Laurence Sherwood wrote:

>I'm going to see if I can establish my credentials as an historian in
>some field other than music by taking our esteemed moderator to task.

Laurence obviously knows whereof he writes in this post, and I don't think
there's anything I actually disagree with.

>While Dave was playing the high end of audio with Marantz equipment
>(tooling around in a Corvette, were we, Dave?),

No, at that point I wouldn't be able to afford a Corvette for about a dozen
more years.  As I think I mentioned, I was only 15 at the time.:-)

>this writer was scrabbling around with Dynakits, ...

And driving a VW bus or AMC Gremlin, I'm sure.:-)

>so this post is partly a sociological grudge match.

Oh, I don't think sociology has anything to do with it.  That's just
personal differences in our weirdness.  For instance, though I could
easily assemble a computer on my own from scratch, I prefer to buy one
pre-assembled with the OS already installed, figuring to save time and
avoid problems that way.  Of course, the first thing I usually end up doing
is opening it up and pulling it apart to add something or change something,
so just who am I fooling...?

Some of the best home sound systems I heard back then used Heathkit,
Hafler or Dynaco (to name a few) components made from kits.  When I was 16,
I built a pair of speakers to my own haphazard specifications that amazed
a couple of older friends who were into high-end gear.

>According to Dave, speaking of the year 1973, "Stereo was then 15 years
>old".  From the standpoint of widespread availability of commercial
>recordings for the consumer market, our distinguished moderator is correct:
>widespread consumer use of stereo recordings began in the late 1950's.

You took my context correctly.  I also make something of a
distinction between multi-channel and "stereo".  In my mind, stereo is
just one multi-channel implementation, and not even the only two-channel
implementation possible.  For example, binaural recordings have been
hanging on the fringe for some time, and although they use a similar
concept to stereo I believe the audio engineering (in its ideal, at least)
for a stereo recording is quite different from a binaural recording.
Though early stereo was sometimes called binaural, true binaural recordings
today require the listener to use headphones to get their full effect.  For
more info, including (on a link from the home page) several classical music
recordings, check:

   http://www.binaural.com/binfaq.html

>However, there is more here than his comment might suggest.  It had been
>known since the early 20th century that recording music with multiple
>microphones and replaying it with multiple speakers had advantages over
>monaral recordings.

Indeed.  You don't mention it, but I believe I remember reading about
a very early experiment, perhaps in the '20s or a bit earlier, with
synchronized gramophones.  The idea is that two or more (I remember three)
lacquer masters would be cut by different machines simultaneously, each
using its own microphone.  The discs would then be played on a special
machine that synchronized playback.  These may be the Bell Labs experiments
you mention, but I seem to remember this as being done in Europe using a
string quartet and recording gramophones left center and right, but if
anyone knows for sure, please correct me.

>I think the first commercial application of stereo sound was Walt Disney's
>film "Fantasia" in 1940, again with none other than Leopold Stokowski at
>the podium, predating Dave's claim by over 15 years.

Come now.  I never even mentioned "first commercial application of stereo
sound" in my post, much less make a claim for a specific date.  I did
mention Fantasia as the first application of multi-channel (six discrete
channels, just as we have today with DD, DTS, SACD, and DVD-A) sound for
a movie soundtrack was Fantasia.

>So the "surround sound" and "quadraphonic" systems of later decades were
>not plowing new ground in a technical sense.

I disagree a little with this.  It depends on what you mean by "plowing new
ground".  If you mean multi-channel sound, then of course the concept had
been around for a long time.  But in the sense that truly new technologies
allowed for the encoding of this multi-channel information onto a consumer
format, and provided for affordable surround sound decoding in a consumer's
home, there was a tremendous amount of innovation required by multitudes of
engineers.

Thanks for the links for info on the many contributions made by
Alan Blumlein.  Another interesting link I uncovered provides a
timeline-oriented discussion of film sound history, and discussed
extensively multi-channel recordings for film:

   http://www.mtsu.edu/~smpte/timeline.html

As a postscript to my original post I would like to mention a wonderful
recording I just acquired:  Ton Koopman playing Bach organ works on Teldec.
He uses a Baroque organ dedicated in 1727 and located in a Dutch church.
Included is the ubiquitous Toccata & Fugue in D minor, and a selection
of lesser-known works.  As I mentioned before, I'd don't yet have a DVD
player, but the Dolby Digital version is magnificent.  Some Baroque
organs can be a bit wheezy and weak, but this organ suffers from none of
those flaws.  Some may find Koopman's interpretations a bit idiosyncratic -
I haven't yet compared this directly with my favorites from Walcha,
Chorzempa, Biggs, Alain, etc., or even Koopman's earlier recording
for Philips, but it seems Koopman uses more ornamentation than most.
Still, it's very effective, and the sound is spectacular.  The center
and surround channels are only used to capture the ambience of the church,
leaving the soundstage entirely to the front.  You can easily perceive
the space the organ was recorded in, and this lends a realism to this
demonstration-quality organ recording I have rarely heard.  For more info:

   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000059ZHE/classicalnetA/

Dave
[log in to unmask]
[log in to unmask]
http://www.classical.net/