The other day I noticed a fascinating Deutsch Gramophon release of early recording pioneers. I didn't have the money so I put it back on the rack, right side down for some reason, and noted a big bold MONO on the title strip. Of course it's mono, I laughed, these are all acoustic recordings.

I remembered reading a post here noting a jazz recording session that had been taped with two machines, single mics, but with the mics in different places in the room (offering different vantage points). Somewhere along the line the two tapes were synched, offerering the first recording in stereo.

Pondering this, I thought why not think WAY back? Not just to the acoustic era, but to the cylynder era. Remember - wax cylynders couldn't be mass produced. In those days studios had several recording machines: the talent would be positioned around a number of capturing horns, play a performance into all of the machines, then these would be reloaded and do it all again.

From the pictures I've seen, these machines weren't all hooked up the same sound box. As a result, I believe no two cylynder records are alike. If someone were to actually track down two different cylynders which could be verified as from the same performance, it's concievable that these could be synched as well, offering an acoustic recording in stereo: as vivid a picture as possible of the time.

I'm aware Santa will probably be finished with his milk and cookies before this happens, but we can dream, can't we?

Joe Nelson

Wasn't there a recording/recordings of "Casey Jones" dating from 1910 or so that were synched to (crude) stereo?

I've mentioned this before, but there's a special 33 1/3 RPM Victor session on February 3, 1932 featuring Duke Ellington's band doing three tunes in a medley format (Mood Indigo/Hot And Bothered/Creole Love Call).

The records were issued on their short-lived "Program Transcription" series (10" one-sided - usually - and playing at 33 1/3 RPM).  Both takes 2 and 3 were released.

Even through the records are fairly rare, one Ellington collector had both "takes" and discovered that one of the "takes" appeared to have louder piano and the other "take" appeared to have a louder Orchestra section.

Someone tried putting both takes together, and lo-and-behold, the truth came out - Victor used two mike set-ups and two cutters for a single take performance.

Putting the two "takes" together created a true, natural live-in-the-studio stereo sound.

Cool, huh?

I've heard a couple of recordings by major composers - Rachmaninoff is one - which were made on old paper piano rolls, and then played back on modern player pianos, which were duly recorded using contemporary microphone techniques.  I suppose it requires a hair-splitter finer than mine to call this 1930s stereo, but still, it's a recording from that period that we're hearing in stereo.  (Rachmaninoff died in 1943.)

I don't know if this has been mentioned elsewhere... but when they were cutting movie soundtracks in the early days, they would sometimes run several machines with microphones positioned in different places and edit the takes together.  I believe some of these have been unearthed, synced, and remixed to stereo along the way.

I guess everything that's old IS new.

-TC

I believe the industry giants like Capitol, Columbia, Dot and RCA had discrete stereo R-R tapes on the market sometime around 1952-1953.

Question to Atomic (or anyone else who knows): I have also seen websites mentioning that "stereo" records (meaning wax cylinders) / players were patented around 1898 (and it is not difficult to imagine a lathe with two concurrent cutting bits and a player with two parallel needles), but your statement that no usable recordings were made then (as opposed to any surviving to the present) fascinates me, since I always thought that the US Patent Office requires that an invention actually be constructed and demonstrated to work in order for the patent to be issued, not just that the machine be designed on paper (or now computers).

Does anyone know how this played out?