Behind The Scenes (May 1972)

by Bert Whyte

As YOU CAN SEE from the proclamations on every hand, this issue marks the 25th anniversary of AUDIO Magazine. Like any anniversary, it is an occasion for celebration and a time for reflection. I think it is worth noting that when this publication was launched in 1947 as "Audio Engineering," it was coincident with what is generally considered the beginning of the high fidelity era. The impact of audio technology on the recording and reproduction of music, especially in the context of the home listening experience, was more than any of us could have foreseen. For 25 years this journal has faithfully chronicled the spectacular growth and advances in this field. That's a long time, and it sounds more so when you say a quarter of a century; and a great many audio triumphs and tragedies, innovations and "breakthroughs" have occurred in this span of time. Let's go back to 1947 for a look-see and a capsule account of this reporter's personal involvement in the audio scene for the past 25 years.

In 1947 the living rooms of America were filled with the typical "Queen Anne" mahogany monstrosities ... consoles with open-back construction, housing mini-watt amplifiers and tuner sections, single PA-type cone speakers with cheap stamped baskets and tiny magnets, and changers with crystal cartridges operating at a "lightweight" couple of ounces of stylus pressure! The really affluent had Capeharts, whose claim to fame, besides magnificent cabinetry, was a special changer that could play each side of a record consecutively. The records were, of course, the old fragile 78 rpm type, and needless to say the quality of sound from any of these consoles was just plain awful.

In marked contrast to this was the equipment to be found in the homes of some engineers in the broadcast and movie theatre sound fields. Recognizing the deficiencies of the commercial consoles in the consumer market, they brought home the big co-axial and woofer/tweeter theatre speakers, push-pull amplifiers, transcription turntables and arms made by Altec and Western Electric. Presumably they had indulgent wives because the equipment certainly wasn't pretty. However, in terms of sound quality, their rigs were rears ahead of the home consoles. […] of time some music lover guest at the home of one of these engineers, listen to the quality of sound in open-mouthed astonishment, and demand to know where he could buy such a system. Usually the engineer would direct him to a typical radio parts jobber such as Allied Radio or Lafayette/Concord, which in those days maintained an image as "wholesale" operations. Our music lover would buy the equipment he wanted at an apparent 30 to 40 percent off "list price," and with the superior sound his system afforded was delighted with the whole transaction. Naturally the new hi-fi convert would invite friends to hear his great new sound, who in turn became infected with the hi-fi virus, and so on and on, ad infinitum.

Word of mouth recommendation was the foundation of the hi-fi business, and demand for equipment zoomed to such proportions that the parts houses gave up the fiction of the "wholesale" prices and opened special sales and demonstration salons catering to this new hobby. As the hi-fi phenomenon grew, alert manufacturers made equipment specifically tailored to the requirements of this market. This was the time when reputations were made and names established that signified excellence in amplifiers or speakers or with any of the component parts of a hi-fi system. McIntosh, Fisher, H. H. Scott, Altec . . . these are household names today. Others, of singular excellence at the time ... Browning, Radio Craftsmen, REL, Audak ... have vanished from the audio scene.

By 1950, the "hi-fi bug" had been dignified with the appellation "audiophile," and I was selling well-heeled members of that group such items as a 50-watt McIntosh amplifier, Browning tuner, Rek-O-Kut turntable, Pickering arm and magnetic cartridge, a speaker system consisting of the superb Western Electric 713C driver with cast aluminum sectoral exponential horn, crossing over at 800 cycles to a 15-in. Altec theatre woofer in an 11 cubic feet bass reflex baffle, and a Magnecord PT6 tape recorder. A little later on the vogue for horn-loading of speakers was upon us, with enthusiasts experimenting on every hand. Audio's own C. G. McProud designed a widely heralded and much constructed horn. A huge bathtub-like back-loaded horn was designed for the Jensen triaxial speaker. Ollie Read of Radio TV News had his "Fold-A-Flex" horn. It was practically de rigueur for EE students at MIT and CIT to build their own Klipsch horns, an agonizing exercise in "screwing and gluing." Perhaps the ultimate was reached when a giant concrete 30-odd foot exponential horn was built, the mouth of which occupied one whole wall of a living room. I'm not sure, but I believe this was in the home of Al Kahn, former president of Electro Voice.

Along about this time, the long-playing 33 1/3 rpm record became an important factor in the hi-fi scheme of things. Introduced in 1948, its quality wasn't very good, and for the sound enthusiasts, the London/Decca ffrr 78 rpm recordings were of amazingly good quality and were preferred in spite of their cumbersome format. But the advantages of 25 to 30 minutes of uninterrupted playing time were not to be denied nor was the much lower noise level of the vinyl. When improved cartridges from Pickering and GE and better pressing techniques solved the LP mistracking problems, the 78 rpm record was dead. The silly 45 rpm versus 33 1/2 rpm battle waged at that time was a sheer waste since it was quite obvious that the 45 rpm record was strictly in the province of the "pop" singles market and could never be a factor in the classical market. The LP record while clearly the winner, still had its share of problems, not the least of which was a thing called equalization. No one could seem to agree on an ideal recording and playback curve and so for a number of years we had the so-called LP curve, the AES curve, NAB curve, and all the preamps of those days had to furnish playback equalization for each of these curves.

Finally of course, the RIAA curve was adopted as industry standard, but I would be remiss if I did not tell you that some very influential engineers today feel that certain aspects of the RIAA curve would benefit from reexamination and possible change in the light of present knowledge.

The boom in LP recordings was really initiated by the ready availability of high quality magnetic tape recorders. It was said in those days that anyone with an Ampex and the price of a ticket to Europe could start a record label. And it was literally true! One could tape a performance, have masters cut, records pressed, labeled and packaged for less than a thousand dollars! The result of this was an outpouring of musical exotica never since equaled. Magnetic tape recorders were the glamour items in the hi-fi world.

Ampex and Magnecord shared the professional field, with the Magnecord garnering some sales among audiophiles because of its lower cost. In 1951 I became sales coordinator and musical director of Magnecord and this was to have a profound effect on my life. Up to that point, my experience with magnetic tape recording was with the full track monophonic format. My first day at Magnecord, I was invited to put on a set of headphones and listen to something called binaural sound, an experimental process that had its genesis with "Oscar the Dummy" at the Chicago World Fair in 1933.

"Oscar" was a life-like model head with a microphone at each ear, situated in a closed room. Via headphones outside of the room you perceived sounds directed at the dummy, as if you were sitting in the dummy's seat. In essence, the microphones spaced 6-8 inches apart on the dummy head were your surrogate ears! As I recall, the recording I heard was of a high school band, made with the 6 to 8 in. binaural mike spacing. I listened to this recording, with utter astonishment. I was simply stunned by the incredible realism of the sound. A binaural recording was and is today (with some minor updating of mike technique) the ultimate expression of realism in the reproduction of music.

One should note here that the current popularity of headphones is not related to the binaural phenomenon. Almost without exception the kind of recordings people listen to on headphones are made with the typical wide spaced array mike techniques intended for stereophonic playback through loudspeakers and thus the spatial perspective they perceive is grossly exaggerated.

People obviously like this, but I think their response to a true binaural recording would be even more positive.

It is interesting in retrospect how the binaural recording got started at Magnecord. The Navy Special Devices Center in New York wanted a special tape recorder for underwater sonar research and a requirement was that two separate channels could be recorded simultaneously on the standard quarter-inch magnetic tape. At that time there was no such thing as stacked heads, so Magnecord solved this by the expedient of using two half-track heads spaced some 11 inches apart.

These became known as "staggered" heads, and some old-timers will remember some very early stereo tapes made in that configuration. Having made this special two-channel recorder for the Navy, someone at Magnecord remembered the "Oscar" binaural requirements and realized they had a […] of recording this kind of sound. […] rise, I was sold on binaural made it my pet project. Magnecord decided to sell the binaural recorders and we demonstrated the units extensively, especially at the New York Audio Fairs. Naturally we needed demonstration material, so I was busy recording and learning about this new sound. I found out about the classical stereo experiments of Bell Telephone and Western Electric in 1933, and a study of the papers on these experiments proved invaluable. One fine day the morning mail brought a letter from Leopold Stokowski who said he had heard of our binaural experiments and related some experiences he had in Europe with stereophonic perception.

The Maestro said he was giving a conducting seminar at the University of Illinois and asked if we would like to make a binaural recording of the final concert. Of course, I flipped! Up to that point I had been recording relatively small groups. However, what the Maestro had scheduled was rather mind-bending . . . no less than the Monteverdi "Vesper Mass of 1610," with full symphony orchestra, a chorus of 250 voices and organ! Rather early on at Magnecord, I had decided that while true binaural recording was indeed exciting and unique, it was cumbersome to demonstrate, especially to groups. I therefore modified the mike spacing to permit stereo recording and reproduction through loudspeakers.

I always used the famous Telefunken U47 condenser microphones for my recordings, and if hall acoustics were suitable, always used the omni-directional pattern. Whenever possible, I hung the mikes, in preference to mike stands and booms. The hall acoustics of the University auditorium were just a shade over-reverberant when it was empty. With an audience there was enough absorption to overcome this problem. The recording turned out quite well, although the organ pedal was on the heavy side. The Maestro and I worked well together and he invited me to record him with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra a few weeks hence. Subsequently we made other recordings, but little did I realize that eight years in the future we would make commercial recordings for Everest Records in New York. That Univ. of Illinois recording is 21 years old now, and in case you are wondering about the longevity of magnetic tape ... it was on Audiotape Type 1251 and except for some slight "cupping" seems to be in perfectly playable condition. The tape has been stored under normal home conditions.

Having made a major foray into the classical recording field, I was lucky enough to meet Mr. Frank Holzfiend, owner of the famous Blue Note nightclub in Chicago. His club was the home of the "big bands," and with his cooperation I recorded the orchestras of Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman and a number of lesser luminaries. The club was not overly large and the ceiling was a mere 8 feet, and there was the omnipresent crowd noise. The U47's were switched to the cardioid pattern, stereo spacing adjusted to the conditions, and I got some very exciting sounds. The Blue Note is long gone ... but the memories are still fresh. Here again, I was recording with someone ... Woody Herman ... with whom I was to make commercial recordings in the future. And now my friend Bill Putnam of United Recording in Los Angeles has sent me an ambient four-channel stereo recording Stan Kenton's orchestra on half inch tape at 15 ips with A Type Dolby! Makes my 1951 effort sound pretty feeble. Well, that's progress! During my association with Magnecord, I got another lucky break. Mr. Bob Fine, the well-known engineer responsible for the great Mercury Records "Olympian Series" classical recordings, invited me to his recording sessions with the Eastman Rochester Orchestra. What he recorded monophonically, I recorded in stereo. The Mercury recording crew was a great bunch, co-operative in every respect.

The stereo recordings were sensational and conductor Howard Hanson delighted with his first stereo experience.

Bob Fine and I hit it off so well that I went along on sessions with the Chicago, Minneapolis, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, and while Bob made those great mono recordings of that era, with Rafael Kubelik, Antal Dorati, and Paul Paray, I recorded the same repertoire in stereo. A few years later I became general manager of Fine Sound in New York, and got involved with "PerspectaSound," Mr. Fine's special stereophonic process for motion pictures.

If my memory serves me right, it was late in 1952 and I was sitting in my office at Magnecord, when my secretary told me there was a call for me from a Major Armstrong in New York. Cocking a somewhat skeptical eyebrow, I picked up the phone and was a bit stunned to learn that it was indeed the Major Edwin H. Armstrong himself! The Major said he understood that I had a number of stereo tape recordings. When I replied in the affirmative, he then proceeded to tell me how the stereo tapes could be broadcast via a technique he had invented called FM multiplexing. Further, would I like to cooperate with him in some experiments?

This story and the conclusion of this saga next month.

(Audio magazine, May 1972; Bert Whyte)

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