The Rise of Stereo

"Now everyone gets the best seat in the house," says Conductor Erich Leinsdorf. "That is proper for a democracy, is it not?" The "best seat" is a living room sofa facing a wall equipped with two speakers six to eight feet apart. If listener and speakers are positioned correctly, there seems to issue from the wall a wave of what is known as stereophonic sound. Nothing has so excited listeners and record makers since, more than a decade ago, the long-playing disk ushered in the Age of High Fidelity. Stereophony's extra clarity and depth have not had the immediate impact on the public that high-fidelity sound did, but it is a major and startling improvement in home listening.

As far as most record buyers were concerned, just a year ago stereo sound was little more than a whisper in a laboratory echo chamber. By the beginning of this year, the stereo disk (usually $1 more than a comparable monophonic) accounted for roughly 10% of total LP sales; by year's end, it may represent a third of the total. But stereo disks are not likely to make the old monophonic disks entirely obsolete, since a well-engineered old-style LP sounds fine when played on stereo. While the sale of monophonic equipment has dwindled to almost nothing, many of the nation's stereo owners have continued buying monophonic records.

The Equipment. Stereo disks are made by feeding sound through three or more separate microphones, with the signals recorded on three separate channels that are later reduced to two. On the record, a single needle picks up separate impulses from each channel by moving both up and down and sideways in a single groove. The two signals from the needle must be played through two separate amplifiers and speakers. Despite the necessary additional equipment, the cost can be far lower than that of a genuine monophonic hi-fi rig, because stereo achieves impressive reproduction with relatively small speakers and low-wattage amplifiers. Hi-fi addicts with component-part rigs can convert to stereo by gradually adding units.

Packaged stereo sets all ready to plug in now come as low as $39.95 for a portable unit (the tone is apt to be as strident as a bluejay's cry), or as high as $2,500. Between the two extremes are dozens of sets in the $100 to $500 range, many of which make for better listening than more expensive monophonic units. Thinking of the already cluttered American living room, manufacturers also offer "self-contained stereo"--units with both speakers housed in a single cabinet. But two-speaker cabinets, unless they are six to eight feet long, can give only an illusion of stereo depth and definition (what one manufacturer calls "stereotype" sound).

The Sound. How effective is stereo reproduction? All stereo sets come equipped with controls by which the home listener can adjust the balance between the two speakers to the size and shape of the room. If unknowingly handled, the controls may draw too much sound from one speaker, not enough from the other. Moreover, some stereo records, particularly the earlier ones, may require frequent rebalancing. Even when correctly balanced, stereo reproduction is subject to more possible distortions than old-style monophonic reproduction, e.g., position of furniture, curtains, carpeting, etc. Result: a good stereo performance is largely the creation and responsibility of the listener.

Even the best home stereo set will never achieve the advertised "concert hall" realism. In one disturbing sense, stereo is actually better than concert hall sound. To approximate the home listener's position, the concertgoer would have to be located around the twelfth row center and suspended some five feet in the air, on a level with the stage. The disparity between stereo and live music adds a new dimension to an old LP argument: Should a recording strive for technical perfection or for "performance" standards? Example: if a composer has written a brass fortissimo that he knows will make inaudible the next four or five bars in the strings in a concert hall performance, should stereo make the string passage audible? The stereo industry's answer is apparently yes, and the occasional result is stereo records of dazzling clarity, in which the inner voices of familiar music are suddenly cast into unfamiliar relief.

Stereo has achieved its best effect so far with an interesting assortment of opera: Orff's Die Kluge (Angel), Barber's Vanessa (Victor), Cherubini's Medea (Mercury), Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (Angel), Puccini's Tosca (Columbia). The most spectacular of the stereo operas are the ones that have been "staged," i.e., recorded while the cast is going through stage movements. Perhaps the finest example so far is London's version of Puccini's La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), with Renata Tebaldi, Mario Del Monaco. The 18-member cast moved across a lettered and numbered grid laid over a 40-ft.-by-20-ft. stage. Their movements were indicated on the recording director's score: thus, before the Act I card game, when Miner Larkens moves from the extreme left and front of the stage to off-center right, the shift was indicated on the score by the notation "Larkens 11A-3A." A sense of action is created by having the performer sing as he moves.

Before the card game between Minnie and the sheriff at the end of Act II, for instance, when a drop of blood falls on the sheriff (from the wounded Dick Johnson hiding in the cabin loft), the sheriff crosses from 2A to 10A (see diagram) marking his movement by singing "Mister Johnson, scendete! [come down]." Minnie, meantime, moves from 1A to 6A singing "Aspettate [wait]," and a moment later is joined by the sheriff, who sings "Un minuto? E perche? [One minute? Why?]" as he crosses from loA to 8A to discuss the card game. The two voices are now mid-stage, or directly between speakers. Soon Minnie moves again, to 3C, where she is heard upstage right singing "Aspettate un momento" as she stuffs "three aces and a pair" into her stocking before returning to 6B to start the game with a convincing slapdown of cards. The illusion of movement is good enough to give the scene an almost visual impact.

The Repertory. Well over 1,000 stereo disks on 78 labels have been put on the market, including many by small outfits more or less specializing in stereo--Everest, Omega, Janus, etc. But so far, small companies have not dug for rare music with the pioneering persistence displayed in the early LP era. Predictable leaders are Beethoven (57 versions of 31 works), Tchaikovsky (49), Bach (41).

Despite the spottiness of the repertory, stereo has already opened up an impressive new world of sound. It can be as massive as Berlioz' Requiem (Westminster), whose soaring sonorities are not marred in stereo by the smudging that often afflicts the monophonic versions. In the quieter area of the Waldteufel Waltzes (Angel), Paganini's Caprices (The Concert-Masters of New York; Decca) or Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe (Capitol), the sound which in the monophonic version seems flat against the speaker now travels to the listener across a crystalline block of air. In Bruno Walter's reading of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony (Columbia), and Fritz Reiner's performance of Debussy's Iberia (RCA Victor), the strings are marvelously drawn out in separate strands of sound.

In popular music and jazz, the stereo manufacturers lean to big-band arrangements, generously flavored with percussion, although such groups as the J. J. Johnson Quintet (J. J. in Person; Columbia) and Phineas Newborn Jr. and Trio (Fabulous Phineas; Victor) often benefit more from stereo's ambient sound. The Dukes of Dixieland, a breathlessly muscular group, have risen to new fame in the last year partly because Audio-Fidelity has used their recordings to display the far outer limits of stereophony.

Stereo records suffer from many faults: a tendency on some disks for the sound to careen drunkenly from speaker to speaker, a tendency for soloists to boom over the orchestra. In chamber music, stereo depth and ambiance sometimes come only at the expense of splitting the ensemble effect. But stereo recording techniques have improved noticeably in the last six months. And stereo sound has begun to catch the nation's ears. "It is like 'reinforced' bread, homogenized milk and the hydramatic shift," says one recording executive. "Once you have it, the public expects you to give it to them."

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