[78-L] Electronic stereo and Schwann (was: Dubbed contemporary matrix questions (Columbia related).

[Chris Zwarg]

>> It was a German "innovation" almost as old as 45/45 stereo itself. The 
>> first RCA (e) appeared around 1961 (Toscanini)
>
>Why do you claim it was a German innovation??  It was purely American.  

AFAIK the idea to get a "stereo" signal out of a mono recording goes back to the patents of Kuechenmeister (who BTW was Dutch rather than German) of the late 1920's. He used two acoustic soundboxes with the needles tracing the same groove at a short distance, so one signal was delayed a few milliseconds - exactly the same RCA did with two tape playback heads with the infamous Elvis and Belafonte fake-stereo issues (can't comment on other repertoire as these are the only I was ever "treated" to). The system works reasonably well with larger ensembles such as a chorus or a symphony orchestra, but every soloist - vocal or instrumental - is turned into a duet with him/herself. You still occasionally hear these mangled versions on German radio; probably nobody bothered to buy new copies. Some cheapo rip-off CDs have used the fake-stereo masters but *mixed back to mono*!

There were other fake-stereo methods as well: Adding "stereo" (out-of-phase) reverb was pretty ubiquitous, and British Decca re-equalized at least some of their fake-stereo LPs with a sort of comb filtering so that certain frequency bands were stronger on the left and others on the right channel, to give an illusion of stereo spread.

Chris Zwarg