The Speaker

It’s not often that we search for something in these articles, but our customers may be uniquely qualified to help in this search. 

Playing cylinders the way they were meant to be played is not hard. There are many surviving cylinder players and they can be had for not an awful lot of money. However, these players are acoustic machines. They depend on the mechanical vibrations of a stylus and a horn speaker to provide the music. This is fine for listening, but how does one digitize these recordings? The most common way is to simply use a microphone to pick up the sound coming out of the horn speaker. This works, but wouldn’t it be better if we could mount a modern phono cartridge onto the reproducer mechanism and get an electrical transcription? Then we could easily record in these cylinders and let DC Eight work its magic. 

Over the years, several of these electrical adapters have been available, but as far as we know, no one makes one today. So, if you have knowledge of any new production of these devices, we’d like to hear about it. If you have an old one lying around not being used, give us a call on that one too. 

Feel free to use our toll free 866 260 6376 in the US or 717 764 9240 Intl.

Thanks,

Your friends at Tracer.
www.tracertek.com

I don’t know how I missed it. One of the most memorable music release of 2010 came in the middle of the year and I totally missed it.

Oh well. Better late than never.

We walked on eggshells waiting for the newest album release by the Steampunk English Band called “The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing”. That long anticipated release is finally here.

Never heard of them, you say? Well, there’s a reason for that. They are English, they play music called Steampunk which, apparently, is a combination of Victorian music and Punk Sci-Fi. And their music is offered “tongue in cheek” – meaning funny to English folks.

So why should we be interested in a low selling English release of some really arcane music?

The answer is simple. They sold 40 “special edition” versions of this CD which came bundled with one of the tracks on a 2 minute Wax Cylinder.

Yep, that’s the same 2 and 4 minute cylinders that Thomas Edison sold in the tens of millions until production stopped around 1928. These are the same cylinders that require an Edison machine to play – or at least something like it. The band included instructions on how to make your own homebrew player so you can actually hear this track.

But you don’t have to build one, just click here and you can hear the first new release of a cylinder record in around 80+ years.

Listen Now

Come Again?

We often get calls from DC Eight customers asking if we can pull a rabbit out of our hat and reduce the amount of reverb in a recording.

These are, of course, important recordings or else they would not write about them. They are frequently speeches, church services, weddings, etc.

Reverb and Echo can be distracting and therefore, folks want to remove both from their recordings. This is not an easy chore and often we can make only marginal improvements, but sometimes a compressor such as the Punch and Crunch can make things better.

But this leads to another question – is reverb just noise to be reduced when we can? The answer is no. Reverb can be a wonderful tool when used correctly in the area of music mastering or even when we are restoring old recordings.

In the studio, a touch of reverb makes a singer sound much more powerful and adds quite a lot of depth to a vocal recording. Listen carefully to any ballad with a solo singer made in the last 20 years and you’ll almost certainly be able to pick out the reverb that has been electronically added. You can do that with DC Eight as well – just choose the Reverb tool.

Reverb can also be used for restoration. If you have lifeless recordings from about 1925 until the 1950s, you may find that a touch of reverb added to the entire mix will add just a touch of space and realism to the otherwise sterile audio.

Give it a try. Remember, with DC Eight you’ll never end up with too much reverb since you add it while you are listening. And as usual, a gentle hand is the best when adding these effects.

Computers continue to increase the role that they play in our lives. As the technology advances into each and every facet of our daily routine, we depend more and more on our computers to deliver the performance we desire with as much speed as can be mustered.

As computer buyers, we too must advance our thinking in order to purchase a computer solution that meets our needs, our speed requirements, and most importantly, that has a coherent support mechanism built in to aid us when the tires fall off.

Part of the reason Tracer began our Custom Built Computer service was that we felt that the available suppliers in the world were not delivering what we needed in regards to speed and with the ease of use we thought was required. We also were amazed at how the level of expectations had diminished over time as to what constituted Good Service and Good Value.

Getting old is not really too much fun, but one of the advantages to age is that you can still remember when you called a company and could actually speak to a human. You can remember when you used to receive a bundle of software with a new PC that actually did something…or at least did something for more than 30 days.

At Tracer, we’re pretty old and we still remember those things…we don’t quite understand why things like customer support and customer interaction were done away with.

When we started building our PCs, we had a couple of criteria we strived for:

• Fast
• No lardware. (lardware means trial software, demo software, anything that they tease you with, but you don’t actually own. )
• Fast
• Supported to the max

Yeah, I know we said “fast” twice…but we really like fast.

Once you start comparing prices, it’s really the little things that matter. We really try to do all of the little things right. We provide a fast PC that is unclogged by useless freeware and trialware, that gets the job done as fast as possible for you. We support you not only by telephone, but also by the little things we do. The inside of your PC will be clean and organized. You’ll receive all of your original disks…including your Windows version. If you ever have a problem or a question, we’ll put you on the phone with the person who actually built your machine!

Also, you’ll get exactly the hardware and software you need…installed and set up exactly the way you specify because we’ll speak with you on the phone and gauge those requirements prior to building your machine.

Some of these things may never matter…but if they do, you’ll be glad that you purchased a Custom Built PCs from old guys.

What Shape is Your Stylus?

I’ll bet many people who play records could not answer this question. Admittedly, it’s somewhat arcane, but the shape of your cartridge can play a large role in determining how good your restorations are.

There are two main shapes of Styli available today. These are Conical and Elliptical.

First, let’s imagine the shape of a Conical stylus. It’s the shape of a perfect cone. This is also called a Spherical stylus.

An Elliptical stylus is just like a conical one except that it is not quite round but is kind of squashed in on both sides.

You can use either stylus in playing LPs and 45s and each will work fine and neither will hurt your records. If you play 78s, it’s generally considered better to have a Conical stylus of the correct size. Size is another issue we’ll cover in some future entry.

As always, there are exceptions to the rule, but many experts recommend Elliptical for playback of vinyl records that are in good shape and Conical for records that are worn and noisy. This really does make a difference with worn records and the choice of stylus can mean you end up with less noise and an easier restoration effort with DC Eight audio restoration software.

The best thing to do is have two head shells, two cartridges and, of course, two styli. This makes it super easy to simply plug in one or the other to see which does the best job on a particular album.

Our Audio Technical 3600L uses a Conical/Spherical stylus

Our audiophile quality Stanton 681 EEE MK III has a very high quality elliptical stylus.

We offer quite an assortment of cool little treats for your turntable as well as all of the necessities…just click here for details:

Our Turntable Supply Page

So, shape does matter. It’s best to have one of each to plug in and try. BTW, 78 styli are mentioned here, but are more complicated if anything.   Call us if you have a burning question on them.

866 260 6376

So you are minding your business, just walking down the street. Behind you, there’s a curious booming sound that you quickly identify as a car stereo being played at teeth loosening levels. From outside the car, you can hear the bass quite well as the metal frame of the car expands and contracts due to the large amount of energy in the low bass notes.

You may think that these low notes are quite low in frequency and quite loud (and possibly quite annoying), but you haven’t heard anything yet.

Scientists have recently discovered sounds emanating from a super massive black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies about 250 million light years from earth – not exactly next door.

It seems that this hole puts out the lowest frequency audio signal ever found in the universe. It’s also immensely powerful. They even know the musical note that it represents – a B flat.

But it’s not your normal B flat – it is 57 octaves below middle C on the piano keyboard.

So what is the frequency of this signal? The B Flat below middle C on a piano is 233.082Hz so this is 57 octaves below that.

Quick now, do the math in your head. What’s the frequency of this black hole? Remember, each time you go down and octave, the frequency is halved, so you just divide by two 57 times.

Well, we admit to using Excel to do it as we could only divide by two 43 times in our head. But the number is:
0.000000000000003234662537821010 Hz

Now that’s a lot of bass.

But it won’t bother you as you walk the streets.

Here’s an enhanced image showing the sound waves leaving the black hole as taken by the Chandra X-Ray Telescope.