CSG Processed Mono Master?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by ascot, Feb 1, 2003.

  1. ascot

    ascot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    I was going through some 45's and saw this on the Crosby, Stills & Nash "Marrakesh Express" label: "CSG Processed Mono Master"

    The B-side, "Helplessly Hoping", is also in mono but does not have the same message. I have not compared the mono and stereo mixes yet so I don't know if it's a fold-down or not.

    So what do you they mean by "CSG Processed"? "Crosby, Stills & Graham?"

    The disc actually sounds better than the label looks.
     
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  2. ascot

    ascot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    I don't what happened to the picture the first time. :sigh:
     

    Attached Files:

  3. Craig

    Craig (unspecified) Staff

    Location:
    North of Seattle
    Crosby, Stills and Gnash.
     
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  4. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    First laugh I've had today. Thanks!

    Compatible
    Stereo
    Generator


    A (cursed) machine to make stereo masters go 1/2 out of phase so the left and right information will not be lost so much when played back in mono.

    It really sucked. Listen to "White Room" by Cream.
     
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  5. ascot

    ascot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Thanks, Steve! So it's basically just a fold-down.
     
  6. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    Steve--was that a 90 degree phase shift in one channel...or both channels? And was it limited to bass frequencies, and only for LP masters? (I wouldn't see a need for it on tape, or at higher frequencies.)

    I once had an engineer give me a really technical explanation of it several years ago...heck if I can remember much of it today.

    Some A&M's have this processing. Any cut of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" sound strange from it. The opening guitar riff is fine, but when the bass comes in, the bass itself sounds unlocalized, coming from both channels at once rather than in one focus spot. This has also carried over into CDs...this track sounds the same way on Rhino's Bacharach box set. Annoying as hell, IMHO. Over headphones, it not quite as bad as the "eardrums getting sucked out of your head" feeling when something is TOTALLY out of phase, but almost.
     
  7. ascot

    ascot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    The bass is reduced on the single. I listened to the single and then to the LP folded-down. The bass is much stronger and fuller on the LP. You can hear the guitars better on the single. The organ bursts out of the single mix but is somewhat buried in the LP fold-down.
     
  8. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    All frequencies. The reason is so the vocals (or anything else in the middle) didn't get louder when you played back in mono. It didn't really have to do with record cutting itself. In fact, it's *easier* to cut a record if everything is in phase, as you have less vertical movement. Put it some out of phase stuff and it gets harder.
     
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  9. -=Rudy=-

    -=Rudy=- ♪♫♪♫♫♪♪♫♪♪ Staff

    Location:
    US
    Great way to ruin a good recording, IMHO.

    One could only hope that there are existing masters that don't contain the processing (more so in the case of album masters)...but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed.
     
  10. Angel

    Angel New Member

    Location:
    Hollywood, Ca.
    Atlantic loved the CSG process. Many of their mixes from 1968 were run through the generator during mixing. Of course that means that a decent "normal" two-track mix of many landmark songs do not exist I guess.

    The first time I ever really noticed this CSG problem was when I heard Steve H.'s Sammy Davis Jr. CD that had "I've Gotta Be Me" on it. I thought there was a problem with my disc and called Patty (I believe) at Dunhill Compact Classics. Steve got on the wire and explained what CSG was and how there was really nothing one could do about it because it was not possible to fix the problem by adjusting the tape heads. Drat! :realmad:
     
  11. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Patty Lundy, at the DCC Order Desk. I had a tremendous crush on Patty, but she was married. Nice person; moved to San Francisco.

    Where was I? Ah yes:

    CSG was a terrible idea, and I can't believe ANY recording engineer could have embraced it. It didn't last too long, thank God. I think engineers felt that people who still had mono playback systems would scream if they played back stereo records on them. In reality, people didn't even notice that the mix was off. Meanwhile, the only mixes of "It's A Beautiful Morning", "White Room" and a bunch of other songs were done through the generator.

    Ah, those were the days.:(
     
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  12. rontokyo

    rontokyo Senior Member

    Location:
    Tokyo, Japan
    I've got Percy Sledge's "Take Time To Know Her" CD, reissued as part of Atlantic's 50th Anniversary, and whereas the original LP was CSG processed [and that logo even appears on the CD front jacket] the CD sounds absolutely wonderful. Glorious, in fact. So luckily here's one set of masters that survived "the process."
     
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  13. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Tom Dowd mixed the New York Atlantic/Atco sessions right through the generator.

    Music recorded "off campus" (be it Stax or American) was always redubbed at Atlantic, whether it needed it or not.
     
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  14. rontokyo

    rontokyo Senior Member

    Location:
    Tokyo, Japan
    Does this mean that all sessions recorded in New York have been CSG processed? And as many Atlantic master tapes are missing, does this mean, like the Cream titles you mentioned, there may be many, many more titles whose sound may be irretrievably screwed up?
     
  15. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Ron,

    NO Atlantic master tapes are missing. Multi-track tapes were destroyed. The masters are fine.

    Not everything was mixed with CSG that year by Tom Dowd. A lot of things were deemed "unimportant" for the process. For example, only about 1/2 of the studio tracks for Cream's "Wheels Of Fire" were mixed with CSG. The rest are just straight stereo mixes. The live album is straight stereo.

    I have no idea what his criteria (pun intended) was for choosing to patch in the CS Generator.
     
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  16. ascot

    ascot Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    Maybe Tom based his decisions on a song's hit potential?
     
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  17. Steve Hoffman

    Steve Hoffman Your host Your Host

    Could be.
     
  18. lukpac

    lukpac Senior Member

    Location:
    Milwaukee, WI
    Couldn't a person simply change the phase by 90 degrees in one channel to "fix" it? Kind of like how the channels on "Look What You've Done" are 180 OOP on the London December's Children CD. Invert the phase in one channel and things are perfect.

    This is how WoF stacks up, BTW:

    Non-CSG:
    - Sitting On Top Of The World
    - As You Said
    - Pressed Rat and Warthog

    CSG:
    - White Room
    - Politician
    - Those Were The Days
    - Born Under A Bad Sign

    Don't remember what DCOTH is off the top of my head.
     
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  19. sgraham

    sgraham New Member

    Location:
    Michigan
    Lukpac beat me to it. Seems like the process should be reversable. How about this: Get hold of one of the processors, take your CSG-processed master tape, and run it through it with the stereo channels reversed on both input and
    output. Wouldn't that do the trick?

    But, er... CSG processed MONO master? What does that mean - EVERYTHING's 90 degrees out of phase?
     
  20. TommyTunes

    TommyTunes Senior Member

    I came across a WLP of Procol Harum's Shine On Brightly that says the CSG process was utilized. It also has CSG in the dead wax, what does this mean? Is it mono or a folddown to mono.
     
  21. BradOlson

    BradOlson Country/Christian Music Maven

    CSG=Haeco's Compatible Stereo Groove process. 2 prime example of this being used include Sergio Mendes' "Fool On The Hill" and the Association's LP era "Greatest Hits" compilation
     
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  22. Sckott

    Sckott Hand Tighten Only.

    Location:
    South Plymouth, Ma
  23. W.B.

    W.B. The Collector's Collector

    Location:
    New York, NY, USA
    I.I.N.M., the initials actually stood for Compatible Stereo Generator. The company that foisted this process upon us, HAECO, is short for Holzer Audio Engineering Company, this based upon the 1969 book The Audio Cyclopedia published by Howard Sams & Co. Besides A&M and Warner-7 Arts/Reprise (based upon that Association compilation LP), other companies that used this process included Atlantic and MGM. I've heard of A&M collectors assuming that the "HA" part of HAECO referred to Herb Alpert, whilst it's possible Atlantic collectors thought that "AE" was Ahmet Ertegun.
     
  24. TommyTunes

    TommyTunes Senior Member

    Thanks Sckott, must have missed that thread.
     
  25. Sckott

    Sckott Hand Tighten Only.

    Location:
    South Plymouth, Ma
    There's a Led Zeppelin single that claims to be a MONO/CSG reprocessed "master" but last time I saw one was a reissue and it was in stereo sounding pretty normal.... ;)
     

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