[78-L] Accidental Toscanini Stereo

[DAVID BURNHAM]

I'm surprised there hasn't been more accidental stereo Toscanini. A separate 
mike was supposedly used for the broadcast feed to South America.

dl
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As you know, we've discussed this situation before.  I can't believe, (but I'm not saying I'm right), that they would have only used a single mike in the '50s to pickup a full orchestra, Choir and soloists.  But that aside, any miking arrangement would have been designed to pickup the entire ensemble as balanced as possible.  (I've just been reading the book, "Recording the Twenties", and a Mr. Sooy says that while recording the Boston Symphony under Karl Muck, they used as many as 20 horns, [or was it 12, I've forgotten], to pick up the various sections of the orchestra.  This was new to me.)  In any case, I can't imagine that combining any two properly miked mono situations is going to yield stereo.  I listened to a bit of the Verdi and it seemed it was mainly a treble left/bass right sound.  If you want to verify if a Toscanini recording has been captured in accidental stereo, just check to see if the first violins are on your left and the
 seconds are on your right;  this can't be achieved by any frequency manipulation.  Just having a different sound on the left and right channels produces an effect, but it's not stereo.  A respected engineer once brought me a Bruno Walter recording of, (I think), a Mozart overture which he claimed was stereo.  Putting this recording in a computer, I was able to verify that the two channels were identical but one was delayed 20ms behind the other.  I was amazed that he was skilled enough to get the two channels that closely alligned.

db