"False" Stereo

[Tea24]

Some time ago I bought the whole record collection of an elderly friend; some 700 odd Lps, 45s & 78s. Amongst this collection were several boxed sets of Readers Digest compilations. One is a set called the Glen Miller Years and has many other big bands on it such as Artie Shaw, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington (& some with a young Frank Sinatra as a vocalist) etc. etc.

This is labelled ‘Stereo’, though obviously, as some tracks were originally recorded pre-war they cannot really be Stereo; however the re-mastering is very well done on good quality discs by RCA and they do have a sort of Stereo sound.


The blurb states; “72 historic recordings made by 14 celebrated bands, reprocessed from original master discs deposited in RCA archives, and from records in private collections”.

My question is; how was this done. At the time 1966/7 you could have bought either Mono or Stereo of this set.

[morris_minor]

I'm guessing, but the stereo version of the set you talk about was probable fake stereo - from days when stereo discs were perceived as "better".

I bought a few "electronically re-processed for stereo" discs back in the day. The better ones were listenable, the bad ones horrible - a sort of fake acoustic and muddy sound with recessed treble. it sounded as though bass frequencies had been panned to the right, and higher frequencies - such as there were - panned left.

I can only guess this was done with varying filter techniques - though nothing I'd be very proud of

It's only fairly recently - since I started recording LPs for streaming (a cardinal sin in some folks' eyes in itself ) - that I've tried to rescue these discs by applying parametric equalisation to the file and, of course, mono-ing it. The results have been variable, but never worse than the original

[Tea24]

I am sure you are right. I have now found "electronically reproduced" on the box, but actually this set is not too bad at all - whoever did it knew what he was doing. However I must try mono-ing & some re-equalisation.