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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lady Lurksalot who wrote (6886)	2/15/1998 12:59:00 AM
From: flickerful	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20981

you will not learn: recorded does not mean it was released in both versions, although it's possible. but, chances are the stereo version, like many albums of the 50's and early 60's were released later in a stereophonic version. read all about it: ( from an interview with jack pfeiffer...) Tell me about your involvement in the early days of stereo. We started experimenting with it in 1954, when they had finally gotten two-track machines. I insisted that we take advantage of our recording sessions and set up two systems. We did this with the Chicago and Boston Symphonies' recording sessions. There was one mono setup and one stereo setup, each with its own console, microphones, tape machine, engineer and producer. Out of those sessions we got some fantastic recordings, especially the Chicago Symphony's Ein Heldenleben of Strauss with Reiner. Those were done in March of '54. How did those first stereo recordings turn out to be "fantastic"? Out of sheer ignorance. I had only used a couple of microphones - literally, one for each track. I set up two in front of the Chicago Symphony in Orchestra Hall in Chicago. And the clarity and definition that we got - of course, a lot of it had to do with the acoustics of the hall, the quality of the musicians, Reiner's balances, and so forth - were so dramatic. It was completely different from anything we had ever heard before. I set up listening sessions down on 24th Street and grabbed anyone who was around to come in and hear this fabulous sound. I remember getting some of the RCA executives to listen. They were all enormously impressed. I think the early stereo experiment proved the point, that the fewer microphones you have, the more likely you are to get a really first-class recording. Microphones are stupid. They pick up everything that comes their way. So the more mikes you have, the more phase differences you get, plus you pick up all the reflections from the acoustical environment. It all adds up to a mess. I've always tried to limit the number of microphones. Still? Yes. Of course, there are certain advantages in multi-miking. You have only a limited amount of time in a recording session to get a good performance; in a live situation you only have one chance. You use all the insurance you can get - you put up a lot of microphones so you can try out various combinations later on [in the mix] rather than during the session, when costs are enormous. I've always felt that multi-miking gave a satisfactory result, but not the best result - not as good as just two microphones. Did the progression of stereo machines from two tracks to three alter your miking philosophy? Somewhat. In '54, Ampex came out with a machine that recorded three discrete tracks. That seemed practical, because very often you had a soloist, whom you wanted to isolate from the rest of the orchestra - so you could record the orchestra on two tracks and the soloist on the third. But you were still thinking one mike per track? Yes, although then we began to think that sometimes the center of the orchestra, which was behind the soloist, sounded a bit subdued - that it wasn't being picked up properly. So we thought, let's put a couple of mikes up for the woodwinds, just to have a little more control. And then, well, maybe we don't hear the percussion quite enough. Eventually it just got out of hand. What other kinds of experiments were you involved in? Even before stereo, we were playing with tape editing. Actually the LP generated tape editing, because [earlier] you had to edit together the 78-rpm sides to make up an LP. From that, everyone realized that you had more degrees of freedom.