> Subject: Transcription of Automatic Music Roll #1146
>
>[ Historian Dave Junchen wrote in Bower's Encyclopedia that Automatic
>[ Music Rolls was a distribution subsidiary of the Seeburg company.
>[ The arrangements and perforating were done under contract by Clark
>[ Music Rolls.  --  Robbie

Aha!   That explains the sloppy cutting.  I've looked at the file Wayne
produced, and it's _full_ of perforator errors.   Just as bad as the
"M" roll that he previously scanned.  Just so you read that sentence
correctly,  Wayne's reader is _perfect_,  the rolls are flawed.

It's interesting to see these scans of original rolls just to see the
differences in quality between competing companies.  It would seem that
both Clark and Capitol changed gearing during the run to compensate for
roll buildup.  Capitol rolls are usually flawless, Clark rolls are
usually full of errors.

What happens, of course, is that people playing Clark rolls think
something's wrong with the take-up spool etc., and those playing Capitol
rolls relax and enjoy their machine's flawless playing.

It gets worse with re-cuts, which introduce sampling errors produced
by pneumatic readers.  Those done from originals provided by the
quality houses such as Paul Gottschalk's Capitol are very nicely done,
and the earlier PPCo recuts are equally as nice.  But only if from
Capitol originals.   If from Clark originals, then they inherit the
perforator errors.

The not-so-good recuts (recuts pneumatically read from the aforemen-
tioned re-cuts, an interesting but discouraging story from the pre-1978
copyright revision days) just add even more sampling errors to the
original sampling errors, and produce that 'ol familiar spastic lurching.

George Bogatko

 [ Editor's note:
 [
 [ The problem isn't caused by a pneumatic reader: the sampling errors
 [ result from coarse asynchronous copying.  The synchronous process
 [ at Ampico is well-documented, and it produced error-free music rolls
 [ with pneumatic readers.  The secret was the sprocket holes of the
 [ master roll, which ensured that the holes in the master roll were
 [ always read in step with the perforator crankshaft motion.
 [
 [ John Malone (Play-Rite), and others with very fine resolution
 [ perforators, make acceptable quality recuts asynchronously, because
 [ the sampling distance of the copying machine is two to three times
 [ the sample distance of the original roll.  Thus the typical sampling
 [ error is less than one step advance of the original roll.
 [
 [ But "garbage in, garbage out" still applies -- the best copying
 [ process can do no more than replicate the errors in the original
 [ roll !
 [
 [ -- Robbie