Brown cylinders were often made of aluminum stearate mixed with some sort of wax, such as ceresin. These compounds have crystal structures; that is, they aren’t completely amorphous. The crystals would cause noise even in a newly-recorded cylinder.
BTW, I previously said that mass duplication of cylinders was made possible by a switch from wax to celluloid. Actually, Edison worked out a way to use molds to duplicate wax cylinders. You can read about it here.
“wander”?
Something to do with Venus In Furs, I think.
When talking about vinyl records, “wow and flutter” had well understood common mechanical explanations. When you’re talking about a pure digital signal, the causes and characteristics of low-frequency error are different, so they needed a new word. Over the medium term, the signal 'wanders". DC bias wander is a thing, but the word commonly refers to clock wander (or /derived clock/ wander). The effect of wander is to introduce error, analogous to but not the same as wow and flutter.
With an Edison dictaphone, the closest thing to ‘wander’ would perhaps be the speed effect of the clockspring winding down: which is not wow, or flutter, or static, but does introduce a slowly cumulative frequency error.
Interesting question. Inspires another one. Does the higher frequency noise lessen with wear? It would seem a wax disc would wear quickly. The finer high frequency noise “bumps” getting worn off quicker. Or are they just replaced with other noise generated during the wear?
I guess I’m missing the answer in all of this. What causes the clicks. bumps and hiss on the old wax cylinders.
Wear doesn’t reduce noise; it introduces more noise. This is because wear patterns are irregular. This is obvious if you start with a quiet recording like a well-made LP: repeated playing will wear the groove and introduce hiss, pops, and ticks. The same is true if you start with a noisy recording - playing it will only make it noisier. I know this from many years of experience with 78 RPM records. A worn record is always noisier than an unworn one.
From a modern view : has anyone tried digitally scanning not 1 record, but a few dozen surviving copies of a record, and using an algorithm based on some form of correlation to recover the most probable master record? This wouldn’t strip the noise that was in the master recording but it would at least strip the damage done by time to the record.
To get rid of that noise, you would then use machine learning, trained on human vocal capabilities and music instruments of the time to strip the noise.
Note that a stylus, esp. the old school ones on mechanical players, were really great at adding noise to a cylinder/record. The stylus would hit a small bump, bounce and then create some more gouges as it moves along. The debris gouged out could then also cause more bumps and more gouges.
You needed to be careful and replace the stylus after fairly few playbacks as the wear on the stylus caused it to damage the cylinder/record even more. But people were cheap and lazy so the damage accelerated.
I guess my question my question goes beyond wear. What about the groove and equipment causes the hiss and pops and cracks? Like: “The wobbling of the needle when the sides of the groove of worn causes it to transmit a hiss whose frequency is inversely proportional to the groove width” or something technical like that.
First, the material isn’t completely smooth. As I mentioned earlier, the wax has a crystal structure that makes the surface a little irregular. The playback stylus encounters the irregularities and renders them as noise.
Neither the recording nor the playback equipment is perfect. Every little extraneous wobble of the cutting needle, every bit of looseness in the linkage between the diaphragm and the needle, every vibration in the rotation of the cylinder, can introduce noise. The same is true on playback: the stylus doesn’t track the groove perfectly, the linkage from the stylus to the diaphragm isn’t perfect, the rotation of the cylinder may have vibrations, and each of these faults may introduce noise.
By the way, the answer I just gave applies to new cylinders. Old wax cylinders may be worn, and may also have deteriorated with time. The wax (actually a metallic soap) is susceptible to mold growth, which pits the surface and introduces a lot of noise.
A pothole in a dirt road promotes washboard formation. The frequency of that is driven by the resonant frequency of the car body.
Usually a foot or less; high frequency. Same phenomena happens when a needle passes over a dip or bump in a wax cylinder.
So over time, high frequency noise increases.
I always wanted to spring for a laser phonograph — seems like a no-brainer if you value your records, but they are not cheap.
The Wiki article (q.v. at the end) reminded me of the system set up at the Library of Congress that 3-d scans a record or cylinder in order to reconstruct the sound digitally, just as you suggest. Like with the $20000 laser turntable, it makes more sense for a library to produce a cleaned-up digital version that can be further distributed than for everybody to have one in her drawing room.
I came across this demonstration by the NYT today. Clearly demonstrates the loss of quality, especially dynamic range.
Three things I found interesting. (1) How much track noise there is. (2) How it added this weird extra vibrato to the male voice. (3) How much worse it was at capturing the female vocalist. She just sounded very tinny and shrill, while his voice still sounded full, if warbled a bit.
I would have expected the opposite, with some lower frequencies not recording as well, making his voice sound tinny while her voice remained more full. At least, that is the sound I associate with older recordings.