[78-L] Electronic stereo and Schwann

[Bertrand CHAUMELLE]

In fact, my own copies of the Elvis reprocessed LPs are of the German 
variety and I kind of liked them at the time.

On the other hand, all Duophonics sounded atrocious to me.

BC
>
> Chris Zwarg wrote:
>> - 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).
>
> Not quite.  They split the bass and treble and only echoed the treble 
> on
> only one track.  The other track was not echoed and was mainly altered
> only  by equalization.
>> 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.
>
> It was more like a quartette.  Three Harry's on one side and one on the
> other.  I bought some of those early ones only because one track was
> nearly untouched.  They later did other types of junk, but this was how
> RCA Victor did all the early Belefonte, Como, and Elvis.
>
>> 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
>>
>>
>>
> This is what Duophonic usually was.  Most of them were done without 
> much
> consideration of what the original track was.  It was
> one-size-fits-all.  Those first three Toscanini LMEs were done with
> attention to the score and changes made to make it seem natural
> depending on what instruments were playing.  But the untouched monos
> still sounded better.
>
> And don't forget that Australian guy, Parker I think, who did that 
> whole
> series of 20s reissues, some of which came out on the BBC label.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
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