page_title: Hellmuth Kolbe
section_title: Mastertone
hierarchical_section_title: Hellmuth Kolbe / Career / Mastertone
caption_attribution_description: English: The picture shows two Ampex 350 3-channel tape recorders, the first of which Hellmuth Kolbe claims to have received in 1953, and in the foreground most possibly a portable audio “processor” with XLR connectors at its backside, probably an American military style mixing console. This equipment could have been installed either in RWR premises, in a Viennese Concert House, or in the Wiener Musikverein. The picture actually is from a series of recordings for CBS in 1964, with American tenor Richard Tucker (1913-1975, left), conductor Pierre Dervaux (1917-1992, middle) and apparently Tucker’s wife Sarah (?–1975, right) in the Vienna Concert House (Orchestra: The Vienna State Opera Orchestra).
context_page_description: Hellmuth Kolbe was a musician and an audio recording and acoustics pioneer.
context_section_description: From 1951 to 1963 in Vienna, Kolbe operated "Mastertone", his first recording studio. The Mastertone studio was engaged by Vox and Vanguard. Kolbe said, "At that time, the rate of exchange of the dollar to the Austrian Schilling was very favorable and American record companies soon found it well worthwhile to record in Vienna".
  In 1987, Kolbe said, "In the autumn of 1953 [we got] the first stereo tape recorder in Europe, an Ampex 350... which meant we aimed for proper stereo image rather than the 'ping-pong' style that was popular in the early days – everything on the left or the right and no middle". From the beginning, Kolbe was a strong advocator of 3-channel stereo.
  In 1956, Kolbe worked with Karlheinz Stockhausen, a composer of electronic music.Together they developed the first electronic music scores in the form of frequency versus time graphs. In 1965, they recorded Stockhausen’s Klavierstücke I-XI (1961) and Mikrophonie I/II (1965). Kolbe engineered both.
caption: From left to right, Richard Tucker, Pierre Dervaux and Sarah Tucker in Vienna, 1964 with two Ampex 350 3-channel tape recorders, a portable audio processor with XLR connectors, and (probably) an American military style mixing console.[14][15] Photograph courtesy Ursula Kolbe.
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