greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley) (09/20/84)
A recent posting which mentioned a CD player with a variable pitch control will probably provoke several "why do you need one?" responses. There is, of course, the obvious situation of musicians who like to "play along" with a recording and need to adjust for the differences in tuning of different orchestras (such as the notoriously high tuning used by the Vienna Philharmonic both live and on records). There is another reason that many people may not be aware of, which is of interest to anyone who collects transfers of "historic" material originally recorded on 78's. Many companies who have issued LP transfers of 78's have been careless in matching the actual speed of the original recording (which has been known to vary from approx. 65 RPM to 86 RPM). RCA Victor, with one of the most extensive catalogues of "historic" 78's (Caruso, Flagstad, Toscanini, among countless others) has been particularly bad about this. There is a record of arias by Rosa Ponselle which contains a "Willow Song" from Otello, dubbed a full half-tone sharp, thus rendering the voice unrecognizeable from the rest of the selections. So far, this has not applied to CD since, to my knowledge, there are no CD's yet available of material originally recorded on 78's. The presence of "digitally remastered" Toscanini performances on the RCA Gold Seal label indicates that CD's of the same material may be on the way (although so far, the selections chosen were mastered on magnetic tape). If this happens, the reccurence of this pitch problem will depend upon whether the digital "master" is remade from the original shellacs, or is taken from the same working tape which was used for the previous LP transfer. - Greg Paley