My first letter from Prof. Dr. Hermann Scherchen, the eminent German orchestral conductor and founder of the world-famous research center for acoustics at Gravesano, Switzerland, came to me at Audio under the date of December 23, 1959. Dr. Scherchen (whose superb Westminster records older readers may recall) was a subscriber and obviously read us thoroughly, including my own column. His letter was no secretarial product--it was personally typed, in a species of English, on an extremely decrepit typewriter with added scrawls in handwriting. The stationery was that of his newest symphony orchestra, the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, but he wrote to me direct from Gravesano. At the top of the first page was a large handwritten CONFIDENTIAL.
"Dear Sir, It is with the greatest interest that I have been reading your monthly observations in Audio and I am delighted each issue to find so much that is not only clever but at the same time fine and realistic '.... Surely you know nothing of me [not true!] but I shall say that if ever I have wished to see any personality here at the Gravesano Studios, it most certainly would be you ...." Well, I never made it to Gravesano but you may be sure that my heart leapt up at those words. But like most well-known personages, Dr. S. wasted no more time and went straight to business. He wanted to tell me of a device he had developed in his lavish Swiss laboratories called the Stereophoner.
"This is the reason [the above kind remarks] why I allow myself to beg your interest in what follows, after you have read the material accompanying this letter. My wish and my researches have for long been to create a new kind of monaural disc that would yet have the effect of a stereo sound. My work in that direction has finally brought me to the Stereophoner, which is the result of a lifetime of ear attention to all the directional timbres and sound-projection and reflecting qualities of the musical instruments.
"Now--at 68 I have once more taken on the responsibility for the sound-creating function of an orchestra, with which I work for radio in the city of Bremen, and with which I intend to develop specifically all those best musical qualities in playing which lead to the finest sort of high fidelity reproduction. My [existing] stereo recordings are entirely compatible, for finest mono reproduction; now I am going back to the beginning of my work: I hope to create a new 'monaural room-sound disc.' " What the Doctor is saying is that, in those early stereo days, he felt that a spatial or "room-sound" effect could be created more simply by the ingenious use of a split and "doctored" single signal, delivered as in stereo to a pair of loudspeakers but out of one amplifier. It was, of course, a circuit devised by him and his engineers that could do the trick, and the Stereophoner, already in production, was the preliminary answer. It could be hooked into any mono sound source; all that was required was the one extra speaker, suitably placed.
Nuts, I can hear you saying. Yes--in 1982. But in the late 1950s, when stereo was scarcely beginning and full of faults and clumsiness, not to mention expense, things did not look the same to serious listeners. There were already hundreds of stereo LPs available in late 1959, but stereo equipment was still mostly of the conversion sort and full of bugs, the recordings were often marginal, even out of phase, as were mikes, amp circuits and, of course, speakers, not to mention stereo pickups. You bought a new speaker to supplement your old one and it usually was a grievous mismatch. All in all, stereo was no treat for most of us (though full of potential for a better future). The well remembered "hole in the middle" was rampant-not one but two point sources, thanks to lack of stereo coherence between the speakers. Inevitably, plenty of people still clung to mono as the more reliable sound source for music. Stereo releases were also available in mono, and many stereo tapes did not even appear as stereo discs.
But the basic problem with mono sound remained: 95% of listeners heard a single point source directly out of a loudspeaker pointed at them. This was unfortunate. Only a few lucky souls had listening rooms that somehow spread the apparent source by reflection, for better realism. What we desperately needed (and got in later stereo) was the obliteration of that ugly point, so 'that music could be spaced out, seemingly, within the entire listening area.
What if one could indeed liberate music in this fashion and yet maintain the simplicity of the mono system? That was Dr. Scherchen's preoccupation and a part of the more advanced thinking of the day, which had given rise to commercial stereo itself. He intended, it seems, to go onward from the Stereophoner to a mono "coded" disc-but this evidently never got off the ground. The Stereophoner, the halfway stage, definitely did, if briefly.
Hermann Scherchen, then, belongs among the pioneers in our present and continuing interest in room sound spaces and the "sound field." His mistake was to back the wrong horse in future terms. Mono. It was no wrong horse then.
I had a number of further letters on the Stereophoner from the great man, who genially saluted me in his quaint and misspelled English as "Dear College"--Colleague. Amusing, but since his intent was entirely serious I have "translated" his words to some extent in these quotes, though the sense of the original is there. Let me continue.
He had worked on the Stereophoner for a number of years; it was demonstrated in Geneva before many notables as early as 1958 and thus must have been in final prototype form. Here is his account to me of the first impact: "The first results were astonishing," wrote Dr. S. "The sound no longer came direct from the [mono] loudspeaker but was freely located in the whole room. This effect was impressive-the clarity of every timbre seemed perfect, the entire room seemed filled, though the sound was over-all the same [i.e. equally good at any listening point]. And this even though this sound analyzed itself stereophonically into a spatial separation of different sources. Nor was it divided sharply into right and left sound emissions [the "hole in the middle"]. And there was no 'best seat' !" Bob Carver and holographic sound, 1982, take note.
I wish I could quote you the dozens of enthusiastic reports that were passed on to me, from England, France, Germany, Switzerland, in Dr. Scherchen's accompanying literature.
Even allowing for pardonable exaggeration of claims, they are impressive.
He was, of course, particularly interested in radio, where stereo was still remote and reception in the home was necessarily mono. He was indefatigable-he had demonstrated the Stereophoner before many of the top radio men in Europe and their response was overwhelming.
The chief of research at the French national radio system wrote, "The success of this system lies in its ability to recreate the differing character of the sound spectra on the left- and right-hand sides of the orchestra, represented by the two speakers, where all other attempts of the sort have contented themselves with simply separating the bass and treble frequencies, leaving the mid-frequencies spread over both channels ...." There speaks the engineer and you may begin to surmise at the actual electronics employed by Dr. Scherchen. Highs on the left, lows on the right was too simple a trick-that did a little but not much for sound .separation. Many of us tried it and went on to better ideas. The Stereophoner, it seems, was more sophisticated.
A German engineer in Frankfurt/ Main had this to say: "We have had the opportunity of demonstrating the Stereophoner before a gathering of prominent acoustic experts [and we report that] the Stereophoner effects an extraordinary improvement in the quality of reproduction of a sound manifestation .... The source no longer appears to lie in a loudspeaker, as heretofore, but to emerge from there and take up a position in the air." Once more, the astonishment is in the creation of a graded sound space, in place of a point source.
And the composer Rolf Liebermann (Concerto for Jazz Band and Symphony Orch.) had this to say, typically: "It was a pleasant and powerful experience. I never thought that I should be prepared, capable and willing to listen to gramophone records for eight hours and still be enjoying it at the end of that time." Composers were generally not fond of "canned music." Dr. Scherchen also collected a sheaf of testimonials from ordinary listeners in England, where he had licensed the Stereophoner for manufacture and sale. These people, without special engineering or musical knowledge, said much the same things. No question about it, this ingenious "black box" created a sensation, out of two loudspeakers, wherever it was set up, whether before experts or the layman.
" In its special way it clearly brought a new kind of sonic experience to all kinds of listeners. Again and again, it was the remarkable "absence" of the loudspeakers that people noted, and the new presence of a sound field, an ambient source that was entirely removed from the speakers themselves as one listened.
I do not think there is the slightest doubt that the Stereophoner, as far as it went, was an important and briefly influential device in the history of sound reproduction, though apparently confined to the European continent.
I could go on with a hundred more quotes--Dr. Scherchen himself described the reactions of a brace of famous musicians in his later letters to me. But all this is only part of the story.
What was this Stereophoner? What sort of electronic circuit could it have employed, to create such apparently convincing spatial effects out of a single mono signal? The thing was clearly no more than a passive modifier; it had no power cord and there were no batteries of the sort then available. It was evidently intended as a kind of "Volksstereo," using the simplest means and requiring none of the clumsy and expensive stereo equipment then sold. Yet it did appear to have subtlety and it was sponsored by a very important man in the musical and acoustic worlds.
Dr. Scherchen did send me a Stereophoner. At this point I do not remember what, if anything, I said about it in this magazine; nor does it matter, since we have different ears today.
That Stereophoner has been sitting on a nearby shelf for most of the last 22 years and now sits beside my typewriter as I write. Or rather, its remains.
Twice during the years curiosity overcame me and I asked a qualified audio man to make measurements, for, you see, the inner components were potted, buried and invisible inside a block of some tarry, plastic substance. That block filled only half of the small 3 1/2-inch cube. If you are a tinkerer, or especially if you were around 1959, you will know, then, that there could not be much of anything inside that potting, other than a few standard and inexpensive elements for a passive circuit. No transistors, tubes, microchips, mini-batteries. Could this be nothing more than, say, "10ยข worth" of cheapie stuff, carefully hidden from the outer eye? My engineers could not be sure. One said a few resistors and capacitors, maybe. The other, only last year, told me somewhat lamely that the darned thing seemed just to have wires that went straight through and out the other side. Crazy, real crazy.
Well, this got too much for me. When I recently ran into Dr. Scherchen's original letter I resolved to act. There was only one thing to do: Melt the thing down. And so, by golly, I did.
What a mess! But now I know. More about this later.
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by Edward Tatnall Canby (adapted from Audio magazine, May 1982)
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