
The Internet Archive has digitized 25,000 78rpm Gramophone records - yurisagalov
https://archive.org/details/georgeblood
======
indescions_2017
House of the Rising Sun. As interpreted by Josh White, advisor and confidant
to F.D.R. Priceless ;)

[https://archive.org/details/78_house-of-the-rising-
sun_josh-...](https://archive.org/details/78_house-of-the-rising-sun_josh-
white-and-his-guitar_gbia0001628b)

I find myself on Internet Archive a lot during these dog days of summer.
Delving into classic texts like Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars or
Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. Discovering a forgotten H. P.
Lovecraft story in the Weird Tales archive. Mining old time radio shows like
Suspense for story inspiration. And using the Internet Arcade for screen grabs
that can be used in retro-style game texture art. It makes me think I should
do a better job of preserving my own output. You never know what future
generations may find useful!

~~~
pmoriarty
You might enjoy librivox.[1]

It's like the Project Gutenberg of audiobooks, recorded by volunteers. The
recordings are new, but many of them are of old books, now out of copyright.

The quality of their readers varies, but there are some surprisingly good
readers on there, such as my favorite so far, David Clarke, who did a superb
reading of The Count of Monte Cristo.[2]

[1] - [https://librivox.org/](https://librivox.org/)

[2] - [https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-
version-3-by-...](https://librivox.org/the-count-of-monte-cristo-version-3-by-
alexandre-dumas/)

------
komali2
Fun to read some of these reviews, apparentl from random internet folk, like
on jungle boogie - [https://archive.org/details/78_jungle-boogie_the-bobby-
true-...](https://archive.org/details/78_jungle-boogie_the-bobby-true-trio-
brodsky-handman-tepper-trio_gbia0001554b)

Some guy just wanted to tell everyone some neat little facts about this thing
he apparently knows a lot about. I find it fascinated how much people care to
know about things like this.

EDIT: whoever this "arc-alison" character is, they're prolific - I'm finding
their informational reviews all over this archive.

~~~
aidos
Not to take anything away from the effort, but most of that information is on
the disk itself - and you can hear that it's not the same as the Kool and the
gang track :-)

I feel really rude for saying that because I would hate to discourage people
from contributing on the internet, especially to a project like this. And on
that note, this project is awesome! As a crate digger, I can see myself
spending a lot of time trawling through these tracks.

~~~
ianai
It's ok to copy information. Just makes it more available/searchable, for one.

~~~
aidos
Agreed. To clarify, I wasn't saying that it's not worth the effort, I was
saying that in that particular case the reviewer wasn't showing a deep
knowledge of the subject.

------
guyfawkes303
The records I clicked on have this notice

 _Digitized from a shellac record, at 78 revolutions per minute. Four stylii
were used to transfer this record. They are 3.8mm truncated conical, 2.3mm
truncated conical, 2.8mm truncated conical, 3.3mm truncated conical. These
were recorded flat and then also equalized with NAB.

The preferred version suggested by an audio engineer at George Blood, L.P. is
the equalized version recorded with the 2.3mm truncated conical stylus, and
has been copied to have the more friendly filename._

I'm trying to guess but can't imagine what the reasoning for this is. I've
tried A/B/C/D testing a few tracks on some crappy speakers and can't discern
any difference.

While it's certainly admirable to try and digitize it as thoroughly as
possible, I just can't see how a difference of 0.5mm in the stylus width is
worth increasing your work load 4x times over (having to record each record 4
times rather than just once).

~~~
johtso
Looking at the "about" page for the project, it explains that they're using a
special turntable with 4 styli that can record simultaneously. So it doesn't
really increase the workload by 4 times to archive in this more thorough way.

[https://archive.org/details/georgeblood&tab=about](https://archive.org/details/georgeblood&tab=about)

~~~
stordoff
That's extremely cool. With decent headphones (ATH-M50x), there is a
noticeable difference between the styli, so probably worth the extra work for
archival.

------
ShirsenduK
And India has gone ahead and banned them!

[https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-india-blocks-access-
in...](https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-india-blocks-access-internet-
archive-wayback-machine/)

~~~
thecrazyone
Yeah i dont know why its banned. Any idea?

~~~
ShirsenduK
Same here. There has been no notification yet. I am as lost as you. :(

------
jonah-archive
Lots more info here for the curious:
[http://great78.archive.org](http://great78.archive.org)

You can see a picture of one of the four-armed turntables here:
[http://great78.archive.org/preservation/](http://great78.archive.org/preservation/)

------
beaugunderson
They had me make a Twitter bot that's tweeting out all of the 78s (with
preview audio) as well:

[https://twitter.com/old_78s](https://twitter.com/old_78s)

------
sushisource
More sample fodder for the EDM artists and rappers. Always a good thing.

------
mortalkastor
The "Bibliothèque nationale de France" (national library of France) did the
same kind of thing with hundreds of thousands vinyl records from their
archive, including international ones published in France:
[http://www.bnfcollectionsonore.fr/](http://www.bnfcollectionsonore.fr/)

~~~
amelius
Interesting. Is there a way to search these archives?

~~~
emerod
Perhaps from one of these sites:

[http://www.bnf.fr/fr/la_bnf/anx_dep/a.collections_sonores_en...](http://www.bnf.fr/fr/la_bnf/anx_dep/a.collections_sonores_en_ligne.html)

[https://www.bnfcollection.com/](https://www.bnfcollection.com/)

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
If I didn't care [https://archive.org/details/78_if-i-didnt-care_ink-spots-
jac...](https://archive.org/details/78_if-i-didnt-care_ink-spots-jack-
lawrence_gbia0013893a)

Andy Dufrense

~~~
darkmynd
Can't forget this one: [https://archive.org/details/78_i-dont-want-to-set-the-
world-...](https://archive.org/details/78_i-dont-want-to-set-the-world-on-
fire_ink-spots-seiler-marcus-benjemen-durham_gbia0011964a)

The surface noise works well with the song.

------
jrowley
I have no experience with this stuff, but I wonder if they could use a laser
record player to capture the record, and then replay it with different
simulated stylus sizes. Not exactly kosher probably, but could be an
interesting experiment. Plus scanning time could be greatly reduced I imagine.

~~~
prashnts
There've been attempts to do this [1], but I think it's probably not as easy,
than simply playing it back.

[1]
[https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extractin...](https://mediapreservation.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/extracting-
audio-from-pictures/)

~~~
jrowley
This is super cool without a doubt, but they could use an actual laser - not
photographs to do it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable)

~~~
LeoPanthera
The laser turntables sound surprisingly bad because unlike a stylus a laser
will not remove any foreign particles in the groove. Unless the record is
_perfectly_ clean, it's going to sound very noisy indeed.

~~~
flavio81
Exactly.

The Laser turntable was a really bad idea, one that attempts to solve a
problem that doesn't really exist in practice: record wear.

A stylus rides on the physical surface of the record. The information (audio)
is on the physical height and x-position of the groove, not on the image of
the groove. Thus the laser turntable also reads dirt and even damage that
wouldn't be read if the stylus was used.

On a proper turntable with a proper (reasonable quality, not-worn) stylus, a
vinyl record can be played in excess of 1000 times before noticing audio
degradation, according to AES tests done in the '60s. Under an electron
microscope it was reported that the vinyl surface appears to "flow" or
"compress" under the action of the stylus.

78rpm "shellac" records are designed so the _needle_ wears (!). For this, the
osmium needles of the era should be discarded after two record sides. What
happened in real life was that the needles weren't discarded, so they
developed cutting edges that did damage the records.

~~~
jrowley
Thanks for the extra info. Super interesting.

I don't think I'd agree that the laser turn table was a bad idea necessarily
though - I mean if the laser turntable worked as you'd want it to, it could be
really nice, because you wouldn't need to have any moving parts potentially,
or fewer moving parts (series of mirrors to position the laser or something).
And fewer moving parts -> machine will last longer.

~~~
flavio81
It has more moving parts than a normal turntable.

Normal turntable, moving parts:

    
    
        1. turntable spindle
        (2). Motor (sometimes integrated into the spindle assembly)
        3. tonearm bearings
    

ELPJ laser turntable

    
    
        1. turntable spindle
        2. motor
        (3). tray loader
        4. tangential tonearm positioning motor
        5. laser servo mechanism for precise positioning
        6. laser focusing servo
    

Conventional turntables last a long time. In practice they last many
generations.

------
e12e
Certainly a bit of everything on there... :)

[https://archive.org/details/78_rambling-wreck-from-
georgia-t...](https://archive.org/details/78_rambling-wreck-from-georgia-
tech_dick-powell-and-the-foursome-harry-sosnik-
rev.-mic_gbia0013872/08+-+Rambling+Wreck+From+Georgia+-+Dick+Powell+And+The+Foursome.flac)

------
pier25
Any sound restoration software would greatly improve these recordings.

For example this one from 1902: [https://archive.org/details/78_medley-of-
emmetts-yodles_yodl...](https://archive.org/details/78_medley-of-emmetts-
yodles_yodle-song_gbia0000726a/Medley+of+Emmett's+Yodles+-+Yodle+Song.flac)

I'm sure Izotope would give the RX license for free in exchange for a blog
post (or any other audio software company).

~~~
andrewaylett
While that's true, I suspect that for archive, the original is best -- anyone
can (software licenses notwithstanding) apply current state-of-the-art
restoration techniques, but if all we preserve is the restored version then
it's going to be really difficult to apply a better restoration technique in
ten years.

~~~
msla
The Internet Archive already does automatic conversion to uploaded artifacts,
and it's very much an additive process: The original file is always preserved,
and the new versions and file formats are stored alongside it.

------
tamersalama
Looks like there are some recordings by Sergei Rachmaninoff himself [1]

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?sort=&and[]=subject%...](https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?sort=&and\[\]=subject%3A%22Classical%22&and\[\]=subject%3A%2278rpm%22&and\[\]=Rachmaninoff)

------
daveheq
Imagine after World War 3, the aliens sift through the remnants of humanity,
find this archive of digitized 78rpm records, and turn into mustachioed
corduroy-wearing hipsters.

------
0xcb0
This is just great! Listening to these songs instantly sets me back to a
relaxed inner state. Together with that sizzling noise of the gramophone
record in the background, so calm and chilled.

I currently listen to "A Duke Ellington Panorama", just nice!

Thanks for that and keep up the awesome work!

------
menacingly
Very cool that they offer 24bit flac downloads. I'm sure this sentiment is
shared here, but I am always impressed by the efforts of this organization

~~~
sir_brickalot
Honest question: Why is archive.org using 24-bit FLAC when >51% of the
internet tells you HD Audio is useless and can even worsen the listening
experience?

"A consumer will never need 24-bit. Ever."[1]

"24 bit audio is as useless as 192kHz sampling"[2]

I would love to hear a good explanation so I can decide about the future of my
audio library.

[1] [http://gizmodo.com/5768446/why-24-bit-audio-will-be-bad-
for-...](http://gizmodo.com/5768446/why-24-bit-audio-will-be-bad-for-users)

[2] [https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-
young.html](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html)

~~~
thristian
HD audio is useless if you want to listen to audio that somebody else has
prepared.

However, if you want to prepare audio (or any media) yourself, it helps to
have input material that's much higher quality than your output format so that
you can mess around with it and still have something that's at least a little
higher quality than your output format.

I guess archive.org hopes that these recordings will be remixed and re-used
and incorporated into future creations, as well as preserving their original
form.

------
matt_wulfeck
How would one go about removing the pops and clicks from recorded audio
programmatically?

I really like some of the audio here but it needs some post processing. The
only thing I can find to do it is audacity and it doesn't look very friendly
to scripting.

~~~
paulmd
I was musing about this last night. Obviously there are standardized de-noise
utilities (and I'm sure much better minds than I have given a lot of thought
to those) but the fact that we have four separate recordings gives us more
options.

To outline the starting assumption and desired ending points, what we have are
four tracks with different needle sizes. The smaller needles tend to "wobble"
in the track more (will pop/hiss more) but the larger sizes may miss fine
detail (treble) that the smaller needles pick up. The assertion of the
Internet Archive is that the needle that is closest in size to the one used to
record the track will produce the best output, but again we are not limited to
just a single track, we can programmatically combine them to produce a better
output. The desired end-goal is a "clean" track with maximal spectral quality
and minimal pop/hiss.

I think there are two distinct tasks here. Maximizing spectral quality and de-
popping the track.

For the first task, my layman's description of "maximizing spectral quality"
would be that we combine the frequency ranges that each track is "best" at. In
other words the finest needle has the best treble, while the biggest needle
has the cleanest bass. That might be implemented by some kind of averaging, or
a weighted average (eg weight tracks that are "most different" from the
average track, or from the cleanest track).

Then you de-pop the resulting track. In terms of machine learning, this should
be something that is amenable to deep learning. If you train a net to identify
what a "pop" or "hiss" is then you can have it directly produce a clean
output, or produce a "pop/hiss track" that you can then subtract from the
input waveform (same thing).

If you want something more programmatic, you could again play around with
generating a "noise track" by subtracting the "clean" signal (biggest needle)
from the "most detailed" signal (finest needle), perhaps also repeating this
with each other track as well. The "noise track" would still have some signal
inside it and you would need to apply some other method to further separate
that out, but you would be working only on a _portion_ of the total signal so
in theory you would lose less detail than working on the whole signal.

------
vinchuco
Is there a way to stream these indefinitely on shuffle without having to pick
each one manually?

------
Finnucane
Too bad it doesn't seem to be easily searched by label--from a historical
perspective, it would be cool to be able to search for say, Paramount or
Gennet or Okeh.

~~~
zerocrates
Though it's not in the facets you can indeed search by label (here categorized
as Publisher) easily enough:

[https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?and[]=publisher%3A%2...](https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?and\[\]=publisher%3A%22Okeh%22)

~~~
Finnucane
Cool, thanks.

------
Nav_Panel
Some _very very good stuff in here_. I've gotten pretty into 20s thru 50s
music over the past couple of years. I usually buy compilations on LP, though,
so it's a treat to find these straight off the 78s. A big portion of the stuff
never even makes it to digital.

Just at a glance, I'm seeing The Light Crust Doughboys[1], basically a string
band supergroup. Multiple members would go on to found famous western swing
bands (Bob Wills, Milton Brown). Very proto-rock-and-roll -- listen to that
electric guitar -- Elvis would cover some Western Swing numbers[2] in his
early days[3].

Also seeing some older stuff, including a few recordings by the (arguable)
best banjo player of all time, Vess L. Ossman[4] (from 1907). Pretty cool to
listen to these march numbers and then hear them evolve into jazz/ragtime only
a couple years later[5] (this is a recording by Fred Van Eps, the _second_
best banjo player of all time, from 1914).

EDITS: seeing some other personal favorites:

Hank Penny, a favorite western swing singer of mine[6]. He usually does it
hot/upbeat/fun.

Blind Blake, a guitarist who could play the fretboard like a ragtime piano[7]!

Oh, and here's the WWII-era Bob Wills I was waiting for[8]. Got that classic
Leon McAuliffe pedal steel playing. No Tommy Duncan vocals, unfortunately.

Neat! An old solo Art Tatum[9]! Widely considered the best pianist of all
time... And another, a whole album[10]!

Really classic early electric guitar playing on a jump blues number by T-Bone
Walker[11]. I actually believe he's one of the first to use the electric
guitar in blues.

Great steel guitar playing on this Gene Autry cowboy number[12].

Looks like there's a lot of Django for all you gypsy jazz fans[13]. Never
heard this take on Avalon before, I dig it.

Lot more to dig through and lot of obscure stuff I'd like to give a shot, but
I'm out of time for now...

1: [https://archive.org/details/78_pretty-little-dear_light-
crus...](https://archive.org/details/78_pretty-little-dear_light-crust-
doughboys-ramon-de-arman-crumit_gbia0008766a)

2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGCTFWhoqQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGCTFWhoqQ)

3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bSVEA0ZAVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bSVEA0ZAVw)

4: [https://archive.org/details/78_policy-king-
march_vess-l.-oss...](https://archive.org/details/78_policy-king-
march_vess-l.-ossman-d.-brown_gbia0009599a)

5: [https://archive.org/details/78_notoriety-rag_van-eps-trio-
ka...](https://archive.org/details/78_notoriety-rag_van-eps-trio-
kathryn-l.-widner_gbia0005729b)

6: [https://archive.org/details/78_get-yourself-a-red-
head_hank-...](https://archive.org/details/78_get-yourself-a-red-head_hank-
penny-penny-duncan_gbia0007440b)

7: [https://archive.org/details/78_tampa-bound_blind-
blake_gbia0...](https://archive.org/details/78_tampa-bound_blind-
blake_gbia0001322b)

8: [https://archive.org/details/78_texas-playboy-rag_wills-
bob-w...](https://archive.org/details/78_texas-playboy-rag_wills-bob-wills-
and-his-texas-playboys_gbia0000257a)

9: [https://archive.org/details/78_deep-purple_art-tatum-
mitchel...](https://archive.org/details/78_deep-purple_art-tatum-mitchell-
parish-peter-de-rose_gbia0000999a)

10: [https://archive.org/details/78_art-tatum_art-tatum-james-
swi...](https://archive.org/details/78_art-tatum_art-tatum-james-swift-
tatum_gbia0005678)

11: [https://archive.org/details/78_t-bone-blues_les-hite-and-
his...](https://archive.org/details/78_t-bone-blues_les-hite-and-his-
orchestra-hite-walker-t-bone-walker-frank-pasley_gbia0001424a)

12: [https://archive.org/details/78_silver-haired-daddy-of-
mine_g...](https://archive.org/details/78_silver-haired-daddy-of-mine_gene-
autry-jimmy-long_gbia0000335a)

13: [https://archive.org/details/78_the-quintet-of-the-hot-
club-o...](https://archive.org/details/78_the-quintet-of-the-hot-club-of-
france_the-quintet-of-the-hot-club-of-france-django_gbia0003366)

~~~
leoc
No Pops? There has to be Pops:

[https://archive.org/details/78_s.-o.-l.-blues_louis-
armstron...](https://archive.org/details/78_s.-o.-l.-blues_louis-armstrong-
and-his-hot-five-louis-armstrong-armstrong-kid-ory-j_gbia0004530b)

[https://archive.org/details/78_savoy-blues_louis-
armstrong-a...](https://archive.org/details/78_savoy-blues_louis-armstrong-
and-his-hot-five-lewis-armstrong-bennett-louis-
armstron_gbia0009425/08+-+Savoy+Blues+-+Louis+Armstrong+and+his+Hot+Five.flac)

(Though these are songs you can already find on CD or on Spotify.)

~~~
Nav_Panel
Absolutely! Was just trying to focus on artists people might not be familiar
with.

------
hmhrex
Just curious, what's the copyright on this kind of material?

~~~
johtso
From the project's "about" page:

"This collection has been made available for use in research, teaching, and
private study only. Copyrights that may exist in these materials have not been
transferred to the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive does not advise as
to the copyright status of items in our collections. Our terms of use require
that users make use of the Internet Archive's collections at their own risk
and ensure that such use is non-infringing and in accordance with all
applicable laws. It is the user’s responsibility to determine whether
permission may be required for a given use of these materials, or whether such
use is authorized by law."

[https://archive.org/details/georgeblood&tab=about](https://archive.org/details/georgeblood&tab=about)

~~~
Broken_Hippo
This is one time I wish I would have read the comments first as I went and
searched this information :)

------
kyledrake
Be careful what you wish for

[https://archive.org/details/78_i-want-a-hippopotamus-for-
chr...](https://archive.org/details/78_i-want-a-hippopotamus-for-
christmas_vicki-dale-the-peter-pan-orchestra_gbia0000281a)

------
shmerl
Thanks for the link, lot's good stuff there!

* [https://archive.org/details/78_dance-a-little-tanz-a-bissel_...](https://archive.org/details/78_dance-a-little-tanz-a-bissel_rose-gross-maurice-spector_gbia0000577b)

* [https://archive.org/details/HotAYidAVaybele_201706](https://archive.org/details/HotAYidAVaybele_201706) A lot more here: [https://archive.org/details/78rpm](https://archive.org/details/78rpm)

------
sdsk8
I don't know about everybody here, but i am listening to so much new things to
me on this archive that i'll definitely donate to the archive team today,
congratulations for this fantastic job!

------
fortyfivan
Wow, this is great! I've been a serious record collector for 20 years, but
never got into 78s.

My eventual life goal is to do something similar with my Brazilian record
collection... have the skeleton of such catalog at:
[https://www.novedos.com/collection](https://www.novedos.com/collection).

------
orbitingpluto
This is the crowning gem from the Internet Archive (from the 78 RPMs and
Cylinder Recordings collection).

Cab Calloway, The Man from Harlem

[https://archive.org/details/Harlem](https://archive.org/details/Harlem)

------
S_A_P
So the obvious win here besides archiving art is that this is out of copyright
sample fodder*

*IANAL and this may not be the case for all the material but I'm sure that there is mountains of inspiration to be mined.

------
kmeade
I'm curious about something and I can't find the answer on the web site -- Why
were these recordings played and digitized in stereo when the records were
mono?

~~~
vatys
> Why were these recordings played and digitized in stereo when the records
> were mono?

Probably to allow for better post-processing in case one groove wall is in
better condition than the other. They seem to be going for completeness rather
than hard drive efficiency.

[http://great78.archive.org/preservation/](http://great78.archive.org/preservation/)

> This means we deliver both groove walls of 4 different stylus sizes with and
> without EQ for a total of 16 channels of audio. The most comprehensive
> presentation of 78rpm discs ever!

------
barking
What did they smell of? It was really unusual. Tesco, briefly, had an own
brand hand soap liquid in the 1990s with exactly the same smell.

------
amelius
Is it possible to search based on genre or geographic origin?

------
neelkadia
New stuff for Machine Learning. GAN. Magenta.

------
cJ0th
thanks for the heads up. this is just amazing!

------
anjc
I am become The Avalanches, mixer of old songs

Very cool

