Behind The Scenes (Jun. 1972)

by Bert Whyte

As You KNOW, last month AUDIO celebrated it's 25th birthday and the occasion was duly noted by an effusion of nostalgia and much reminiscing about the progress of the hi-fi industry in the last quarter of a century. Space limitations being what they are, the story of my involvement with the people, the places, the events, and the developments in the world of audio during those years could not be covered in one issue of this esteemed journal. Thus the story has "spilled over" to this month's edition and with your kind indulgence, I will bring this saga to its conclusion so we can return to the realities of today's audio scene.

When we left the story last month, I was telling you about a phone call I had received from Major Edwin Armstrong, the "father of FM," in which he informed me about his new development in FM broadcasting called stereo multiplex. He wanted my co-operation in furnishing him with stereophonic recordings for his experimental multiplex transmissions. Naturally, I agreed to help the Major, as I was quite excited by the potential of his stereo broadcasting, to say nothing of the fact that I was thrilled at the prospect of meeting this almost legendary figure. It just so happened that when the Major called me in Chicago, I was within a few weeks of returning to New York, where among other things, I was to be an audio columnist and associate editor for "Radio TV News" (later "Electronics World"). I shall never forget my first meeting with the Major in his opulent penthouse in the fabled River House apartments on East River Drive in New York. I found him to be a kindly, affable man, singularly free of any pretentious mannerisms or airs of hauteur. As I sat in the living room sipping on the excellent Scotch the Major had thoughtfully provided, he gave me a detailed explanation of his FM stereo multiplex process. He outlined his need for stereo tapes, since the only alternative would have been to do live broadcasts, and due to the experimental nature of the transmissions and their point of origin, this would have been impractical. At that time Major Armstrong was broadcasting stereo multiplex from his huge personally-owned transmitting tower atop of the high palisades at Alpine, New Jersey, across the Hudson River laboratory at Columbia Uni the benefit of those who may not know the story of the Major's tower, a word of explanation. The Major was the quintessential audio purist. He simply wanted the very best in sound quality and was rigidly uncompromising in this respect. As you know, FM propagation is limited to "line of sight" (hence broadcasting from places like the Empire State building for maximum area coverage), so to ensure that he would broadcast a good signal, the Major had this very high, complex tower erected at the reputed cost of several hundred thousand dollars. If I remember correctly, the height of the tower plus the height of the granite palisades at Alpine added up to better than 800 feet. Major Armstrong had this experimental monophonic FM station (whose very famous call letters elude me at the moment) and there is little doubt that some of the highest quality FM sound ever broadcast emanated from his station.

Consider this . . . there would be a concert by the Marine or Navy Band, or the National Symphony Orchestra in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. and a top-notch engineer would set up the best microphones available at that time (very often the Western Electric 640AA calibration standard condenser type). Then the Major would personally pay the charges for a 15 kHz equalized line all the way from Washington to his tower at Alpine! The sound of these live concert broadcasts was fabulous. Those in the know made tape recordings of the broadcasts using a special "black box" which enabled one to use a McIntosh amplifier for recording purposes. I have heard many of these tapes and there was a "Firebird Suite" performed by the National Symphony Orchestra which was simply stunning in its sonic impact. As noted, the broadcasts covered the full audio spectrum and with a signal-to-noise ratio that was quite a bit better than the S/N ratio afforded by the tape recorders of that day.

At that first meeting, the Major asked me about the mike placements I had used on my various stereo recordings. Then he wanted me to make stereo recordings with special mike placements with regard to spacing, height, and distance from orchestra. (This was subsequently accomplished in Carnegie Hall with the help of the late Hal Sherman, a good friend and knowledgeable recordist.) In the following months, if one had owned a multiplex adapter, he could have listened to Major Armstrong's stereo broadcasts and heard such diverse things as the bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, and the Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis Symphony orchestras.

I want to emphasize that from the beginning and in our subsequent meetings, Major Armstrong told me that he considered his stereo multiplex system a straightforward, high quality A-B (left/right) system. "Store-casting" and other SCA services had no place in his stereo scheme of things. Of course, in retrospect, one is bound to say that his A-B system would have eventually run afoul of the FCC. Somewhat less than a year after my initial meeting with Major Armstrong, I received a letter from Murray Crosby, another FM expert who was also experimenting with stereo multiplex.

His "sum and difference" method of multiplexing made it possible for the monophonic listener to receive a left/right balanced signal. Mr. Crosby told me of his difficulties in demonstrating his system, because of a lack of stereo recordings, and lamented the fact that the musicians union was against stereo recording (unless you paid a double fee for the two tracks!). More about the union a little later.

I found out that Mr. Crosby lived less than 5 minutes from my home and his laboratory was also nearby. I met with Mr. Crosby and agreed to furnish him with stereo tapes. Not long afterward he gave me a closed circuit demonstration of his stereo multiplex system and I was much impressed. Murray Crosby knew of my association with Major Armstrong and just a week previous to the Crosby demonstration I had been visiting the Major at River House. We had been discussing the improvements in S/N ratio with the new high output tape oxides, and in all respects the Major was his usual self, affable, assured ... the perfect host. You can imagine my utter shock when I walked into the Crosby labs the day after the demonstration and Murray told me a bulletin had just come over the radio that Major Edwin Armstrong had "apparently committed suicide" and his body was found 13 floors below on a roof-terrace of River House. I tell you I was really shaken. The Major had seemed absolutely rational to me with no evidence at all of the kind of trouble that would precipitate such an act. A tragic untimely end for such a great man. Some time later it was my sad lot to go up to his Columbia laboratory to pick up my stereo tapes he had been using.

Some months later, although informed engineers rated the Crosby stereo multiplex as the "system of choice," Mr. Crosby was not having much luck in placing his equipment in an FM station for experimental transmissions, even on a totally free basis! Having become convinced of the worth of the Crosby system, I had allied myself with Mr. Crosby. I suggested that we "go to the top" and see if this approach would get some results.

My reckoning was that we should try RCA, since they had all the requisites ... broadcast facilities, a record company, and manufacturing capabilities for multiplex equipment.

Dr. Oliver Reed was Editor of "Radio TV News" and a friend of the late General David Sarnoff, head of RCA. He was kind enough to write the General on my behalf, with a brief explanation of stereo multiplex. Dear friend Leopold Stokowski also contacted the General, telling him what I had in mind. The upshot of all this was an appointment with a Dr. Jolliffe, technical director of RCA. I had my trusty Magnecord along, complete with earphones and stereo tapes, as Dr. Jolliffe had never heard stereo, let alone multiplex stereo. Dr. Jolliffe liked what he heard and had me contact various executives in the broadcast, consumer, and manufacturing divisions of RCA. After a period of negotiation and planning, late in 1954 a group of 14 RCA executives made the journey out to Crosby Labs on Long Island, for a closed circuit FM stereo multiplex demonstration. They were suitably impressed with the multiplex demonstration, and more so with stereo which no one in their group had ever heard before. For over a year after the demonstration there was much "backing and filling," "foot-shuffling," and "wheel-spinning," typical of big company inertia, and nothing was ever accomplished on behalf of multiplexing.

However, the exposure to stereo evidently was worthwhile for early in 1955 RCA Victor became the first major record company to issue stereo prerecorded tapes. As an aside to this, I pointed out the trouble we were having with the musicians union and decided to try and resolve the problems.

Through the truly herculean efforts of a lesser union official with whom I was quite friendly, I finally met the recording secretary of the union, who turned out to be a very reasonable man.

Once he understood the situation, he arranged for me to demonstrate stereo … C. Petrillo himself! Armed with Magnecord, phones, and tapes, I invaded the union headquarters on Lexington Avenue in New York. After listening intently, and after I told Mr. Petrillo that everything in the pop or classical catalogs would have to be re-recorded if people wanted these items in the stereo medium, he smiled and relaxed, said the sound was terrific and invited the girls in his office to "come have a listen." The most immediate result of this encounter was that the recording secretary gave me a blanket letter of permission to record union musicians in stereo for "experimental purposes." This, needless to say, was worth any amount of trouble.

A short while after the Petrillo demonstration, the union lifted its demand for double fees, and stereo recording began in earnest.

The first RCA Victor stereo tape was the Chicago Symphony performing Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," (famous today through the "2001" movie). It was, and is, a superb recording and it was used as part of a famous promotion. Ampex came out with the Model 600 stereo tape playback deck and a pair of small suitcase sized matching speaker/amplifiers. All around the country, in stores and at shows, they would set up the speaker/amps with the proper spacing for the size of the room, and conceal them behind draw drapes. When the audience had assembled, they would start "Also Sprach Zarathustra" and from behind the curtains would come this spectacular sound. The audience swore they were listening to some huge new super-speaker, when the drapes would be dramatically parted and there were these puny little units pumping out this startling sound. Stereo was "in" with a vengeance! That first RCA Victor stereo tape and the others that soon followed sold a great many Ampex 600's. Today, after 17 years and over 35,000 units sold, the Model 600 has record facilities, a new two-speed motor and is still going strong! I have been involved with many other audio situations over the years and . . . well shucks, fellas, I could write a book! One of the most satisfying and yet frustrating experiences in audio was my Everest Records affair. Mr. Harry Belock, at the time President of Belock Instrument Corp. of New York, a high-precision electronics manufacturer and defense contractor, and I founded Everest Records in 1958. The name was my idea, "the peak of achievement"! Mr. Belock is one of the most remarkable men I have ever met, a veritable dynamo, with great drive and awesome perseverance. His organizational and production genius earned his company Navy "E's" and financial rewards for himself. He had one credo-everything had to be the best available, and this was reflected in the fabulous array of recording equipment we quickly acquired. First we used Ampex three-channel half-inch recorders, specially modified in the Belock plant and later on, drawing on Mr. Belock's extensive experience in the sound departments of Columbia and Paramount Pictures, we introduced the use of 35mm magnetic film. Westrex made the machines with Belock-modified electronics for full spectrum audio recording, rather than their usual 507500 Hz cinema equalization curve. In four months time we had built a recording studio complex in Bayside, New York, with the main studio so big that I recorded Leopold Stokowski and the entire N.Y. Philharmonic doing "Peter and the Wolf," with Captain Kangaroo narrating! The studio was equipped with its own pair of Scully lathes, and the Westrex stereo disc cutter, and the cutting was in charge of Robert Engler ... formerly of Westrex. Our Chief of Engineering was John Livadary, former head of the sound department of Columbia Pictures. Most of our 35mm recorders were three-channel, but we had a special six-channel unit, with which we did the recording in Rome for Mike Todd, Jr.'s picture "Scent of Mystery." This was the oddball picture that had "Smellavision" . . . actual scents keyed to the story and the score. The picture was a bomb, but the six-channel stereo was great! I still have a photo somewhere that should make KLH happy ... showing six of their speakers being used as monitors. We recorded extensively in this country and in England and the Continent. My bailiwick was the classical recording, and we had a notable series which, if I may be slightly immodest, has been characterized as some of the best recordings ever made ... this praise coming from some pretty hard-nosed and rather blasé recording engineers. Yes, at Everest we had the best of everything ... everything but an understanding board of directors of the parent company. It takes a long time for a record company to establish itself, and the money return is necessarily slow. Impatience set in ... the board pulled the plug, and Everest was sold.

It is a sort of record conglomerate these days, still under the banner of Everest Records, doing little if any original recording, but by all reports thriving in its particular milieu.

So it goes. Win some, lose some.

Audio is ever fascinating and I've had my fun, and sometimes a little glory in the past 25 years. Maybe some other time I can dredge up a lot of other audio tales, that must for now stay untold.

(Audio magazine, Jun. 1972; Bert Whyte)

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