From: dbk@cs.umd.edu (Dan Kozak)
Newsgroups: rec.music.beatles
Subject: Stereo vs. Twin-track and other recording nits
Date: 30 Jul 92 06:38:20 GMT
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742

Gosh, I spend a few days away from the computer and all hell breaks
loose!  For once a discussion about the recording techniques and I
miss most of it . . . Oh well, let's see if I can pick up some of the
pieces . . . 

A quick trip to Webster's gives us this "stereophonic--giving,
relating to, or constituting a three-dimensional effect of auditory
perspective."  A wit might suggest that the "relating to" clause in
this definition causes it to apply even to the sounds of the earliest
Beatles material, but it is clear that none of these recordings
constitute stereophonic reproduction in this sense, as Jay C. Smith
has ably pointed out:

jcsmith@eos.ncsu.edu (Jay C. Smith) writes:
> "Stereo" very much implies a recreation of a three-dimensional aural
> space.  This is frequently done with only two channels, much in the
> way that a stereoscopic viewer uses two images to create a "stereo"
> visual image.  

> Any use of the typical two-track stereo release that in no way
> attempts to create a 3-D aural space cannot really be called stereo.
> This includes creation of "fake stereo" by using filtering and delays
> on mono sources, and it also includes discrete channels mixed to
> either left or right with nothing in the middle.  It would make no
> more sense than looking in a stereoscopic viewer that had Paul and
> Ringo as the left image and John and George as the right image.
> Would anyone claim that that would make a stereo visual image?

I would also point out that the early recording sheets reproduced in
The Book have a place to indicate (by circling one) either Mono or
Stereo, and in the early days it was most often crossed out and
"Twin-track" written in, showing that the EMI recording team(s)
regarded these recordings as a seperate beast from stereo or mono.

Now the controversial part is this:
> The stereo effect may be artificially created through the mixing of
> two or more essentially mono tracks into a three-dimensional field.

	The purist point of view is that this is not stereo--a
	position Benjamin D. Lukoff expresses thusly:
	> TRUE stereo can only be gotten with a stereo mike pair. 

 	Then there is a point of view that if there is a true stereo
	soundfield (i.e.  created by one of a few types of two mike
	setup, etc.) already, then "spot" mikes can be mixed in and
	placed via pan-pot in the mix and the result will still be
	stereo.

 	You could move a little further down that path and say
	that if you miked, say, the drums and piano in stereo and put
	them each on 2 tracks of your multi-track and everything else
	was a single mike pickup, that when you mixed it (with the
	piano's and drums' stereo pairs hard panned to the
	appropriate sides of the mix) the result will be stereo.

[BTW, Mr. Lukoff seems to have ignored the possibility of either of
these options when saying:
> Multi-track will never be TRUE stereo, it is just a collection of
> monophonic signals mixed to resemble stereo.

Obviously it's quite possible to record multiple stereo pairs on the
tracks of a multi-track, and in fact it's done all the time.]

	You could say that a multi-track recording with _no_ true
	stereo pairs in it can be mixed stereo by panning the various
	sources to represent a 3d soundstage . . . or something, an
	option Mr. Lukoff makes reference to when saying:
	> Of course I consider multi-track true stereo.

And so on until you reach the other extremist point of view . . . 

	You could say that if you recorded the whole thing on a mono
	tape and later dubbed onto a stereo deck while cutting the
	highs going to one side and the lows going to the other that
	_that_ is stereo :-) -- a point of view that seems to mainly
	have been held by mastering engineers at Capitol Records. :-)

It's obvious that we're not going to resolve here what is essentially
a matter of opinion--I'm sure that most people here (who give a
!@#$%) fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum and some seem to
come down at different places even in the same paragraph. :-) Suffice
it to say that as far as the Beatles' recordings are concerned, there
are almost _never_ any single instruments miked in a purist stereo
fashion, or even multiple miked and mixed to create a stereo image
(the drums on "The End" are the big exception to this).  In fact,
it's safe to say that the Beatles' work created the ground on which
this argument could take place by creating a new, looser definition
of "stereo" than had existed before.

bad@pismo.sw.stratus.com (Bruce Dumes) writes:
> . . . two track recording is just like four track or eight track,
> but with only two tracks to work with.

There is another difference besides the number of tracks, at least in
the case of the Abbey Road team.  My initial research indicates (and
I reserve the right to go back on some of this when I find the 2nd
part of The Absolute Sound's article on EMI stereo) that the BTR-2
machine (used for the "twin-track" recordings) did not have a split
erase head (and consequently no sync capability).  Thus both tracks
had to be recorded simultaneously and no drop ins were possible.  By
splitting the vocals onto a track by themselves, though, a vocal flub
(or a whole bad take) could be rectified using sound-on-sound:
copying only the instrument track from the first take, sing along
onto a new tape, or even just sing the parts that need correction and
cut and paste the whole thing together later (notice that the Abbey
Road team did far more editing of this kind before the advent of the
4-track which allowed drop-ins).

brennan@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Joseph Brennan) writes:
> Please note as well that the first two albums are "stereo mixes" and
> not just the session tapes.  Listen to one channel at a time and you
> can hear echo of the other channel; this was done more heavily on the
> second album "With the Beatles" and the Capitol versions were
> processed even more.

You are right that the stereo mixes are not just copies of the
session tapes, but the "echo" effect you mention is (IMHO) not a
product of a concerted effort during stereo "mixing."  First off, the
vast majority of these recordings were done with vocals and
instruments being recorded at the same time, in the same room, so
leakage of instruments onto the vocal mikes accounts for alot of
this.  Compression/reverb/EQ of the vocal tracks tends to emphasize
this (listen to "Roll Over Beethoven"'s vocal track--the compression
brings up the instruments between every vocal line thereby shifting
the "stereo" image in headphones in a most disconcerting manner :-).
As for the "ghost" of the vocals on the other side, it's true that on
some songs reverb was added to the vocal tracks and the returns
panned somewhere centerish, but more often I'd attribute it to
crosstalk, both between tape channels and during the LP
mastering/reproduction process (I don't know what a "good" crosstalk
figure is for an LP, but it's certainly well into the audible realm).
This would explain why the Capitol albums are more noticeably this
way: almost all of them went through at least one extra tape copy vs.
their UK counterparts, which would add to this effect.

> Many of us like the "stereo" albums because you can hear details, but
> we'd probably like to listen to the later recordings one or two
> tracks at a time for the same reason.

Right on!!

> Now, starting with "I want to hold your hand" in October 1963, they
> used 4-track recorders, and from here on out fairly decent stereo
> mixes can be produced.  CD-only fans may refer to "Past Masters"
> volume 1 for examples, starting with IWTHYH itself.

I don't have a stereo IWTHYH in my collection (another reason to pick
up that vinyl _Past_Masters_1&2_ I saw today), so I can't talk about
that track in particular, but many of the later 4-track recordings
show up in (at least what seem to me) _very_ odd stereo mixes.  The
use of only one track to capture the vast majority of the
instrumental performance obviously has it's limitations, and later on
the layers of reduction mixes (almost always reducing to one track
and then continuing) would result in much the same situation.  Here
I'm thinking of things like _Rubber_Soul_--wouldn't it make more
sense to mix the "rhythm" (drms/bs/gtr, sometimes 2nd guitar) track
(singular) in the center and then place the various vocal and
instrumental overdubs around the "stereo" [sic] picture?  

That's all for now, I'm out of breath!

#dan

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