - interesting.

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