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A Facinating and Amusing Look at Audiophilia from 1959
- Thread starter Route 66
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I found this short video very interesting. It was made 60 years ago and we were being made fun of even back then.
Yes, most excellent! I am literally LOL...especially the ending bit, with the new stereo system owner trying to find the perfect listening spot for himself and his guests.
mhardy6647
Lunatic Member
mhardy6647
Lunatic Member
The only problem with early stereo: the designers and engineers of stereo fully understood what they were trying to accomplish.
The "content industry" (rekkid companies) and the consumers (who suddenly had to buy another amplifier, another speaker, and other new stuff, too), to a great extent, went a different, and rather more garish route.
"Ping-Pong Stereo". Ridiculous stereo effects were all the rage in the early days.
FWIW, I actually have a copy of the above-pictured album
Bicyclist
Super Member
4 channel had some similar claims and dumb products as did 3d movies.The only problem with early stereo: the designers and engineers of stereo fully understood what they were trying to accomplish.
The "content industry" (rekkid companies) and the consumers (who suddenly had to buy another amplifier, another speaker, and other new stuff, too), to a great extent, went a different, and rather more garish route.
"Ping-Pong Stereo". Ridiculous stereo effects were all the rage in the early days.
FWIW, I actually have a copy of the above-pictured album
Splatter Pak
High-End Scrounger
Shameful - the BBC should have been supporting the British audio industry.
Pyrrho
Super Member
That is really funny. One of the things I enjoyed that no one above seems to have mentioned is the music critic portion in which the critic explained the differences between the different performances of Beethoven's 5th, with samples that one could hear. The descriptions are quite different, but the performances sounded pretty much the same (I would have to watch it again and pay more attention to know if they used the same recording for all of them or not). With this example, one sees that it is not just the equipment lovers who are being made fun of. There is a lot of pretentiousness in many aspects of human life.
SuperLead100
"These go to 11"
"Is it a religion, or a disease?" 
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
It was supporting the British audio industry. In Britain, showing appreciation with a glowing tribute would be creepy and insincere. You show appreciation through the fine art of piss-take: a series of jibes, mockery and clever insults designed to covertly demonstrate warmth and affection via its overt opposite.
Think back to English folklore -- a seven-foot tall compatriot of Robin Hood was called Little John. It's like that.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
I'm yet to be really convinced that stereo is superior to mono.
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
I guess you've never heard a decent soundstage. There is none with any mono recording. For many so called "superior" mono recordings the source is the same two or three track master tape used for stereo.
FWIW: A soundstage is quite important to me.
Older recordings such as KOB are sourced from the exact same three track master tape whether for stereo or mono. For mono all the tracks are mixed together. For stereo the center track is mixed equally to the left and right tracks.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
Yes, I have heard lots of good stereo, and some of it has a decent, natural sound stage. However, considering my 2200 CDs (I sadly and remorsefully gave up on LP playing), the so-called sound stage is artificial, and sounds like it.
In a typical pop recording 16 or 32 tracks are miked and then half are assigned to Left, and the other half assigned to Right, with some being panned to the center to arrive at a nominal "stereo mix." BUT, and this is where all the trouble begins, many of those assignments were from mics placed in all sorts of weird places like inside a piano, or in front of a guitar amp being played in a sound booth. These extraneous ad hoc mics are NOT picking up room reflections from a Left/Right perspective! They are picking up arbitrary reflections which are now bundled up into Left/Right track assignments. The result of this multi-track, multi-phase, random-reflection collection is: G-A-R-B-A-G-E noise, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with legitimate stereo mix.
When you play these "multi-track, multi-phase, random reflection collections" through a pair of stereo speakers you do get TWO different streams of sound called rather arbitrarily Left and Right, but they do not, and can not, represent the Left side and Right side of a performance, because no such performance was ever given in front of "L/R mics". Quite often you can hear dis-embodied overtones of one instrument playing through the opposite speaker that is producing the fundamentals. That sounds bad. The performance (for pop music) is a bag full of tracks, recorded at different times, in different places, with all sort of different mics and processing. The mix you buy as a "stereo media" is just a "collection" of the sounds they put on the Right and another collection of sounds they put on the Left. The idea that The Eagles got together in a studio, set up like a stage band, and then performed songs into true Left and Right mics to create a stereo performance is a pipe dream. It doesn't happen that way.
So, I get back to mono. A mono recording, played on one speaker, often sounds more faithfully coherent, more like real instruments, than these poor multi-track affairs. I don't often do it any more, but in the past, with the right kind of large speaker, mono sounded great!
OF COURSE, that's simply my opinion.
In a typical pop recording 16 or 32 tracks are miked and then half are assigned to Left, and the other half assigned to Right, with some being panned to the center to arrive at a nominal "stereo mix." BUT, and this is where all the trouble begins, many of those assignments were from mics placed in all sorts of weird places like inside a piano, or in front of a guitar amp being played in a sound booth. These extraneous ad hoc mics are NOT picking up room reflections from a Left/Right perspective! They are picking up arbitrary reflections which are now bundled up into Left/Right track assignments. The result of this multi-track, multi-phase, random-reflection collection is: G-A-R-B-A-G-E noise, that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with legitimate stereo mix.
When you play these "multi-track, multi-phase, random reflection collections" through a pair of stereo speakers you do get TWO different streams of sound called rather arbitrarily Left and Right, but they do not, and can not, represent the Left side and Right side of a performance, because no such performance was ever given in front of "L/R mics". Quite often you can hear dis-embodied overtones of one instrument playing through the opposite speaker that is producing the fundamentals. That sounds bad. The performance (for pop music) is a bag full of tracks, recorded at different times, in different places, with all sort of different mics and processing. The mix you buy as a "stereo media" is just a "collection" of the sounds they put on the Right and another collection of sounds they put on the Left. The idea that The Eagles got together in a studio, set up like a stage band, and then performed songs into true Left and Right mics to create a stereo performance is a pipe dream. It doesn't happen that way.
So, I get back to mono. A mono recording, played on one speaker, often sounds more faithfully coherent, more like real instruments, than these poor multi-track affairs. I don't often do it any more, but in the past, with the right kind of large speaker, mono sounded great!
OF COURSE, that's simply my opinion.
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