technically speaking, what is 'fake' stereo? (Duophonic, Electronically Re-processed, etc.)*

Are you kidding? When I first heard She's A Woman in stereo (off the Australian GH V2, the first place it appeared), without the airplane hangar & with an actual audible piano, I thought I had died & went to heaven. It does not sound dull. It sounds REAL. If I wanted anarchic wildness, I would have stuck with The Dave Clark Five.

 

Until early 1968, when mono was discontinued, stereo ALWAYS cost a dollar more than mono. And third party labels had nothing to do with this. The original labels were the guilty parties. The worst offenders were Capitol, RCA, Columbia & MGM, hardly 3rd parties.

 

As The Beatles outsold Spector's records many times over, I doubt that. I also doubt Dave Dexter gave much thought to pop and rock anyway, a music form he despised.

 

What was done to the end of I Am The Walrus" was not "Duophonic". Reprosessed, yes, but not in the same way as earlier Capitol Duophonic releases. I have a theory that all the fake stereo on Magical Mystery Tour came from Abbey Rd. and not from Capitol at all.

Here is my theory. Listen critically to IATW's ending. What you should notice is that the treble side had some annoying harmonic distortion. Now flip over the US LP and listen to any one of the three faked stereo tracks ("Baby Your a Rich Man" is probably the best of the three because that harmonic distortion is so bad on the vocal peaks of the choruses). OK as to why I say it came from Abbey Rd., now listen to an '87 CD release of MMT during the same section of IATW. What do you hear? That same harmonic distortion on the CD! The rest of the album had the correct stereo mixes, but they still did not have the ending to IATW. Since that harmonic distortion is there in '87 I concluded that the fake stereo was done in the U.K.

 

I Am The Walrus' ending IS Duophonic. The 3 side 2 tracks are not.

 

Oh yes they did, at least for a time in the mid 60's. I've heard that thee was some legal action taken that made the record companies fess up to fake stereo. I've seen early covers of Stones LP's with just the word "Stereo" while latter issues of the same album had "electronically reprocessed" tagged on in small print (IIRC "Decembers Children (and everybody's)" may be one of those covers). Even albums with true stereo (like "The Hollies Greatest Hits" U.S. Imperial) had the reprocessed disclaimer on the cover since it was ~60% reprocessed. The Beatles OTOH never got the Duophonic banner at the top of any album despite most albums having at least some fake stereo. I guess if the majority of the tracks were true they did not have to run the disclaimer. Come to think of it I believe every Capitol album before Revolver had at least one Duophonic track except for Rubber Soul.

 

No, it isn't. Duophonic was a Capitol process. The stereo reprocessing on the second half of "Walrus" was done by an engineer at EMI Studios (Abbey Road). Not the same.

The other phony-baloney "stereo" tracks on the original Capitol MMT are a milder form of stereo rechanneling than the original Duophonic process.

 

No - "Duophonic" was a specific process (patented, I believe) with a specified amount of delay between left and right. The ending of IATW does not have any delay between tracks, just a straight bass/treble split (with harmonic distortion o the treble side). Not all facial tissue is "Kleenex", not all photocopies are "Xerox". Not all fake stereo is Duophonic.

"Reprocessed" is a generic term, "Duophonic" is a trademarked, patented process. Any reprocessed from mono recording on any label other than Capitol cannot be called "Duophonic" and Capitol themselves abandoned the specific process around the time MMT came out.

 

Thank you! Ever since I first heard the CD of IATW I believed the fake stereo was done in the U.K.

 

Of course, RCA were the "originators" of electronically reprocessed stereo, so they claimed.

 

Computer speakers,and phones that so many people listen to music on these days sound no different than a cheap 60s transistor radio.An MP3 player with earbuds a Walkman cassette from the early 80s.

Rather listen to my 1961 tubed Magnavox console.

 

Something New was all real stereo. Only in the UK did they break down whether individual tracks were reprocessed (when the entire LP was a mixture--like The Hollies' Greatest Hits V2--and they often got this wrong also, like The UK High Tide). US LPs only acknowledged reprocessing if the entire LP was reprocessed, and not even that, in some occasions (Best Of The Animals - "SOUNDS GREAT IN STEREO"--but it was all rechannelled).

 

LISTEN to it. It is exactly the same, and certainly is not bass-left, treble-right, like side 2's cuts were. It has all of the reverb, delay & comb filtering that Yes It Is has.

 

The last time the Duophonic process was used on a Beatles track was on Yesterday and Today. Subsequent "fake stereo" were "milder" i.e. no delay just a bass/treble split.

 

I will admit that when I want to hear the pre White Album Beatles,I will put on my original 60s monos,Beatles '65 aside.Since I only have two of the 60s Parolphone monos,Help! and Revolver,it's often the Capitol monos.I have read what some have said here,but as a whole I'm pleased with the original 60s US monos.

 

No additional reverb was used on the IATW ending and certainly there is no delay, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb even more than it already does. The delay has a hollow sound. What you do hear is the harmonic distortion. That was a unique sound to the MMT album, I have not heard any other fake stereo like it.

"Yes it Is" (and the rest of the Duophonic tracks) sounds like the vocals were run through a doubler - you don't hear that anywhere on MMT.

Duophonic was developed before The Beatles, it made old Big Band and other orchestrated records sound good on stereo equipment. The process did not work nearly as well on rock and pop records.

 

As has been stated elsewhere in this thread,the RCA electronic stereo of the 50s Elvis records,are definitely the worst of any.They are so horrendous,they are in a class by themselves.

 

I have LISTENED to it. It's exactly the same as the MFSL album, the '87 CD, etc etc. It's rechanneled stereo. It's NOT Duophonic because Capitol didn't process it!

 

The mono Help on Capitol was fold down, complete with one Duophonic track folded back down to mono (Ticket to Ride).

 

I don't recall seeing that many electronic stereo records on MGM proper,except for a couple of Hank Williams greatest hits,I never wanted to pick up.If there are YouTube videos I would be curious.Now what I have heard are some horrific early 70s MGM/Verve records of Charlie Parker.What other MGMs might there be?

 

I never said that it differed from those releases. It has been exactly the same everywhere until Furmanek's MMT Laserdisc Dolby surround remix & then the current remasters. And it wasn't only Capitol. Polydor UK used a process that sounded exactly the same as Duophonic (see the "stereo" Direct Hits or Smash Hits).

 

You are obviously not an Animals or Herman's Hermits fan.

 

Was the Capitol Sgt.Pepper a fold down? How do you tell a fold down of a Duophonic?

 

That's right. It's re-channelled stereo, done at EMI (I'm pretty sure the 3 side 2 tracks were done in the US though). The second half of IATW has bass-treble split, plus ADT, with panning towards the end.

PS. The 2009 remaster softens the bass-treble split.