Fake Stereo: any fans out there?
Posted by: Tony2011 on 12 August 2014
I have just listened to an album In Electronically Created Stereo and must say I never heard such an aberration in all my living days. Has anyone else had such a similar experience?
I know what you mean Tony. In the '60s and '70s you often got tracks originally recorded in mono 'electronically enhanced for stereo' and they invariably sounded cr*p.
Lots of cheating going at the time Steve. I found this article on a Billboard magazine about record companies being fined for not so honest practices.
Worth browsing the magazine pages for other articles on music and hi fi. Brought back some nice memories.
Real stereo is bad enough without spoiling perfectly fine mono recordings with "fake" stereo.
As Otto Klemperer observed [of real stereo], "It is a fake!"
ATB from George
Dear Wat,
I have about a third of my music as pure mono, and iTunes rips mono as dual mono.
Just like every CD ever issued in mono - dual mono.
Of course one relies on the decoding of two channels in time [i.e. accurately in phase], but if it were not then the sense of the performers down there in the middle would wander about, and it does not.
ATB from George
Given that the CDs ripped are dual mono, who knows!
They are far better than a stereo cartridge ploughing a dual mono [45 degree/45 degree] groove on a modern mono [i.e. issued since about 1970] LP.
I am not worried, because it is good enough. On the ALAC versus AIFF issue, I found the difference and now use AIFF. The additional cost of a bit of extra hard drive space is insignificant in my view.
Horse for courses.
I have no idea how I could force mono onto iTunes using just one source channel, and though I think the whole stereo for music direction since 1955 was the biggest single mistake in recording technology to date, the current replay is actually fine enough for me to loose interest in changing it.
At one time I had Sonic Foundry on my [in those days Windows] PC, and the LP transfers I made from mono LP to CDs would always use one channel, dualled, from "one channel off the LP" for the end result. This was better than using two ideally similar, but in practice not actually identical channels from a mono LP with a stereo cartridge ...
ATB from George
Thinking about this, the best would be to unplug one speaker - et voila - the problem is solved. I'll experiment!
Report back tomorrow!
ATB from george
Instantly, Mono from one channel is a worthwhile improvement!
No question that it is more direct.
Very simple.
Buy mono records and just use one speaker for best results!
Thanks for the kick in the butt!
Very fine indeed!
ATB from George
PS: Sometimes we do not see the wood for the trees!
Symphonies in four movements.
The Sinfonia was the prelude to an opera or oratorio. Haydn made it a more or less four movement form that need not precede an opera, and is called Papa Haydn, and the Father of the Symphony, but his greatest distinction in my view is his crystalisation what is called Sonata Form.
Haydn wrote [according to the catalogue] 104 symphonies that are almost all in form movement structures, but Mozart [his young admirer] wrote symphonies with three movements as well as four [and some one movement juvenilia that count as overtures without operas to follow], and Beethoven expanded the four to five with the Pastoral - followed by Berlioz with his Fantastic Symphony. Sibelius wrote symphonies in one, three, four movements, but each seems to compress the form to the least necessary to reach the goal as he grew older. The great thing about music is that there are more or less rules, but the composer is free enough to bend them a little! So long as the result is recognisable. Beethoven made the Eroica so big that it was almost unrecognisable at the time.
Whereas Haydn wrote symphonies [or some of them] that would fit in the time duration of the first of the four movements of the Eroica. Beethoven also peppered his music with so many accents and off-beats that the audience of the day could hardly recognise the music as a systematic form - just mad chaos!
As for replay; all it has to do is get out of the way!
ATB from George
And Prokoviev wrote his first symphony "To tease the geese".