Wonder why, in the change to 3-track, they moved to Ampex. Carl, Fairchild never to my knowledge built multi-channel tape recorders. You can learn more about the original configuration of the truck in an edition of The Audio Record published by Audiotape , which is available at archive. Ampex machines did not have that capability. Also, for more details about ye olde vintage recorders, at Archive.
The mono LPs were still made from the single center microphone, so the Fairchilds were kept in service until they were replaced by Ampex full-track machines in So, film-sound was a part of their activities from early on. What is awesome is that they ran full-track alongside 3-track. I always assumed, after adopting multi-track, they just used the center track for cutting mono masters.
I bet there are a few where the mono edits are a little different than the stereo. Thanks for the links, Tom. Carl, you raise another interesting point. The date? In that article or an earlier one on a similar topic by Eargle, he lists US LP sales broken out mono and stereo. Since there were two mono machines running, was one mono master used to make the edited final version used to and the other used as a safety? This is a great photo — would love to see other similar photos from the era if possible!
And now 25 years beyond that we're about to add yet a fifth track and ". Have things changed so much? I hope one thing HAS changed. Bert's barely contained excitement and "news" below turned out not to be prophetic at least basic stereo came out two years later. Quad was messed up by ignorance and record company greed. Sound familiar? I wonder if in another three to five years we'll look back on 5.
Column I -- An Unusual Concert. A FEW months ago, a very interesting and significant hi-fi sound demonstration was presented in San Francisco.
Picture this scene if you can. As you listen, you note the precision of the first violins, they are all bowing together in near perfect unison; observing the woodwind section you focus your attention on the flautist and the pure sound of his instrument comes to you from the middle of the orchestra where he is sitting.
Your eyes and ears move back to the right where several contrabassists are busily sawing away at their ponderous instruments.
As the score develops, you are aware of the constant activity of the instrumentalists. Now we are about two-thirds of the way through the work and at the beginning of a crescendo, suddenly you can't believe your eyes!
The musicians have stopped playing and have laid down their instruments, but the music continues to its triumphant conclusion! You are as bewildered as everyone around you, when three floodlights illuminate three huge theater-type speakers placed at equal intervals across the back of the stage, and another flood shines down upon the familiar heads, reels, and tape of an Ampex tape machine and you realize you have been hearing a three-channel stereophonic recording of the work that has just been "played"!
A moment later a narrator assured everyone that this is in fact, the truth. You must have had some inkling that the reproduction didn't sound 'quite right' and that it had a mechanical quality. Now whether the same sense of realism was perceived after the audience knew there was stereophonic reproducing equipment on the stage, I don't know. However it is well known that there is an interrelationship between the eyes and the ears when both senses are used simultaneously as in listening and looking at a live concert.
The eyes and the ears can easily deceive you. With the musicians going through their motions in perfect synchronization with the stereotape, if there were differences, the mind was not psychologically prepared to accept these differences. With three-channel stereo the highest pinnacle of the audio art to date and with the demonstration under absolutely ideal conditions, the difference between live and recorded was of a very small order at any rate and the mind of the individual listener, having preconditioned itself to the fact that it was going to hear live music, accepted what it heard and saw without question.
To further the deception so that even the most astute music lover or knowledgeable hi-fi fan in the audience would find nothing amiss, very special machines and recording techniques were utilized. The Ampex machines were special three-channel Model units, modified to use half-inch wide tape, instead of the one-quarter-inch standard width. This eliminates what was one of the problems with the original one-quarter-inch three channel machine, the deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio.
With less than 45 dB signal-to-noise ratio in the standard machine, at high levels some sharp-eared hi-fi fan would have heard the tape hiss, and even in a preconditioned state, he would ultimately realize that he was not hearing live music. The half-inch wide tape allows each of the three channels a much wider area with subsequent improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio.
The tapes made before the performance had to resort to special microphone techniques. No omnidirectional pickup here. If that had been done at this demonstration, it would have spoiled the illusion desired since you would be playing back the recording in the same hall and you would have produced double reverberation. The speakers used were the Cinemascope type developed by Ampex in conjunction with Jim Lansing and have extremely broad coverage. With their exceptionally high efficiency, it was found that 30 watts of power was sufficient to cover the audience of over people.
Now the crux of this whole thing is this, among those people were many hi-fi fans who no doubt were vastly impressed, to say nothing of the many people who had never heard real hi-fi sound let alone three-channel stereo!
Undoubtedly many of these people, affluent or otherwise, will want to know if there is anything available that will give them this three-channel sound in their homes. The answer of course, is yes, but you must be prepared to pay roughly dollars for a standard Ampex three-channel machine, and set up three amplifiers and three speakers as well.
Assuming some millionaire indulges himself in one of these rigs, do you know what will be available to him on three-channel recorded tape? Just one reel of some organ music. There may be one or two others somewhere but I have no knowledge of anything outside this one commercially-made tape. I'm a lucky guy. I'm one of the few people who have had a three-channel Ampex stereo machine in his home.
And Ampex supplied me with not one but four or five different tapes. I lived with that machine and it was one of the biggest thrills I've ever had in audio, but even the fabulous sound of three-channel stereo begins to pall a little when you hear the same music continuously. The lesson to be learned from this demonstration is this. The public is impressed and the public likes it and will buy it if a way can be found to get the cost of the equipment down to an approachable level.
The Ampex was, of course, a big step in the right direction and if the production rate and availability of two-channel stereotapes can be stepped up, they will enjoy a brisk market.
But going one step further, why not take the final plunge and try to produce a marketable three-channel system. Two-channel stereo is great, but nonetheless there are many people who have difficulty in perceiving its depth and directional qualities. With a three-channel unit the fact that you have something different , something that sounds incredibly alive and natural is immediately apparent even to the most untrained ear. It is well known that a two-channel stereo system using very modest amplifiers and speakers, will sound better than some of the most expensive and elaborate monaural systems.
With three-channel stereo you can literally, "get away with murder" in the matter of speakers and amplifiers and even with units no better than are found in today's inexpensive tape recorders!
Knowing a bit about the economics of producing tape recorders, I say that the logical step up to three channels is neither technically difficult nor financially unfeasible. The big problem to overcome is the matter of the recorded tape. But that was the problem of two-channel recorded tape and it has been largely overcome and the situation will be well in hand by the end of this year.
Many people, some of them placed very high in the music and audio fields, feel that monaural tape is now merely a transitional thing, and that stereo will be the medium used for music on recorded tapes. I'm inclined to agree, but why stop there? Why not start beating the drums for three-channel stereo, which believe it or not, I feel has a larger sales potential than anything in the field of home music entertainment. The fact that three-channel sound is so startlingly better than conventional sound, leaves open avenues for some smart manufacturer to produce a complete packaged system at a price the public can afford.
I sincerely feel that three-channel stereo is in much the same position as was television some years back. It's new, it's different, it's good and, like television, I think there are plenty of people who would be willing to pay the initially higher costs for the privilege of hearing it before it reaches the price level of the masses. As to the music. As a matter of fact there is an even easier way of getting the necessary music. I don't have to tell you about the success of the various record clubs.
If one of the big ones, like the "Record of the Month Club" were really on the ball, they would get themselves three channel tape recorders and record everything they do in the stereo medium as well as on monaural tape and offer the resultant tapes on their usual subscription plans. I'd join instantly and so would thousands of others. These big clubs have the money, they have no restrictions on what they record and actually this would be the ideal time for them to start, since they are slowly recording the standard repertoire.
This would make a more easily assimilable choice of music available on stereotape. This is when they are recording the Dvorak 5th, and the Tchaikovsky 6th, etc. For the most part, the big record companies would be reluctant to record these warhorses again due to the plethora already in the catalogue and while no one wants to discourage them from recording their current repertoire, you can readily understand that it would be easier for them to sell, say, a Beethoven 5th, rather than a "Mathis der Maler" by Hindemith, if-- they could justify the cost of recording a new Beethoven 5th just to have it on stereo.
Since most of them would probably not change their recording plans, at least not initially due to the cost factor, the logical method of supplying the "warhorse repertoire" on stereo tape would be through the clubs.
Well, it's a fascinating subject but I'm running out of space. I'll conclude with this. If a club comes out with a subscription plan which would guarantee the release of a certain number of three-channel stereotapes each month, and someone puts out a three-channel stereo system for around a thousand dollars and I think it can be done for far less this I'd like to sell, and given proper demonstration facilities, I'd have writer's cramp taking the orders! Angel RIAA curve.
This is the fourth performance of the "Gayne Suite" to appear in the LP catalogue, and is by all odds the best. For a starter, the composer himself is conducting, and while it is true that some composers make awful botches of conducting their own scores, such is decidedly not the case here. Rather, Khatchaturian adds a new dimension to the work, in an interpretation entirely different ;n concept from that of the other conductors.
To my ears at least, there seems to be a great deal more material in the score than my previous experience with the work would indicate. I would say that Khatchaturian, secure in his grasp of the work, manages to imbue his colorful score with considerably more power and vigor than the other conductors could summon. This time we wanted to have an ensemble of about eight synthesists on stage at the rear, actually replicating a big symphonic work.
And then the musicians would put down the instruments, but the sound would continue. It would be provided by us, of course, and would show how far the technology and performance mastery of it by good musicians had come, to replicate and surprise an audience into thinking it was "the real thing. I still think it would create a smashing stunt and make a genuine statement.
Bert was also ahead of his time. Three track stereo never got much past the stage he describes above, and what continues below, from a few months later. Column II -- Irresistible Invitation. I DON'T know quite how to begin this month's column. Regular readers will recall that in the past two issues I have been promising some sensational news concerning three-channel stereophonic sound.
This "scoop" was promised for this, the September issue. Fortunately, the news will be presented this month, but unfortunately it will be nowhere near as detailed a report as I had hoped to bring to you. As I have said in previous issues. Don't get me wrong!
This will still be one of the most sensational, provocative and industry-shaking announcements in the brief, but spectacular, history of high fidelity! My experience has supported this approach over the course of hundreds if not thousands of recordings.
I have always very much enjoyed it when an audiophile sensibility entered into the pro audio world and pointed to what could be. Some of my fondest memories of my years at Atlantic involve the time I spent with the great mastering engineer George Piros. I had not heard of these recordings before and when I followed up to find some of them, I found a great many joys both musical and sonic. George was to become one of my mastering heroes for his preservation of musical dynamics.
He remains one of the tiny handful of mastering engineers I can name who did not routinely apply dynamic compression to his signal path. One of my favorite memories was made one day when walking past the outside of his mastering room. For me, it remains one of the great moments in rock. Not that George was an audiophile. He was just one of those folks who could accurately intuit what a recording needed and apply it to get the results he wanted. He did not mince words with regard to the program material or some of the tools popular in audio engineering circles.
Bert was the engineer on the great recordings for the Everest label. Like Bob Fine, he too used only three microphones and created fabulous results. I remember being in the mastering room with both discussing monitors. I feel more than fortunate to stand astride both audio worlds and to have learned a great deal from each.
In an effort to find a synthesis of both worlds, to find the underlying unity which I felt to be larger than either, in I decided to become an independent engineer and formed Barry Diament Audio.
The learning opportunities once more expanded geometrically. As I did not yet have my own studio and mastering work was starting to come in, I sought out studios where I could rent time, my prime criterion being monitoring I could trust. In the end, I found a small number that were willing to accommodate my request for certain monitoring arrangements. They would have to do until the time came when I designed my own room. In keeping up with contacts in both the pro and audiophile worlds, an opportunity arose to visit with the editor of one of the audiophile publications I was reading.
I knew his reference playback system was reputed to be among the best. What I was not at all prepared for was the fact that after being an avid music lover and audio enthusiast since childhood, after having done pro audio work in a number of studios and after having read all the books and journals on the subject I could find, I was going to hear stereo for the first time.
There might be a piano on the left and a guitar and bass in the center and drums on the right. There might be a marching band proceeding across the room from one speaker to the other.
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