[78-L] Electronic stereo and Schwann

[Michael Biel]

Bertrand CHAUMELLE wrote:
> 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
>   

By all means, when you do dig up your sources bring this up again.  I 
have not known of any releases of fake stereo before the three Toscanini 
LMEs.

 > >Those first Toscanini albums got a rave review in High Fidelity at 
the time.  I've still never seen a single one of them.  dl

I've always known those were rare, but am surprised to hear that David 
has never seen them.  I found two of them in 66 or 67 when I worked at a 
rack jobber which had a HUGE stock of cut-outs.  My boss didn't even 
charge me the minimal 30 cents because he said they were unsalable.  I 
forget where I found the third one, but it was only about ten years 
ago.  It might have been at Pops in Lexington. 

I'll have to pull them out, but I think that the article was the R.D. 
Darrell inserted liner notes, so there might have been a conflict of 
interest.  They aren't bad, but they are not mixable to mono, and I 
recall the monos did have more sparkling sound.  They are not anywhere 
as interesting as the real stereo which exists of Toscanini's last 
concert.  There you can clearly hear the problem that is just a jumble 
in the mono.  The two sides of the orchestra were not in sync with each 
other in some places.  His beat must have been hard to see.  It also 
proves that the orchestra never did stop playing.  If you play it in 
sync with the broadcast, where the announcer cuts in and plays the 
recording of Brahams 1st, when they resume the concert it is still in 
sync with the stereo where you hear that the orchestra had continued -- 
confused, but it continued. 


Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 
> 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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