[78-L] Electronic stereo and Schwann

[Chris Zwarg]

At 21:58 28.12.2008, you wrote:
>Chris Zwarg wrote:
>> At 21:06 28.12.2008, you wrote:
>>> In fact, my own copies of the Elvis reprocessed LPs are of the German 
>>> variety and I kind of liked them at the time.
>> 
>> That may well be - RCA masters were handled in Germany by Telefunken at the time, which company was the legal successor to Kuechenmeister's "Ultraphon". It's certainly thinkable that they did their own stereo-izations with Kuechenmeister's one-channel-delay method for the German (and Continental European) market. The tracks I have heard certainly do *not* use the bass/treble split and extra echo described by dl .
>> 
>> Chris Zwarg
>> 
>
>Unless there's another dl around here, I didn't make any reference to split 'n' 
>echo (US Decca's usual system..occasionally I've had to find one clean channel 
>and do massive EQ to get something listenable where this was the only source 
>available).
>
>dl

Sorry for the misascription, David, it was Michael Biel who described this "split-n-echo" method as *RCA's* - I have however not noticed it on any RCA issues that ever came my way. You are much nearer the mark ascribing this method to Decca, and I can confirm they used it in Britain as well; I have some Gilbert & Sullivan complete operas (mis)treated this way. The odd thing is that the two channels, despite one having mainly midrange and the other bass+treble, do not add up to a complete mono signal. Apparently some phase-shifting - perhaps inadvertantly caused by the analogue equalizer circuitry - was involved, as certain frequency bands are out-of-phase between the two channels (and therefore disappear when you simply mix to mono) while others are in phase.

Chris Zwarg