Re: [ARSCLIST] OK - Does Anyone Know More About This?

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 15/06/07, Tom Fine wrote:

> Hi David:
> 
> Of course I can't put my hand on any of Bert's articles about those
> days right now (I believe he wrote about it some for Radio & TV News
> in the 50's and then later at greater length in Audio magazine in the
> 70's), but I think he was running snippets of the sessions onto tapes,
> experimenting with mic placement and maybe levels or the like. The
> Magnecorder, I think, used 7" reels, so if he was going at 15IPS he'd
> have to be changing tapes frequently. He may have been told to only
> record X minutes of any session but I'm not sure about that because I
> was under the impression that he was pretty much given carte blanche.
> I imagine it was a trip working with Stokowski in what was by far the
> highest-fidelity stereo medium yet at that point. Stokowski was
> veteran of Bell Labs stereo disk recordings in the 30's and Fantasound
> optical recordings, so I imagine he was tough customer about what
> sounded right from tape. And he and Bert worked together again when
> Stokowski recorded for Everest.
> 
> Speaking of Bert Whyte, he wrote a really nice column after he was
> introduced to Mercury 3-channel stereo:
> http://www.wendycarlos.com/surround/surround6.html#column2 Fact
> correction: the listening venue was actually Fine Sound Studio C at
> 711 5th Ave. (today it's the Coke building, owned by Coca-Cola Co.). I
> agree with Bert -- there should have been a 3-channel consumer medium
> but it was thought just too complex and expensive at the time (and,
> based on how well quad and later SACD did in the marketplace, perhaps

SACD is doing much better than Quad did. There is a steady couple-of-
dozen titles per month being released, and the number of people who have
DVD players and surround speakers that can also play SACD must be many
times greater than the number that installed Quad setups.


> the thinking was right -- plus no one had any ideas about a 3-channel
> disk medium). One other interesting thing -- Ampex was able to build
> 3-channel tape machines as early as 9/53 (Ross Snyder of Ampex wrote
> an article for International Sound Technician magazine that showed
> pictures of a 3-track headstack and described 3-track magnetic
> recording on 1/2" tape), but no one started recording music in
> 3-tracks until 1955.
> 

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx