How Balanced for L-R ?

[Marc Hildebrant]

Group,

Like many, I use L+R to recover the lateral info for 78 RPM records. Some of the records have a reduced L (or R) due to groove wear. I know that I can compensate by gaining up or down a channel to make the X-Y display 45 degree's...but is it really necessary for recovering the music ?

Marc

[dbanani]

Hi Marc

I have tried it on several 78s a few years ago but did not noticed much, if any, improvement.
Of course, I haven't done a lot of 78s recently. and have never spent much time comparing the results.

My current workflow for 78s is to record in stereo and take the best sounding channel, L or R, and proceed from there
When I get a problem area, I always check the other channel at that point for a possible replacement snippet.
This is where having a tiled fast edit workspace comes in very handy,. I just cut and past from the L or R of the stereo version to my working copy below.

Of course if a 78 was really badly worn on both channels I would think it would help in recovering some portion of the music.

D

[Marc Hildebrant]

D,

I do not remember all the details, but I believe that the lateral movement of the stylus tends to cancel some of the harmful harmonics whereas the vertical component tends to amplify the same harmonics.
This has been my reason for wanting to use the L+R as a way to remove some of the noise. Now, that maybe all wrong...and your method is better.

I'll have to research this "cancelling of harmonics" subject again.

Marc

[Craig Maier]

Using L+R can yield a free 3 dB of improvement in S / (N+THD) (especially on virgin source material). But, on a badly worn record, usually one grove wall is cleaner than the other.