[RNLD] Technical problem: old recordings not playing through

[Paul Trilsbeek]

Hi Salome,

It could be that they are stereo files of which the left and right channels are out of phase, meaning that one of the channels is basically flipped upside down. When playing such files through stereo speakers, they sound pretty normal apart from possibly some wider than usual stereo effect, but if you play such a file through a mono speaker by merging the left and right channel together, it could be that the one channel cancels out the other one because the signals are the opposite of one another. You then basically hear nothing or almost nothing. 

If this is indeed the problem, it can be easily fixed in a sound editor either by just getting rid of one of the channels in case the original source was mono anyway, or by “inverting” one of the channels. (e.g. Audacity has such an “invert” function under “effects”). The source of such problem is usually in incorrectly soldered wire.

Best,

Paul

On 19 Mar 2014, at 4:20 , 3/19/14, salome harris <s_lome at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I wonder if any of you have any experience or expertise in solving this problem:
> 
> I have some recordings that I digitised from 40 year old cassettes, that for some reason when copied to my phone or a memory stick, are not playing properly through various speakers I have. The sound comes out crackly and unrecognisable as speech.
> 
> They will play through a bluetooth connected speaker from my laptop, so I suspect it is related to transferring the recordings to another device. Also, better quality recordings of the same era do work with those devices.
> 
> I have tried both .wav and .mp3 versions of the files, and this makes no difference to the problem.
> 
> Strangely, the problem recordings do work through my phone using headphones, just not through the internal phone speaker, a blue tooth speaker connected to the phone, nor through a memory stick plugged into a speaker.
> 
> (Note to Nick Thieberger - these are recordings I digitised myself, not the recordings digitised by Paradisec)
> 
> I'd be grateful for any suggestions. I'm trying to improve portability since I'm in the field and trying to play old recordings to groups of listeners, and can't always carry my laptop with me.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Salome