Indiana University website goes live today!

[Le Chiffre]

That sounds great. I'll take your word for it and look forward to it. If it comes out around the same time as TOSOTW, all the better.

[Dan_UK]

But you'd be surprised how many "OTR Fans" (?) still long for faults... "The static and the clicks make me think of the old days!"

So of course, Balance In All Things:

The Sweet Spot lies between a dirty multi-dubbed disc, and an over-scrubbed digital file.

There's so many old files I find unlistenable because someone has wanted to remove every last morsel of hiss then whacked the settings up some more for good measure. When processing audio I try and take notice of what is happening to the quality and if it's being impaired I'd throttle back a little... and so only remove some hiss not all, to try and find a happy medium. One setting I never use (because it's terrible, but I'm sure many old OTR files have been treated with it) is the one where it take a little sample of silence from the recording and apply it to the whole recording. The difference is quite impressive to a noob, but once you start listening to the recording you start to hear some horrible unwanted things happening.

Then we have bitrate... I've seen OTR fans say say that older recordings don't need to be such a high bitrate because they're 'bad quality' to begin with, but what they don't realise is in low bitrate every click and crackle is made so much worse, with each little click being accompanied by extra unwanted sounds which sounds worse the lower the bitrate. Then there's that sound that sounds like someone continually shaking a bag of broken glass.

P.S. - As I think I mentioned here before, a little birdy tells me that there may be a best-yet WOTW coming for Halloween - and done by folks who know_their_stuff.

Well if they use Randy Riddle's copy, Lilly's copy, and any other copies, and use the best bits from each they should be able to come up with something truly excellent.

[Wich2]

Well if they use Randy Riddle's copy, Lilly's copy, and any other copies, and use the best bits from each they should be able to come up with something truly excellent.

I believe that that is about what is happening - and in the hands of folks who know their stuff.

-Craig

[Wich2]

Has anyone been there recently?

I tried to access the '38 CAROL there today, to compare to a CD, and it would not fire up.

(This has happened before, too...)

-Craig

[jbrooks]

Just tried it ... works for me. Listening to Joseph Cotton as Scrooge's nephew as I type this ...

[Wich2]

Thanks, J.

It cleared for me later; may have been an AOhelL issue.

(And yes, the Lilly copy, thankfully, does not have the dropped/lost words that even the best old Radio Spirits edition suffered from.)

- craig

[Terry]

It's taken me this long to get around to the Almanac comedy series, but finally having done so, I see that Lilly has two episodes that hadn't been in circulation: the February 9th broadcast with Ann Sothern and the following week's entry with Robert Benchley. I haven't listened to either of them so as to save myself the embarrassment.

Conversely, Lilly is missing two of the episodes which have been available: the Charles Laughton appearance of March 15th and Lucille Ball's second appearance on May 5th. That leaves three unaccounted for, though I find it difficult to miss not having them.

Perhaps the musical segments with Nat King Cole or Kid Ory and Welles reading verse or performing Shakespeare at the end give the series some value though.

[Wich2]

True!

Polymaths like Orson sometimes seem to think, "I can do lots of things - so I can do EVERYTHING!"

I appreciate the fact that he had fun doing the Benny shows. But with this series, he proved he wasn't actually Benny!

-Craig

[Terry]

Lilly's copy of Huckleberry Finn runs several minutes longer than the previously circulating copy (the Radiola LP.) Both are the same performance. The LP runs 53 minutes, but wasn't a shorter East Coast performance in this case.

[Le Chiffre]

Interesting. I've never heard the Lp, but I'm assuming it does not contain the 2-minute mid-show break, or all of the after-show filler - some of it sounding like a slightly awkward ad-lib - that the Lilly version has.

If a second version of this still exists, it would definitely be worth tracking down.

[Terry]

I'll have to check the mid-show break, but the extended ending is missing from the old LP; that was the only version of the show I'd ever heard. In general, the more East Coast/West Coast variants of Campbell's Playhouse that turn up, the better.

Lilly's copy of Welles' Texarkana War Bond program (which runs an hour) is followed by a half-hour demo of the show, with Welles describing in words his purposes and what the music and sound effects will be. Illuminating stuff, kind of like Welles pitching the screenplay of something he hoped to film.

[Terry]

Here's the demo for the Texarkana broadcast (which is another Hidden File if you like - Winning Friends in Latin America is yet another, though there's no Welles involvement in that one.) It predates June 6th, 1944, since The Invasion is still a looming thing; the actual broadcast took place six days after D-Day.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ifxbpxai8 ... emo%29.mp3

[Dan_UK]

Winning Friends in Latin America is yet another, though there's no Welles involvement in that one.

Ambersons gets a *very* brief mention in it though.

[Terry]

Thanks, Dan, it wasn't until rereading this entire thread last night that I saw your post that the previously-lost Shadow episode "Cold Death" was now a thing.

I now have 42 Shadows... are those all that are circulating?

[Dan_UK]

Thanks, Dan, it wasn't until rereading this entire thread last night that I saw your post that the previously-lost Shadow episode "Cold Death" was now a thing.

I now have 42 Shadows... are those all that are circulating?

I have 42 also. Not included in the 42 is a bad sounding "House Of Horror 1938.02.13" which is a later one misdated, presumably 1940.11.17. The Lilly audio shows us how good a transfer can sound, in contrast I find the Shadow episodes (even the ones from R$) to sound bad in comparison. I imagine they've sourced them from the reel to reel copies collectors traded decades ago which'll be why they all sound so low-fi and overprocessed. It'd be nice to hear transfers from the actual discs.