what was the reaction to the first records in stereo?

[CJ Shearn]

I'm curious. Was it viewed as a huge realistic sonic breakthrough how surround and SACD are now? or was it sort of like "what is this?". I mean the super wide spread sounds awful nowadays like how some of the early stereo BN's sounded

[carnivore]

At first the novelty aspect was foremost - it was quite an extraordinary experience to hear separation if all you'd ever heard was a mono source. I think that element wore off quite quickly for people whose main interest was the music content but there WAS a big market for a while for records that gave you steam locomotives crossing your living room etc. The more serious aspect was an unfortunate one - very good sound engineers skilled at mono recordings were forced to come to terms with something many of them didn't understand, that many of them hated and that contained many pitfalls, not the least being miking problems and 'spread' of sounds to places where it was not wanted.

[CJ Shearn]

yeah I remember growing up having a few of those weird albums, London maybe that were purely to show stereo separation, they must have been records from the 50's. I guess I'm so used to stereo it's hard to imagine an album in surround.

[Dan Gould]

I thought the reaction was "Oh shit, now I have to buy Blue Train again."

[GA Russell]

My recollection is that for the first ten years most stereos were consoles, pieces of nice furniture, so the speakers were close together, and the high fidelity rather than the stereo separation was the sales pitch.

I am referring to most consumers, not the audiophiles. High fidelity is a relative term, and by the mid 70s when nearly everything sold was component systems the fidelity of those consoles would seem quite poor.

[Christiern]

I recall wondering if that train made it into the adjoining room.

Much later, I recall hearing an Odetta album that suggested she had 12-foot long arms.

Edited February 7, 2009 by Christiern

[Ron S]

GA's rig:

[mikeweil]

I have a German book from 1961 - jazz LP recommendation guide - that states stereo destroys the cohesion of the groups during playback ...

[jazzbo]

I have a "Stereo Handbook" from 1959 that is interesting. . . . They have a "woofer and satellite" three piece speaker unit in there. . . and they have stereo cabinets with a specially designed curved middle section to alleviate the severe separation. Nothing new under the sun these days, it was all there from the beginning.

What is cool about it also is there's a full page ad for the Eico line of amplifiers and I have a 1959 Eico stereo integrated amp.

[mtodde]

I thought the reaction was "Oh shit, now I have to buy Blue Train again."

LMAO...I only have 7 copies of it and plan to buy the APO 45 & SACD soon.

[Teasing the Korean]

My dad stuck by mono till the bitter end, claiming stereo was a gimmick. He was right.

[Shawn]

Like almost all other advances in recording, it was first developed for use in Hollywood and then s-l-o-w-l-y made it's way around to the record companies.

I was reading about Fantasia earlier today, it was recorded with 8 separate tracks that were then mixed down to a 3 track master. This was called "Fantasound" and required specially installed equipment to reproduce the 3 tracks in the theater. Of course that was outrageously expensive, so in 1941 they collapsed the mix back down to mono and it was shown that way until 1956 when they re-released it in stereo.

[Shrdlu]

Carny says it well.

I remember those days vividly. We had one of those neighbors who was always the first to have everything. (Who didn't, lol?) He got this stereo player, which was one of those wooden box sets with the speakers not really far enough apart. We kids all went around to hear the ping pong games and so on. (Pong ping if the speakers were the wrong way around.)

I liked stereo from the outset, and got into it as soon as I could afford to.

"Blue Train" wasn't out in stereo until about the late 60s, and the separation on that is so little that it might as well be mono.

For a quartet or smaller, there isn't much to be gained by having stereo.

Other first things that that neighbor had included Trane "Live At The Village Vanguard". It was my first exposure to Trane and I was shattered by the soprano, bass clarinet, McCoy Tyner's new chord voicings and Elvin's fantastic drumming. Don't remember whether his LP was stereo, ha ha.

[medjuck]

My Dad owned a furniture store and brought home all the latest gadgets. We had one of those big box stereos-- turn-table and amp with speaker on one side and 2nd speaker almost as big on other. I loved stereo from the beginning. Not the ping-pong or train stuff which was fun, but the music--

especially the large orchestras. I still find mono compressed. (I even like the stereo versions of Pet Sounds and Phil Specter's stuff.)

[AllenLowe]

well, I was always something of a prophet - I thought, oh hell, I'll wait for Quadrophonic.

[AllenLowe]

then, when Quadrophonic came out, I thought, oh hell, I'll wait for surround sound -

[AllenLowe]

than, when surround sound came out, I thought, oh hell, I'll wait for MP3 -

[AllenLowe]

than, when MP3 came out, I thought, oh hell, I'll wait for blue ray -

[AllenLowe]

than, when blue ray came out, I thought, oh hell, I'll wait for SOME DECENT FUCKING MUSIC TO EVER COME OUT AGAIN -

ahh...feel better now -