CREAM, RASCALS songs: Removed CSG

I just thought some of you might like to hear the CSG-removed versions of "White Room" and "A Beautiful Morning" that I posted on YouTube:

"White Room"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnSktNLv-qc

A Beautiful Morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6kpFVlO-y4

Listen in "HD" for better quality (by no means close to audiophile, but still better)

 

What did you use to remove the CSG? I believe you have to rotate one track 90 degrees. There are a couple of singles I would like to do.

 

Well that is better than MSG.

 

HAECO (Holzer Audio Engineering Company) CSG (Compatible Stereo Groove) was designed to make the low frequencies mono and on one channel introduced a phase shift of 90 degrees. It did a superb job of mono compatibility but still required a Stereo cartridge and tonearm suited for one. And phasey as heck!

 

Basically anything you need to know about CSG is right here, it's where I learned about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haeco-csg

The short of it was that it was a process in which the right channel was put out of phase 90 degrees so that when folded down to mono there would be no center 3dB increase. It worked for radio airplay but doesn't sound that good at all really.

To remove the CSG I opened the files in Cool Edit Pro and used the Graphic Phase Sifter in the Filters section to roll the right channel forward 90 degrees. It's pretty easy and makes the recording sound way better in my opinion.

 

Doesn't sound much different to me, what am I listening for?

 

Related stuff (and more clips) in this thread:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=167965

There are a few others as well.

 

OK, so why are the drums on the right moved closer to the centre in the YouTube clip with the CSG removed then?

EDIT: Actually that's probably just me misremembering the original mix, never mind.

 

I was always mediocre at trigonometry in high school....that was the math with sine and cosine waves, right?

I've wanted to ask this every time a phasing discussion comes up: Software specifics aside, I don't quite understand how you can "rotate" a sound wave 90 degrees, result-wise. 180 degrees is conceptually easy: What was positive goes negative and vice versa. But what is actually happening to a sound wave when it is rotated 90 degrees? Is it more like "whatever is at zero becomes a peak"? And can the naked ear easily hear the difference on an individual (mono) channel? I'd love to see a super closeup of a before and after. Preferably not of a simple sine wave.

 

You Tube encoding? Perception? Undoing CSG doesn't involve any combining of channels.

 

I can't speak a ton about the math behind it, mostly because I've never bothered to think about it too much, but the waveforms do change quite a bit. Compare my MP3 clips of the Wheels of Fire songs to the DCC CD if you're interested in a comparison.

 

Sounds great!

"Break Away" by The Beach Boys (the original mix, as on "Spirit of America") sounds like it was CSG'd, was it?

 

Are we sure that's CSG, or some other odd stereo processing? I'm not familiar with Break Away, but Disney Girls has some odd processing that is apparently not CSG. Break Away was a few years earlier though...

 

Didn't know Capitol used it. I thought the only offenders were A&M, Warner Brothers, and Atlantic/Atco?

 

Damn, they both sound good !!!!

 

Thank you. I had no idea what CSG was.

 

Something to that effect. Kind of like the edit on Strawberry Fields.

In theory one could run a CSG'd signal through a box again with the channels reversed, but good luck finding one. Plus who knows how much the internals degraded the sound.

 

They've also provided individual channel phase control in the new release of Izotope RX 2.0.

I agree that CSG was a blight and a curse. The worst was when you listened to Haeco-CSG-processed stuff with headphones -- it made me feel like my brains were being sucked out from ears with a soda straw!

 

Wish I could, but I don't have the CD. Could you post flacs of the first few seconds of each version when you have a chance? Only if it's not a hardship.

 

If not tonight, I'll try to tomorrow.

FWIW, while I used the DCC as my source, the CSGness of the mixes should be apparent on any release, as I'm not aware of any that have undone it.

 

I didn't know CSG was so widespread. The only reason I'd ever heard of it was reading about why there are two different versions of the first Neil Young solo LP.