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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 18:30:37 GMT -5
I have two SACDs that are created from old analog 3 channel tapes.
I tried searching, but I'm getting conflicting information on why they recorded 3 channels so long ago. Even more confusing, what tech existed to play back LCR back in the 60s?
Does anyone know the historical reason why they recorded 3 channels back then?
I only ask: Please only respond if you have historical knowledge on the topic.
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Post by marcl on Jan 10, 2024 18:45:42 GMT -5
I have two SACDs that are created from old analog 3 channel tapes. I tried searching, but I'm getting conflicting information on why they recorded 3 channels so long ago. Even more confusing, what tech existed to play back LCR back in the 60s? Does anyone know the historical reason why they recorded 3 channels back then? I only ask: Please only respond if you have historical knowledge on the topic. Take a look at the RCA Living Stereo recordings. They really wanted to do three-channel but the marketing was impossible. Getting people to buy two speakers was tough enough. Nobody had the tech to play back three channel because you couldn't do it with vinyl. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 19:04:39 GMT -5
I have two SACDs that are created from old analog 3 channel tapes. I tried searching, but I'm getting conflicting information on why they recorded 3 channels so long ago. Even more confusing, what tech existed to play back LCR back in the 60s? Does anyone know the historical reason why they recorded 3 channels back then? I only ask: Please only respond if you have historical knowledge on the topic. Take a look at the RCA Living Stereo recordings. They really wanted to do three-channel but the marketing was impossible. Getting people to buy two speakers was tough enough. Nobody had the tech to play back three channel because you couldn't do it with vinyl. One is RCA Living Stereo Rhapsody in Blue and the other is Mercury Living Presence Janos Starker Bach cello. So was it just an intended marketing 3 channel stereo that failed? At least it's cool we can finally listen today. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 19:31:33 GMT -5
Internet search engines are almost useless now days (and too much of the internet has been scrubbed), but do any technical papers exist scanned on LCR analog recordings?
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Post by PaulBe on Jan 10, 2024 19:35:45 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 19:46:14 GMT -5
I had read that about Klipsch, but I couldn't find technical papers on the matter. I also couldn't find much on 3 channel reel to reel. I'd imagine if it existed, it was such a small market, it's now a ghost. Some of the conflicting things I read was that they were mono recordings, and the extra mics were put in place to made sure they got a recording, in case of a failure, but that wouldn't explain the placement of the mics. If they wanted to make sure they got a solid recording in case of failure, all the mics would have been in the same place. |
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Post by PaulBe on Jan 10, 2024 19:54:25 GMT -5
I had read that about Klipsch, but I couldn't find technical papers on the matter. I also couldn't find much on 3 channel reel to reel. I'd imagine if it existed, it was such a small market, it's now a ghost. Some of the conflicting things I read was that they were mono recordings, and the extra mics were put in place to made sure they got a recording, in case of a failure, but that wouldn't explain the placement of the mics. If they wanted to make sure they got a solid recording in case of failure, all the mics would have been in the same place. Here is decent article: www.stereophile.com/content/fine-art-mercury-living-presence-recordingsExcerpt: "By 1967, when all of the original members of the recording team had moved on and Bob Fine's trademark three-microphone approach was abandoned, the Living Presence catalog, counting the single-mike mono (1951–55) and three-mike stereo (1955–67) releases, numbered some 300 titles. With hi-fi best-sellers like the 1954 mono and 1958 stereo recordings of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (Mercury MG 50054 and SR90054), Living Presence also marks the one and, perhaps, the only time when audiophile recordings crossed over to become modest hits among mainstream listeners." Search engines work well. Keep searching. forum.psaudio.com/t/have-you-ever-wondered-how-they-made-those-great-rca-living-stereo-recordings/21445 |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2024 21:06:56 GMT -5
I had read that about Klipsch, but I couldn't find technical papers on the matter. I also couldn't find much on 3 channel reel to reel. I'd imagine if it existed, it was such a small market, it's now a ghost. Some of the conflicting things I read was that they were mono recordings, and the extra mics were put in place to made sure they got a recording, in case of a failure, but that wouldn't explain the placement of the mics. If they wanted to make sure they got a solid recording in case of failure, all the mics would have been in the same place. Here is decent article: www.stereophile.com/content/fine-art-mercury-living-presence-recordingsExcerpt: "By 1967, when all of the original members of the recording team had moved on and Bob Fine's trademark three-microphone approach was abandoned, the Living Presence catalog, counting the single-mike mono (1951–55) and three-mike stereo (1955–67) releases, numbered some 300 titles. With hi-fi best-sellers like the 1954 mono and 1958 stereo recordings of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture (Mercury MG 50054 and SR90054), Living Presence also marks the one and, perhaps, the only time when audiophile recordings crossed over to become modest hits among mainstream listeners." Search engines work well. Keep searching. forum.psaudio.com/t/have-you-ever-wondered-how-they-made-those-great-rca-living-stereo-recordings/21445Still processing the 1st link you posted, but I watched over 10min of the 2nd link, and it was only covering stereo recordings and the LP master process. If they cover 3 channel LCR, could you give me a time stamp? I was wanting more original technical papers on the matter, and I'm sure they exist some place, but likely in a library or in a edu search library. I no longer have access to edu library searches. |
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Post by KeithL on Jan 11, 2024 11:43:48 GMT -5
I would have to disagree with you about much of anything "being scrubbed from the Internet"... Very little old information has been "actively removed" from anywhere... The simple reality is that, unless it is relatively current content, and there is an actual "copyright infringement" complaint, nobody is going to bother to do so. If anything a lot of it has simply "fallen off the edge" when the server on which it was hosted was orphaned or finally taken down... And, in most cases, this happens because nobody knows or cares what was on it... Think of it as some dystopian planet, with endless miles of old basements, many of them abandoned, all full of junk, slowly falling into decay, with only the occupied portions being kept track of. And, every now and then, someone does knock down a building, or clear out the old basement for new construction, and whatever was in it is then lost forever. Most of it is still there... but it's going to take some work... and some digging... to find it... There is still a LOT of stuff out there... but it does require some knowledge and "technique" to find a lot of it... So, for example, if you're looking for a copy of an old paper, you may need to find the exact name, or document number, and then do an exact search based on those details. Otherwise you're going to get a huge number of partial matches... most of which are probably going to be irrelevant... So, for example, if what you're looking for is a reprint of an old paper, then search for it BY NAME, and add ".pdf"... (Since most old paper documents that were archived and put online were scanned into PDFs.) And, yes, the search engines pretty much "stick to the well lit areas", and the obscure stuff will only show up way down on the list... If you're willing to dig a bit you can usually find one or two BLOG posts, that lead to one or two more, and so on, and so on... nearly forever. (For a start you may need to be creative about your search terms... ) I just Googled "three channel recordings", in quotes to limit the response to exact matches, and got over 5000 responses... I got no exact matches for "LCR analog mixes"... But I got 3.5 million hits on "LCR mixes"... Most of them pointed to BLOGs or articles about mixing audio tracks... But at least some of them pointed to articles that mentioned specific albums or tapes by name... Here's one that turned up near the top of the first page: gearspace.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/969025-famous-lcr-mixes.htmlThere are also a lot of rather more obscure places to find things... Good old ARCHIVE.ORG (aka "the wayback machine") still has lots of old website archives... and also movies, music, and books. And the old Kademlia / E2dk network accessed by eMule still has lots of older movies, music, books, and text documents (as well as lots of vintage porn). (eMule is a peer-to-peer file sharing app that still has a LOT of users... many with older and rather more obscure content). And, although I haven't used it in a long time, UseNet was hugely popular for quite some time, and is still around... Internet search engines are almost useless now days (and too much of the internet has been scrubbed), but do any technical papers exist scanned on LCR analog recordings? |
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Post by KeithL on Jan 11, 2024 12:10:35 GMT -5
I think that many folks these days don't realize exactly how different things were back in the early days of stereo recordings. Back in those days the main emphasis was on "sounding good"... and terms like "accuracy" and "imaging" were rarely if ever even mentioned. I knew one old timer who insisted that, rather than have a matched pair of stereo speakers, he always preferred to use very different left and right speakers. "That way, with monaural recordings, the two channels sounded different, sort of like stereo". Note that he had a pair of very large homemade speakers using a variety of very expensive drivers that were considered quite "high-end" at the time. As I recall, the speaker on one side had a massive Altec horn, while the other used an aluminum "ring radiator" (sort of a small machined solid aluminum horn). (We had "the conversation" once... and he found the very idea that he should have "matched left and right speakers for proper imaging" to be quite silly.) Remember that, back then, even though there were some stereo recordings, most existing recordings were monaural... And many of the existing stereo recordings would almost randomly place instruments in one channel or the other rather than make any attempt at "a lifelike mix"... There used to be a few recordings where a single sound would bounce back and forth, from left to right, in what was sometimes referred to as "a ping-pong effect". (Obviously intended to show off the fact that there were two separate channels... and give the engineer something to do with that exciting new invention; the "pan-pot".) I had one very high quality mixer, typical of what a radio station might use, which was current as of 1965... It had a stereo line level input, and a stereo output, level controls for each channel, and one choice for each of the two microphone input channels: "left, right, or center". The audio world was a very different place back then. I should point out that, way back in the early days of stereo, many people did add a third center channel, and feed it a simple summed L+R signal. This would generally be somewhat different than their left and right speakers... and would be chosen to emphasize dialog by virtue of emphasizing the midrange frequencies. There are definite drawbacks to summing the left and right channels (including potential cancellations of out-of-phase signals). However apparently those were less of an issue back in the days of actual "unprocessed" stereo recordings. And, of course, that summed center channel worked great for monaural content. And the center speaker did help to "pin dialog and centered stuff to the center" in large or wide rooms. Then someone discovered that you could make acceptable ambience channels for the rear and feed them L-R and R-L signals... (And all with only two actual channels of recorded content.) I think it's fair to say. however, that in those days many listeners considered the center or mono channel to be "the important part"... And they looked at "stereo" the way many of us still look at "surround" today... They looked at having to buy a pair of speakers as being an added expense over buying just one... And they considered stereo as more of "a cool special effect" rather than "a necessity". And, especially if they built their own speakers, attempting to get two MATCHED speakers was an additional aggravation... So they would have been amenable to having "a big main speaker and two small stereo speakers".... But, as mentioned, the tape technology, and vinyl and FM radio as well, really supported two similar channels but not three very well. Take a look at the RCA Living Stereo recordings. They really wanted to do three-channel but the marketing was impossible. Getting people to buy two speakers was tough enough. Nobody had the tech to play back three channel because you couldn't do it with vinyl. |
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Post by marcl on Jan 11, 2024 15:41:12 GMT -5
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Post by marcl on Jan 11, 2024 16:30:10 GMT -5
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jan 11, 2024 16:47:05 GMT -5
I liked the "fine sounding Sonotone ceramic phono cartridge"... prices starting at $6.45 (mounting hardware included) Bear in mind that $1 actually bought something back then.  |
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Post by 405x5 on Jan 12, 2024 8:00:02 GMT -5
…..no small wonder you hear nothing about this flirtation with three channel from the 50’s 60s these days…… Unless you happen to be digging into it from an historical perspective.
With today’s digital processing modes, you can have a blast rendering music in “Three channel’….. any music out there.
I keep loose track (no pun intended) of the results of various processing modes applied to my music today…… The results are very interesting, simply because there’s no real standard applied to how artists record their own music. Additionally, you’re not tied down to playing with a needle and all kinds of cleaning gear. |
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Post by PaulBe on Jan 12, 2024 8:41:31 GMT -5
…..no small wonder you hear nothing about this flirtation with three channel from the 50’s 60s these days…… Unless you happen to be digging into it from an historical perspective.
With today’s digital processing modes, you can have a blast rendering music in “Three channel’….. any music out there.
I keep loose track (no pun intended) of the results of various processing modes applied to my music today…… The results are very interesting, simply because there’s no real standard applied to how artists record their own music. Additionally, you’re not tied down to playing with a needle and all kinds of cleaning gear. It wasn't a flirtation. It was the beginning of standards for minimal stereo micing of acoustic spaces; some times with a few added spot mics. It was forced because of small number of mixing channels. Many classical recordings are still done with minimal micing - spaced omnis; coincident cardioids; Blumlein; M-S; X-Y; others. Look at a mic tree for acoustic surround recording. It's a minimal mic technique upgraded for multi-channel recording: www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/immersive-object-based-audio-recording-techniques"The three frontal microphones – often called the frontal triplet – are arranged as a Decca-Tree. The positions are chosen in accordance with the optimum recording angle of the given sound source." The Decca-Tree was developed from the original 3 channel 50s and 60s historical recordings. Multi-channel can be recorded in any way the artist desires and intends - from acoustic space Decca-Tree to electronic loop-de-loop. |
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Post by 405x5 on Jan 12, 2024 9:04:15 GMT -5
…..no small wonder you hear nothing about this flirtation with three channel from the 50’s 60s these days…… Unless you happen to be digging into it from an historical perspective.
With today’s digital processing modes, you can have a blast rendering music in “Three channel’….. any music out there.
I keep loose track (no pun intended) of the results of various processing modes applied to my music today…… The results are very interesting, simply because there’s no real standard applied to how artists record their own music. Additionally, you’re not tied down to playing with a needle and all kinds of cleaning gear. It wasn't a flirtation. It was the beginning of standards for minimal stereo micing of acoustic spaces; some times with a few added spot mics. It was forced because of small number of mixing channels. Many classical recordings are still done with minimal micing - spaced omnis; coincident cardioids; Blumlein; M-S; X-Y; others. Look at a mic tree for acoustic surround recording. It's a minimal mic technique upgraded for multi-channel recording: www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/immersive-object-based-audio-recording-techniques"The three frontal microphones – often called the frontal triplet – are arranged as a Decca-Tree. The positions are chosen in accordance with the optimum recording angle of the given sound source." The Decca-Tree was developed from the original 3 channel 50s and 60s historical recordings. Multi-channel can be recorded in any way the artist desires and intends - from acoustic space Decca-Tree to electronic loop-de-loop. Yep of course, was referring to sales/marketing back in the day to records and reel to reel rather than the rendering process |
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Post by PaulBe on Jan 12, 2024 9:18:16 GMT -5
It wasn't a flirtation. It was the beginning of standards for minimal stereo micing of acoustic spaces; some times with a few added spot mics. It was forced because of small number of mixing channels. Many classical recordings are still done with minimal micing - spaced omnis; coincident cardioids; Blumlein; M-S; X-Y; others. Look at a mic tree for acoustic surround recording. It's a minimal mic technique upgraded for multi-channel recording: www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/immersive-object-based-audio-recording-techniques"The three frontal microphones – often called the frontal triplet – are arranged as a Decca-Tree. The positions are chosen in accordance with the optimum recording angle of the given sound source." The Decca-Tree was developed from the original 3 channel 50s and 60s historical recordings. Multi-channel can be recorded in any way the artist desires and intends - from acoustic space Decca-Tree to electronic loop-de-loop. Yep of course, was referring to sales/marketing back in the day to records and reel to reel rather than the rendering process Lots of sales/marketing back in the day. Lots of sales/marketing Today. Formats change, Ears do not change. Today's mind can be marketed as easily as yesterday's mind. There is more snake oil being sold today in consumer audio than there ever was. Just remember that the Decca-Tree 3 channel recording technique was Not marketing. It's not just historical. It is the foundation for modern multi-channel acoustic space recording. Today's audio engineering stands on the shoulders of Giants like Decca, RCA, Mercury, Bell Labs, etc. Without them, we would be beating sticks in the woods. |
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Post by 405x5 on Jan 12, 2024 9:45:05 GMT -5
Yep of course, was referring to sales/marketing back in the day to records and reel to reel rather than the rendering process Lots of sales/marketing back in the day. Lots of sales/marketing Today. Formats change, Ears do not change. Today's mind can be marketed as easily as yesterday's mind. There is more snake oil being sold today in consumer audio than there ever was. Just remember that the Decca-Tree 3 channel recording technique was Not marketing. It's not just historical. It is the foundation for modern multi-channel acoustic space recording. Today's audio engineering stands on the shoulders of Giants like Decca, RCA, Mercury, Bell Labs, etc. Without them, we would be beating sticks in the woods. It’s OK…… I’m doing a crap job of explaining myself this morning, and I know why I haven’t sucked down enough of my morning Java lol! PURCHASING Three channel recordings (the end user)…. It was a niche market Like many things are today relatively speaking. The public by and large was not purchasing this stuff mainstream , regardless of what was commencing with the technology. |
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Post by PaulBe on Jan 12, 2024 10:02:20 GMT -5
Lots of sales/marketing back in the day. Lots of sales/marketing Today. Formats change, Ears do not change. Today's mind can be marketed as easily as yesterday's mind. There is more snake oil being sold today in consumer audio than there ever was. Just remember that the Decca-Tree 3 channel recording technique was Not marketing. It's not just historical. It is the foundation for modern multi-channel acoustic space recording. Today's audio engineering stands on the shoulders of Giants like Decca, RCA, Mercury, Bell Labs, etc. Without them, we would be beating sticks in the woods. It’s OK…… I’m doing a crap job of explaining myself this morning, and I know why I haven’t sucked down enough of my morning Java lol! PURCHASING Three channel recordings (the end user)…. It was a niche market Like many things are today relatively speaking. The public by and large was not purchasing this stuff mainstream , regardless of what was commencing with the technology. I hear you. Working on my second cup of Morning Blend right now.  I think the situation is similar today. Many people use a mix-down version of multi-channel recordings for various reasons. |
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Post by KeithL on Jan 12, 2024 11:24:01 GMT -5
Something you need to keep in mind is the technology involved...
Early vinyl technology obviously started out as monaural and progressed to stereo.
(The first "four channel" vinyl formats didn't show up until the 1970's - or so - with SQ4 and CD4.)
The earliest tape formats were single track...
Which then progressed to two track stereo...
And that was pretty much the limit for home/consumer tape formats...
More recent consumer reel-to-reel recorders supported four tracks... but in the form of a set of stereo tracks in each direction on a 1/4" reel-to-reel tape.
I seem to recall one or two consumer reel-to-reel recorders that could record and play four tracks (all four tracks on a 1/4" tape in one direction).
(I'm thinking that one or two Teac models supported that... )
However there were literally only one or two machines that did it... and it was never considered to be a standard format for home audio.
While there were quite a few home 1/4" reel-to-reel machines, they were never as popular as cassettes, and prerecorded reel-to-reel tapes were not all that common.
(The tapes tended to be expensive, the quality varied, and the selection was quite limited. Most people I knew who had a reel-to-reel tape deck used it to record live or from vinyl.)
There were a few four channel cassettes... and a few 8-tracks...
But the quality tended to be poor...
And they tend to deteriorate with age...
And good luck finding a machine that could play them.
The point is that the only TAPES you're likely to find that might contain three track recordings would be studio masters of some sort...
Studio machines often used much wider tape and could handle lots of tracks...
But, even if you come across one of those tapes, you'll need something to play it on.
(Those machines tend to be expensive as well as requiring expensive upkeep and maintenance.)
For all intents and purposes, home machines, and commercially sold prerecorded tapes, are basically limited to monaural or stereo recordings on 1/4" tape...
So, if you're looking for 3-channel CONTENT... you're looking for content that was remastered onto SACDs, or surround sound vinyl, or modern surround sound digital...
I should also note that, if you look in "the right low places", you'll still find lots of digital files that contain a variety of interesting surround sound versions of many older albums.
Back when surround sound was new many folks experimented with synthesizing surround sound using various digital encoders and processors...
(Often they would play a stereo version of an album through the latest high-performance surround sound decoder and encode the result to a new discrete surround sound file.)
Many of these are still floating around as "bootleg surround sound versions of albums" in various surround sound formats...
These can make it somewhat problematic to figure out exactly what you have when you find an interesting recording somewhere online...
(And, of course, provenances vary, and they range from quite good to downright awful... )
Also, as a complete aside, while many groups really hate "bootlegs", and even aggressively seek to prevent them...
If you're a Grateful Dead fan you may know that the Grateful Dead actually ENCOURAGED fan recordings of various sorts at their concerts...
They would actually have a special reserved section at many of their concerts, near the main console, with the best sound, where fans with recorders could sit.
The point is that there are a MASSIVE number of "official" and "unofficial" fan recordings of various Grateful Dead concerts...
One rather famous series was "Dick's Picks"... which are made up of a huge number of concert recordings... and are available as a huge set of albums...
I haven't looked lately but there used to be a whole section at ARCHIVE.ORG dedicated to Grateful Dead fan recordings... all free... and many quite good...
(And, being live recordings, in a wide variety of different formats.)
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