I’m not talking about the mid-atlantic accent which has been asked about on this sub. I mean how the actual recordings of voices have a distinct sound quality where you can tell they’re…. old timey. Not the graininess, not background-noisiness, but the actual timbre/character of the voices has some sort of… idk, almost slightly electronicky sound to it. And modern artists use it as an artificial effect. But modern recording technology recreates voices much more true-to-life. What is this?
If this makes no sense feel free to roast me and remove my post >_>
edit: someone suggested to link an example. This was on my mind when watching this clip of the Jordannaires singing at the Grand Ol Opry in the 50s: [https://youtu.be/qkJU8BS-jDU?t=337](https://youtu.be/qkJU8BS-jDU?t=337) I listen to a fair amount of barbershop, and lots of the old recordings have this vocal quality to it, but modern recordings are much more accurate to the person’s real-life voice.
In: Technology
I made a saltshaker microphone out of an old telephone speaker. Gives that old time sound without using studio effects. http://imgur.com/gallery/EuBeqOP
It makes total sense dude. there’s something very calming about that sound too. I literally was joking with my coworkers yesterday as we watched a video from the 40’s that every old timey video was narrated by the same guy.
it’s like the old version of the “In a world….” movie trailer voice.
ELI5: Less low tones, less high tones, more noise and glitches, unstable recording speed.
Old recording media had low bandwidth, so low and high ends of the audible spectrum couldn’t be recorded. The media also introduced much noise. Mechanical noise and noise specific to the media used, like uneven surface of a record, dirty, worn out film or magnetic tape. Noise present in all old electronics. Recording and playback require that the sound is recorded and replayed with the same speed. Old mechanical devices that provided the transport was not very precise. The oldest ones were manually operated with a crank.
One of the biggest factors is the microphone.
Older ones were less efficient (you had to speak louder, there’s less dynamic range) and had a smaller frequency response, especially on the higher end. That leads to the lower-end being more prominent, resulting in the “warmth” that we know from old recordings.
In other words, you’re hearing the microphone and recording, not just the singer.
As the microphone and recording technology improved, the final product became more accurate, to the point that it’s “invisible” and we only hear the singer.
The record is not perfectly center so when recorded in digital it captured that wavy effect
whats this thing is all about?
Perhaps because the old timers could actually carry a tune, while today few “performers” can do so. What we hear today is auto-tune.
David Byrne talks about this in one of this books. It’s been a few years since I read it, but the gist is, RCA wanted to advertise that their record players sounded indistinguishable from the human voice, while obviously record players of the time were severely band-limited. So for the demos they had famous jazz singers sing intentionally with a nasally voice that was reproduceable on record. As a result, this style of singing took off. Also, it became natural to imitate the sound of your favorite singer, which you’d only heard on record, so you’d naturally also copy the lo-fi affectations of the recording medium.
TL;DR singers imitated the sound of recorded voices.
But in that example you showed, they’re just lip syncing to their record which is dusty and warped in addition to being distorted and bandlimited.
Wow- OP’s link regarding the Jordanairres is only a few minutes of an hour and twenty minute video of “old timey” country music performances- there’s lots of really great stuff there.
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