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

[Bertrand CHAUMELLE]

I know that the process used by RCA Victor was American.

What I meant is: before that (but not in the 'twenties,  ca. 1959), a 
German guy found an ELECTRONIC way of simulating stereo, from a mono 
source. I can't be more specific (record numbers and so on) because my 
notes on the subject are scattered somewhere.

BC
Le 28 déc. 08, à 14:33, Chris Zwarg a écrit :

>
>
>>> 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
>
>
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