AUDIBILITIES
By Emmet Robinson King Street Recording Company
Professional Audio Services for Any Purpose You Can Think Of – Video and Photo Too!
Since 1967
Volume 76, Fall, 2020
The Absolute Truth About Photo Restoration
As an impatient nation, we’re always looking for faster ways of getting things done. In restoring and preserving vintage photos, for example, there are online services promising fast results at low prices. Why not use them? The answer lies in the details.
The absolute truth is that online services have no direct access to your original image. Whether it’s a vintage photograph, newspaper clipping, or handwritten letter from 1853, online services can only work with the
digitized images you send them.
• If your original photo or document has been physically damaged and won’t scan properly, what do you do?
• When your original is too large for your scanner, how do you handle that?
• If, for technical reasons, you’re unable to send a sufficiently high
resolution file, your retouching options may be severely limited. How do you get the results you want?
Here, the work is done directly from original images, scanned at very high resolution. This allows retouching details as small as a single hair! Details are important. Here are some examples:
• Working with an original newspaper article, it was possible to reconstruct individual damaged or missing characters at the margins of the text.
• A candlestick partially blocking a face was carefully removed, and that portion of the face in the photo reconstructed.
• When people in the background distracted from the subjects in an outdoor wedding photo, they were removed.
• In a snapshot of a man standing in a sunny Italian street, the tilted camera produced an incomplete image. Among the missing were part of the sky, a section of street, one side of an adjacent building – and the man’s right foot!
All missing items were carefully and completely restored. How?
Contrary to popular belief, there is no single mouse click or keystroke that will instantly correct such photographic defects. Retouching and restoration is done over a period of hours, with as many as thousands of individual strokes with the digital equivalent of tiny paint brushes. There is no quick and easy way to achieve worthwhile results quickly. It takes time – and considerable skill – to produce the desired result.
You may have photos of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, lovers, classmates or other people, places and events dear to you. You may also have newspaper clippings, certificates, letters or other documents of importance to you. Think about this:
They’re fading away while you read this. Why risk their eventual loss?
What are you waiting for? Bring them here to save and preserve those images that are important to you – for yourself, and for future generations.
Rates begin at $24.95. Call now for an appointment! 610-647-4341
IN THE STUDIO
VOICES
Heard a Good Book Lately?
A fact-based work of fiction, Atlantic City Nights is author James McCusker’s latest novel. It’s a gripping account of the shady and often violent wheelings and dealings of a fictional organized crime family involved in the development of the Atlantic City, New Jersey, casinos.
When Jim decided to convert his printed pages to audiobook form, he asked me to narrate. Soon I found myself engaged in an enjoyable challenge that would keep me busy for months and make full use of my forty-plus years as a professional voice actor.
For credibility and maximum listener engagement, I knew that simply reading the words into the microphone would not be enough. This dynamic novel would require giving the key characters individual, readily identifiable voices. It would also require giving life to their words. That was the easy part.
Having been born before the advent of commercial television, I grew up with 1940s radio. Dick Cavett once said something to the effect that, “Radio is the best entertainment medium because it requires the use of imagination.” That’s true. Listening to the radio, with nothing but the actors’ voices, music and sound effects, I could easily follow the action. I even knew what the characters looked like. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the resonant voice of tall, slender Marshall Matt Dillon was that of short, portly William Conrad.
In years of intense listening I unconsciously began absorbing the principles of diction, voice inflection, dynamics, pacing, timing and the use of dialect. This was more than just talking – this was acting. Beginning in 1963, I began using what I learned to narrate radio commercials, promotional videos and then corporate training programs. Now, narrating this novel allows me to give life to the colorful characters in Atlantic City Nights.
With the author’s permission, I’ve been able to decide what the key characters should sound like. Some of the coarser of heavily textured voice are extremely tiring, so I alternate between recording and narrating.
To keep the action moving, timing is critical. The spaces between lines of dialogue are adjusted repeatedly until I can hear a natural conversational flow. A tenth of a second makes an audible difference.
Then, of course, was the matter of dynamics. Since each character voice had a different volume, many adjustments were necessary. One of the major advantages of digital recording is that the recording can be manipulated after the fact. As many as a hundred minor adjustments brought every character’s voice to a common level.
On completion, each chapter is sent to the author for review, then backed up on disc and multiple hard drives. At the moment, I’m on Chapter 11 in a 25-chapter book. I can hardly wait to hear how it ends.
Long Memory
On my 60-week national tour as a coffeehouse entertainer in the late 1960s, I made a few friends. Some still remember me after all this time, and I was happy to hear from one recently. She recalled a song from a show I did in Austin, Texas and asked if I had a recording of it. Since I didn’t, I recorded it in the studio and sent it to her at no charge. How nice it is to be remembered!
FROM THE ATTIC
For the Kiddies
In working with vintage material, there are old songs, and then there are old songs. The song on the client’s disk was a humorous childrens’ tune written in 1907. After successfully creating a digital audio file, it was then possible to remove many of the clicks, ticks and pops inherent in disk recordings. Wearing headphones, the intruding noises were removed one at a time. The resulting disk will entertain kids with a tune no one has heard in nearly 100 years.
Family History
Reviewing the archives recently I came upon recordings of my grandmother’s voice from the 1960s. Hearing her warm, loving voice again after so many years brought back a flood of pleasant memories.
Nana and I were very close. She nursed me through a life-threatening illness when I was quite small. She also bought me the small tape recorder that eventually led to a full-time recording studio.That original recorder also allowed us to communicate more effectively. When her arthritis finally made it impossible for her to write or type, she bought a recorder of her own that she could operate and we communicated by tape for several years. I’m so glad that I preserved her tapes by transferring them to disk!
I normally discard recordings after ten years. But not those.
OLD FAVORITES
The most enjoyable part of tape and disk restoration is being able to listen to the stories of those who lived in an earlier time. Here are two favorites.
The Sailor
It’s interesting to find a way to play a 78-RPM steel disc that’s only 6” across. The recording had been made by a weary sailor aboard a battleship in the war-torn Pacific during WWII. His brief and heart-felt message was simply to let his family know that he was all right. As he spoke, his words were punctuated by occasional cannon fire!
After hearing someone under such extreme stress attempting to sound calm and comforting to his loved ones, I don’t believe a photo could have conveyed the same emotional impact.
The Soldiers
Throughout his tour of duty in Vietnam, the young lieutenant carried a small, portable, open reel tape recorder with him. During occasional moments of relative calm, he’d record his activities and observations, then manage to send the tapes home. Many years later he brought 30 of his tiny original recordings here to the studio for careful transfer to CD.
In tape after tape, he maintained a running commentary on his adven-tures in scenic Southeast Asia, accompanied by cannon, machine gun and small arms fire, booming, banging and rattling in the background! I was struck by the stark contrast between the content of his messages and his delivery style. In a calm and pleasant voice, he described the horror and insanity of war in ways the evening TV news could not. The most terrifying of all were his detailed descriptions of the design and use of booby traps by the opposing forces. Chilling!
FROM THE PHOTO SHOPPE
Slidin’ Into History
Some of us of an earlier generation enjoy documenting and preserving our personal history so that others can know who we were and how we lived our lives.
To that end, I’ve been assigned the pleasurable task of producing a video from nearly a thousand 35-mm film slides. In a world of increasing high technology, this was another case for O.P.T. or Older, Proven Technology.
The newer scanner-printers will scan and print images beautifully – but they won’t scan slides. For that, I use a vintage scanner I keep on hand for just that purpose.
With luck, I might be finished by Christmas.
F.A.Q.
Q: You seem to use a lot of older equipment. Why not convert to something more modern?
A: The old tape recorders still work, and I use ‘em frequently. The vintage computers for audio production run on the most dependable software I’ve ever had. The updated version I tried was a disaster, and was missing two small applications I have frequent use for. Once again, O.P.T.
Q: How do you continue to operate during the current pandemic?
A: Since most of the work is the restoration and preservation of vintage materials, clients make an appointment and leave their materials on the inside front steps.
Q: You’ve been in this business for more than fifty years. Do you ever think about retiring?
A: Nope. I’m having too much fun! Speaking of fun, if you want to know how this former dance instructor ended up as a recording engineer, read my new autobiography, Little Boy Found. I keep copies here at the studio. Yours for just $29.99 including postage, handling and autograph.
While you’re at it, have a look at Emmet Robinson’s Reading Room, a growing collection of original informative and entertaining articles for your business – and your life. Go to:
IMPORTANT HEALTH TIP!
Too many of us seem to think that wearing a facemask is either a sign of weakness or a loss of civil rights. Not so. Wearing a facemask is a sign of both common sense and high intelligence. The finer particles of the COVID-19 virus – “aerosols” – are so small and lightweight that they float in the air in the same way the smoke from a cigarette will linger after the smoker has gone. While strolling for exercise or shopping the local stores, it’s entirely possible to inhale particles that a sneezer, cougher – or talker – left behind twenty minutes previously. Why take a chance? Cover up when you’re outside. Dade County in Florida levies a $100 fine for a bare face.
Between the blog, the newsletters and Emmet Robinson’s Reading Room, I found the variety of topics and volume of material most impressive.