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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2014 - 9:23 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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This topic came up in another thread and I thought it deserved its own.
The 1950s and 60s produced some of the greatest sounding hi fi recordings ever, for music that was intended for LPs (and reel tape). This is the case for the US and at least some European countries.
In light of this, it is interesting how sonically disappointing many Hollywood film score recordings are from this period. Granted, the masters are often lost, and the best we can get is a not-so-hi-fi stem. But even with scores for which the 3-track masters survive, there is either wow and flutter, tape damage or dropout, or, frequently, a very mid-rangey sound lacking the depth and clarity you would hear on, say, a 1950s Capitol mono LP or an RCA Living Stereo.
True, LPs were made with a musical focus, so there was an expectation that the music had to sound good. Film music, on the other hand, was serving a purpose in a larger enterprise and was placed under dialog. I'm sure no one had any idea that a small subculture of obsessives would want this stuff decades later. 
So, does anyone have technical information on how Hollywood film scores were recorded relative to major label LPs, either in terms of microphone brands and placement, type of tape used, tape storage conditions over the years, and the like?
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Posted: |
Oct 17, 2014 - 11:47 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Regarding the quality of original film music recordings: during the years when record labels were recording directly to vinyl masters, the film studios were recording to film using the same optical tracks that would be used in release. In optical recording at its best, low frequencies are rolled off at 20 Hz, while high frequencies are limited to 14.5 KHz. This is not dictated by what the optical recorder is able to handle in the way of high frequencies, but by what projectors are able to play back in the theater environment. Recordings made to vinyl, on the other hand, have a frequency response from 7 Hz to 25KHz and have over 75 dB of dynamic range, vs. about 50dB for optical recording.
Film soundtrack recording and audio recording techniques became much more alike when magnetic tape recording became widespread in the early 1950s. Good magnetic recording can produce recordings with a frequency response of 10 Hz to above 20 kHz, with a 60dB dynamic range. But while record labels were releasing these recordings on vinyl discs that could handle the frequency range of tape, film studios still issued the bulk of their product with optical soundtracks that reproduced much less of what had (theoretically) been recorded in the studio. Aside from the rare magnetic stereo film release, it would take the introduction of the Dolby noise reduction process to bring the best out of analog optical soundtracks. And digital sound for theaters was introduced years after CDs had become the standard for audio releases. So, movie sound has nearly always been a step behind the sound for audio releases.
As you note, the film studios did not foresee a continuing use for their music soundtracks beyond their inclusion in the film. Once the film's soundtrack was mixed and vaulted, the need to keep and spend money to preserve the separate music stems often gave way to higher priority uses for funds. In the 1950s and 1960s, no one anticipated the need to "remaster" films for any other use. Existing vaulted negatives and the mixed soundtracks were sufficient for the rare theatrical reissue and for low sound resolution television sales.
On the other hand, for the music labels, particularly the classical labels, their entire raison d'être was the sale (and resale) of musical performances. Consequently, it was in their financial interest to keep older recordings in as pristine a condition as possible, since re-releases of such material could be done on the cheap, without incurring the ever-escalating expense of a new recording. But until home video came along, film soundtracks were a “one-off,” with no continuing commercial value.
I guess the main question is, did the predominance of optical sound film releases well into the early 1980s, with their attendant low-fi sound, cause the recording engineers at the film studios to either consciously or unconsciously be less critical in their recording techniques? There's no doubt that the lack of a secondary home market for films caused the studios to be less concerned with the preservation of such recordings.
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I think it varied. I far prefer the sound of the original Ben-Hur film recording to the sound on any of the concurrent album recordings (I do prefer the performance too but just focusing on sound for this discussion).
I bet if the film recordings survived for El Cid or Exodus we might prefer them to the album recordings too.
Yavar
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Posted: |
Oct 18, 2014 - 9:34 AM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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In light of this, it is interesting how sonically disappointing many Hollywood film score recordings are from this period. Granted, the masters are often lost, and the best we can get is a not-so-hi-fi stem. But even with scores for which the 3-track masters survive, there is either wow and flutter, tape damage or dropout, or, frequently, a very mid-rangey sound lacking the depth and clarity you would hear on, say, a 1950s Capitol mono LP or an RCA Living Stereo.
Onya, I think your sonic disappointment is not based upon how Hollywood film score recordings sounded when they were new but, rather, on how such recording elements sound in the 21st century after 55+ or 65+ years of storage.
Would you hear 'wow' if you were in the theater audience in 1954 or 1955 while watching a wide-screen color film production and listening to its stereo sound via the theater's sound reproduction system(s)?
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Posted: |
Oct 18, 2014 - 10:12 AM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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In the fifties & sixties you couldn't own a film like you can do now. A film came out & went, disappeared until it turned up on the telly. If you bought the LP soundtrack, you sort of owned a bit of it, & you had the poster art (LP cover). And this was good news for the studios, they had something to help publicize the film that actually made a profit (soundtrack LP's selling in big numbers in those days). These days, when the original soundtrack is available, I generally prefer it to the LP version. There are exceptions, like the Flint albums, & then with studios like Columbia who didn't keep their music tracks, the LP version is all we have. The perfect answer is to have both LP & original tracks on the same release, but that's rare as they're usually owned by different people. A couple of good ones in the last few years are from Intrada: Sebastian (Goldsmith) & The Carpetbaggers (Bernstein). I'd think that we who were around in the sixties & bought these LP's like them more than the generation who came after.
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Posted: |
Oct 18, 2014 - 1:09 PM
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By: |
ToneRow
(Member)
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I guess the main question is, did the predominance of optical sound film releases well into the early 1980s, with their attendant low-fi sound, cause the recording engineers at the film studios to either consciously or unconsciously be less critical in their recording techniques? There's no doubt that the lack of a secondary home market for films caused the studios to be less concerned with the preservation of such recordings.
For whatever it's worth, I'll add to this paragraph that composers/orchestrators/etc. themselves may not have been entirely convinced that their work on films and film music possessed anything of lasting value.
Before his passing, orchestrator (and sometimes composer) Ralph Ferraro had reminisced on this very topic. He and Piero Piccioni (and perhaps others, too) did not think they were doing anything important enough (musically, that is) to warrant the proper storage, preservation and/or restoration of film music, which may have been viewed by its own industry as consumer art (use it then forget about it). In this sense, film music could be compared to the graphic designs on soda cans - the consumer buys the soft drink, the customer drinks the contents and then discards the empty can into a receptacle. Thus, the images on the can are throw-away art.
Perhaps Jerry Goldsmith was closest to the core when he regarded soundtrack collectors (who bought every album of his music) as bottle-cap collectors. 
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Posted: |
Oct 24, 2014 - 9:32 AM
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By: |
finder4545
(Member)
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Very interesting thread, that, apart from the technical arguments focused on the quality question “LP versus film session” (Rozsaphile stated well the things in a few words), also brings to reconsider the question of “rights” and “money profit” on that old materials (film music) originally intended not for a recurring listening, but for a “one-only-time” use on the movie.
Having today no substantial market - maybe 500 to 1500 basic followers buying discs - these kind of non-commercial materials, left in the vault on their native unprotected supports, are going only to lose “in progress” their sound quality, day after day, with the risk of entering the Public Domain, into another generation, in hopeless conditions, no longer in time to be saved in some way, even supposing an interest and a will of that generation to rescue them from death.
In other words: the owners of the rights are defending only the future dust, if nobody does something.
The output of some composers has been put under provisional protection, by donation to Universities, often accompanied by heir’s conditions and limitations of use (in the case of Elmer Bernstein, this seems to be the reason for which TEN COMMANDMENTS or KINGS OF THE SUN appear so delayed, compared to other great releases already done).
Considering another side of the technical question focused by OnyaBirri, part of the surviving recordings also is the result of a “last minute attempt” to save them from destruction, by someone who cared to do monaural “masters” from stereo recordings, before blanking the originals (in order to do room or recover supports), so that these objects are now no longer native materials but only copies mirrored from first generation elements.
Rozsa’s JULIUS CAESAR, according to the booklet of the FSM disc release, seems to have been the product of such a kind of operation, having been miraculously “saved” (or “destroyed”, depending on the point of view) by a mono transcription of the native stereo.
Problems can occur, when two or more perfect channels are mixed onto a single mono, even with perfect machines, and you only have to think what can happen on the highs, with violins in opposite phase, for a wrong azimuth (EL CID had the first recording in Italy ruined by that problem).
On the other hand, even masters of original Hi-Fi Albums of ‘50 and ’60 can sound today very bad, for the ups and downs of their life: remember the awful WALK ON WILD SIDE or MOCKINGBIRD reissues, before the brilliant Intrada re-release of them.
Returning to what I said above, I think Intrada, Kritzerland and La-La Land Rec., being not simple traders but precious preservers of this special music, deserve a better consideration by owners of the rights and the physical sound elements, and must have from them the highest support.
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Posted: |
Oct 26, 2014 - 10:12 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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I realize you are referring to recording studio engineering done during the late-1950s and early 1960s for ALL LPs (not only soundtrack albums), Onya, but in your estimation what percentage of such LPs from that time frame are truly audiophile?
Perhaps you are focusing on the products from specific labels (Mercury, Capitol, etc.) and not necessarily the entirety of LP output from the whole recording industry?
I will simply hazard a guess and speculate that maybe only 10% of LPs from this time period were high-fidelity and the other 90% of the recordings were made with less care/interest in the overall sound quality.
What do you think?
If we are talking about the US during the postwar era, I would argue that the percentage of hi-fi LPs was much higher than 10%, because the catalogs of the majors took up a large percentage of the overall numbers of titles available, and because the mid-size labels were trying to compete with the majors.
Of course, there were always budget labels - the notorious Crown Records; and small labels that didn't have the resources of the larger companies. And there was the occasional outlier like US Decca, which always stayed woefully behind the times in terms of both artist rosters and physical product, with LPs that shattered like 78s if they were dropped.
But LPs resonated with the general public because of their longer playing length and extended frequency range, and the vast majority of mid-size and major labels wanted to capitalize on hi-fi. There was the big postwar boom, with its emphasis on newness and better living through better products. The music industry reflected this.
I do not have an ultra hi-end system - I don't have the income or the space for the one - but I do have a very decent system given the price range. In my experience, mono LPs from the 1950s and 1960s almost always sound good to great. Stereo is much more dodgy, given that it was a new technology. From the beginning, it could sound amazing or disappointing. By the 1970s, all bets are off with LPs. But in the aggregate, I would say the quality of US LPs in the 1950s and 60s, in terms of recording, mastering, and LP pressings, was as generally solid as it ever would be.
So back to my original point, it is interesting that the major US film studios, with all their resources, were not producing recordings with the level of quality that the major record labels were producing.
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