Yesterday, I listened to a release I've not heard in years: Anthony Glise playing the Diabelli Sonatas for Solo Guitar, Dorian DIS-80113. To my surprise, the channels are out of phase. Reversing one channel, there is a strong central image. Without reversing, one hears the typically disembodied and spacious sound of two channels out of phase. This is the first time I've noticed this in any commercial recording. Anyone else had a similar experience?
Would that be considered fake stereo ? It looks like that recording is too new for a mono recording, not knowing when it was recorded... A world premiere recording could have been made in 1929 I suppose ?
Reprise copies of Benefit. Side 1 were cut out of phase. Same situation for original US Immediate pressings of Ogden"s. Both were mistakes.
Not nearly that early! Dorian was a digital-only label specializing in good-sounding, rather minimalist, classical recordings. They went bankrupt around 2005, and their catalog was acquired by Sono Luminus. I don't remember the circumstances, but it was a shame, as most of their CDs sounded remarkably good -- especially for the time -- and they had some wonderful musicians, including violinist Rachel Barton and pianist Andrew Rangell, on the roster. According to the booklet, this album was digitally recorded in June, 1992. I suspect the phase reversal was a production error, not intentional. Credits -- Producers: Thomas Ransom and Anthony Glise; Engineer: Thomas Ransom; Mastering Engineer: Brian C. Peters.
In all my travels, only one. The CD of either the 2nd or 3rd Captain Beyond albums. I used a wav editor to flip one of the channels, and reburned a correct version.
That's about what I did with the Glise disc . . . make a copy with the error corrected. Not hard, but surprising to find it.
Moby Grape's debut album was recorded seriously out of phase. I was working at an underground rock radio station in 1972. They were on FM but had not at the time gone stereo. I played a cut from my stereo copy of that album, and the vocals virtually disappeared. The same with most of the other cuts on the LP. I remember the station's engineer coming in and reversing the leads on the turntable's cartridge and trying all sorts of other measures, but nothing would bring back those vocals. None of us were conversant with the phenomenon of out-of-phase recording, and despite his expertise, he was completely flummoxed.
An intentional example would be Broken by NIN. They experimented with binaural techniques like QSound to make the drums really pop out amid the dense wash of distorted guitars and in the final version, just flipped the stereo image 180 degrees out of phase on certain percussion elements. Hence the liner notes warning "Caution: not for use with mono devices" I think on Year Zero they did the same trick but to hide a secret message in "The Great Destroyer" that would only become apparent when it was folded down to mono
F First one I thought of is Sly& the Family Stone Greatest Hits. I did a thread on this a while back. Seems the 3 "new" songs sound like someone reversed one of the speaker wires. Everybody Is A Star, Hot Fun in the Summertime and Thank You all have this strange out of phase sound to them.
My vinyl copy of Buffalo Springfield Retrospective has this strange issue where the left side is louder than the right in side 1, the reverse on side 2. Kind of kills all those great Stills and Young guitar duels
Probably reversed channels. There are CD issues with reversed channels as well. Something Else by the Kinks and Electric Ladyland by the Jimi Hendrix Experience have some tracks out of phase.
Paul McCartney's Ram is known to have some elements recorded out of phase. Presumably, that is why there was a dedicated mono promo mix of the album for radio [mono back in 1971] play...
I recall an interview with Pete Townshend where he said Quadrophenia was initially mixed with the speakers in their newly-built studio accidentally out of phase, which is allegedly why it sounds so muddy and the bass was too soft..
Nothing was recorded out of phase but the channel alignment of the stereo mix is off, causing a phasey sound in mono.
"Switched channels" sounds like it's for another thread. I have a few cases of that aspect I know of, that are in my collection: - "Love Jones" by the Brighter Side Of Darkness. Lacquers cut at Columbia's Hollywood studios had the channels reversed from what lacquers were cut by the Chicago studios where engineer Ed Cody worked at the time. - "Break On Through (To The Other Side)" by The Doors. This non-hit nonetheless appeared in the 1967 Columbia Musical Treasuries compilation SUPERstars - superHITS, and the channels were reversed from what was on their S/T debut album.
hmmm never noticed that before. So if I play those songs in the Mono setting they would sound better?
There are lots of masterings where the polarity of one channel is inverted from the other. Now whether it is on the master tape or a consequence of something gone awry during mastering...that’s a slightly different question. IIRC, if you go over to quadraphonicquad, I think you’ll find some threads dedicated to discussion multichannel records where one or more channels has inverted polarity from the others. And there are also lots of discs - stereo or otherwise - with the polarity of both channels inverted (my preamp actually has a switch to address this - although I can rarely hear a difference, some claim to be able to hear it. And then there are those where the channels are digitally slightly out of sync. These can sound somewhat smeared and indistinct and give a noticeable perception of a channel imbalance if the error is big enough.
No. That will just result in mono -> reprocessed stereo (your LP) -> reprocessed stereo folded down to mono. I’m mean...maybe you’d like it, but I doubt it. If you want the mono mixes, get the Audio Fidelity SACD. If you want true stereo mixes, I believe a recent (or the most recent?) CD has all of the songs mixed to stereo. Also, the 70s SQ quad LP when played back in stereo will present the matrixed quad mixes as stereo for all of songs - which was a bit of a revelation at the time.
