British and American engineers like Fred Gaisberg had to withdraw from Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft staff during the Great War, and recording quality dropped drastically for a while as German replacement staff had to re-invent the tricks that the original personnel had up their sleeves. The shortage of raw materials that got even worse after the Germans lost the war (and the country was practically bankrupt) can't have helped. This and other recordings of the period was probably made under very primitive conditions with whatever styli, diaphragms and wax happened to be available, often enough a throwback to 1901-1905 pioneer recording technology! By the mid-1920s, quality picks up again to pre-war standards.
British and American engineers like Fred Gaisberg had to withdraw from Deutsche Grammophon-Gesellschaft staff during the Great War, and recording quality dropped drastically for a while as German replacement staff had to re-invent the tricks that the original personnel had up their sleeves. The shortage of raw materials that got even worse after the Germans lost the war (and the country was practically bankrupt) can't have helped. This and other recordings of the period was probably made under very primitive conditions with whatever styli, diaphragms and wax happened to be available, often enough a throwback to 1901-1905 pioneer recording technology! By the mid-1920s, quality picks up again to pre-war standards.