Скачать или смотреть "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" by Margaret Young, 1925 Brunswick Light-Ray 78rpm

Margaret Youngblood, shortened to Young, was a popular vocalist in the 1920s. She made a number of records for Brunswick, and this is one of her last issued recordings that I could find [she apparently recorded for Capitol in the 1940s, but I haven't found any of those records]. Here she sings Gus Kahn & Walter Donaldson's "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" in 1925 for Brunswick record 2939 [yep, the billiard and bowling equipment firm]. The orchestra isn't credited, but it might be Bennie Krueger's band.

Unfortunately, this was one of the few electrical recordings she made, and it was made with one of the worst processes used in the 1920s...

The rough, blatty sound here is courtesy the Brunswick "Light Ray" process, essentially a version of the Hoxie Pallophotophone from General Electric. The original machine was designed to record sound on film, hence the photos, by collecting sound in a funnel, vibrating a miniscule mirror, shining light onto the vibrating mirror, and reflecting the now-varying light into a lens system onto a photocell. The photocell would convert this into electrical audio signals to be amplified and processed. In this case, it drove an electrical cutting head to make records.

Hoxie, the inventor, designed it with the goal of being able to process sound and film simultaneously [like Lee DeForest] and potentially broadcast it - much like camcorders with decent mics and WiFi and casting capability today.

It was an amazingly advanced idea, but the sound collection method was barely any better than the acoustic-mechanical methods prevalent - resonance from the horn was still a problem, but the mirror mount was much more sensitive than the acoustic driving/recording box [since it used more delicate materials and didn't have to directly etch the groove into the master itself], making it prone to distortion if overdriven...which clearly happened a lot. Not only this, but Brunswick's engineers didn't have a handle on it for a while, so they'd turn up the volume when the signal was already terribly distorted. While the recordings were much louder and somewhat clearer than acoustic records played back acoustically, their true sound when played back electrically is...a bit painful to hear.

Brunswick eventually figured it out and improved until 1927, when they licensed the RCA Photophone system [similar to the GE Light-Ray system, but using a microphone to vary the brightness of the light shining onto the photocell, still intended to record to film or drive a record cutter]. The results were markedly better, though they are still a little rougher than Western Electric recordings.