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

Orban Parasound made a device in the 60's and 70's called the 245E Stereo Synthesizer. I am including some excerpts of the text of their brochure, but this is by no means an endorsement of this product. The text does do a pretty good job of explaining the process, however.

Also, those of us from LA might remember when KTLA became the first LA TV station to broadcast in stereo. Unfortunately, they only had a few programs the first few years, so they broadcast all their audio in fake stereo to show off the new technology. Their audio was horrid in my opinion. I think they used one of these devices, but I'm not sure.




Since its introduction in 1967, the Orban Parasound Stereo Synthesizer has received wide acceptance by major record companies, recording studios, broadcasters, and tape syndication services. However, its relatively high cost has precluded its use by many smaller studios or broadcasters who might benefit equally from it's features. Recently, an engineering reevaluation program was initiated with the goal of using simplified packaging and th latest semiconductors to substantially reduce the cost of the device.

The Orban/Parasound Stereo Synthesizer has been designed to take any mono signal and create lifelike psuedo-stereo. Unlike many other techniques, the patented Orban Parasound stereo synthesis technique causes no change in spectral balance, does not blur the transient definition, and adds not the slightest audible noise or distortion to the mono original The stereo output sums back to the original mono for total mono/stereo compatibility. And the simple controls adjust in seconds to create an optimum stereo effect from any mono signal.

How it works

The Orban creates a stereo effect by dividing the mono source signal into five frequency bands. Three of these bands are placed in one stereo output channel, the remaining two are placed in the other channel. The filters are synthesized so that the sum of the two output channels is identical to the mono input. In addition, the sum of the powers in the left and right output channels is equal to the power in the mono input signal, guaranteeing that the stereo will have the same perceived frequency balance as the mono source.

The bandcenters and bandwidths of the midrange bands are adjustable by means of the two dimension controls, one controlling the lower midrange and the other controlling the upper midrange. These controls act like frequency band panpots, and are used to get good left-right channel balance for a given piece of mono source material. With practice, adjustment takes no more than five or ten seconds for a given mono source.

Also provided is a separation control which adjusts the level of the stereo difference signal anywhere from zero to the same level as the sum signal. This control is useful for adjusting the audible separation, and also controls the vertical component on a stereo disc or the subchannel modulation (and therefore the stereo and mono loudness) in FM stereo broadcasting. All controls can be adjusted freely throughout their range without fear or losing stereo/mono compatibility.

Recording studio applications: reissuing old mono material

The most obvious application for the Stereo Synthesizer in the recording studio is the reissuing of old mono masters in pseudo-stereo. Because of the mono compatibility, this can be done without offending those purists who have been turned off by some of the more bizarre and tasteless pseudo-stereo efforts of the past.

In cutting discs from mono masters, there is no need to go through an added tape generation -the disc can be cut directly through the Stereo Synthesizer. A second Stereo Synthesizer for the preview channel is ordinarily called for, but the lowered cost of the model 245E makes this economically practical.

Dimensionally spreading single tracks in multi-track mixdowns

No matter how many tracks are available on a multi-tracki recorder, there never seem to be enough. And the first thing to be sacrificed is usually stereo recording of material like strings and horns. All is not lost- mono tracks can be spread in space in the mixdown through the use of the Stereo Synthesizer. Electric or electronic instruments like synthesizer, guitar, and organ can be given a sense of space and depth. And the mono output of an echo chamber or artificial reverb generator can be spread in a life like way.

Phasing and filtering effects

By taking only one output of the "Stereo synthesizer and constantly varying the dimension controls, a 'phasing' or 'flanging' effect is obtained. A single output can also be used for other special effects.

 

Brad makes a valid point: on the main, listeners never cared, and I doubt ever noticed, if something was true stereo, fake stereo, or mono.....I mean, did anyone ever lodge a complaint with Atco because "I'm So Glad" was the only mono track on FRESH CREAM? 'Course not. They didn't rechannel it, either, a rarity back then, but wise move: no need to! Who cared?

I was playing my nice Volt yellow label of Otis' THE SOUL ALBUM, stereo edition, recently when I was reminded that "Just One More Day" is the only non-stereo cut; it is the opening track, rechanneled, with the rest of the album in true stereo. Now...why bother to fake that one song? Why not just leave it in mono? The truth is, in the industry, among execs and engineers, that we would notice, and thus, the trickery. But we now know how needless it was, since here we are in the CD age, and while stereo enthusiasts may lament mono, they are really lamenting lack of stereo, not mono because it's mono(most collectors of any stripe despise rechanneling, even if they're not fans of monaural sound).

 

The fact that most people don't care about stereo, fake stereo or mono continues with fake 5.1 on DVDs.

 

Interesting. Does anyone know of any tracks with fake stereo elements within a real stereo mix?

 

Would Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally apply? One channel is a rechanneled mix, the other is background singers.

 

A lot of fake stereo, or even true stereo, for that matter, exists not because the music buyers demanded it, but because the people within the industry wanted it. I think that even if the buyer had stereo playback, they didn't give a rat's beehind if something was in mono. That's the way it was in my home with decidedly non-audiophile family, not including my father, and that's the way it is now with most people I know.

Look at the CD now, a lot of these new stereo mixes came about because the current CD producers wanted them. Less than 1% (MY estimation) are of the audiophile consumers who wanted new stereo mixes.

 

Exactly. The same goes with hi-rez and any other format. The industry claims that these are released are so that the sound of the recordings can be "better than they were before." We know that these words translate to more money. There are even claims on some rechanneled LPs that say to the effect "Due to customer demand, these mono recordings have been rechanneled for stereo," but what customer demand? The average consumer, not the audiophile and it's the average consumer that helps the major labels make the money they make. Money is what motivates the record companies as we all know.

 

My parents had an RCA TV (circa 1980) that had left and right rca outputs that created a fake stereo effect (possibly treble and high mids in one channel, lower mids and bass in the other channel, but I seem to recall midrange in one channel and bass and highs in the other - I'll have to check one of my old cassettes). I used to tape music off TV that way before we had a VCR. It sure wasn't that great, especially with headphones. I always ended up listening back pressing the mono button on the stereo.

 

The TV story shows that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We now have stereo TVs that hook up to a home theater receiver for stereo sound and HDTV, but do most people care about the sound from their TVs? No. The same with anything else.

 

You should have heard TV audio in the 70's and before through a good system. My Heathkit TV that I built back then had a mono line level output jack. I ran that through the hi-fi and you wouldn't believe all the clicks and buzzes and chops that were there. I guess very few listened on anything other than a 4" speaker so they could get away with this. Once they went to stereo in the mid 80's more people finally hooked their TV tuners up to their hi-fi's and the broadcasters were forced to clean up their act.

When KTLA went to fake stereo in 1984, if you were scanning the channels and had your TV hooked up to a stereo system, the sound could almost blow your head off when you hit that one. It was just awful.

 

Some channels still use fake stereo at times. I've put reruns of Seinfeld or CNN on and been assaulted with fake stereo.

 

I've been told by the local owner of a DVD distribution company that the public does care. That is why, if none is available, they have - on some occasions - worked out 5.1 mixes from stereo soundtracks. (And boy do they sound crummy). It just seems that many consumers might not be able to tell the difference. Whether this is due to lack of a good ear, time to pay close attention, awareness/sensitivity or just to then listening on bad HTIB hardware remains to be seen.

As far as music goes. I am sure that the DVD that accompanies Linkin' Park's Live album is fake 5.1 all throughout. Just listen to the pans to the surrounds when the applause hits. (An example IMHO of quite good music coupled with a quality-challenged presentation). If this is what they are going to include on their DualDiscs, I, for one, won't touch them with a ten-foot pole.

 

I'll jump in with a no-brainer that the push to stereo (fake or otherwise) was due to the increased profit margin of stereo equipment over mono. Companies like RCA were in both ends of the business, making the records and then making the equipment to play them on. Stereo stylus, double the wires, dual amps, two speakers, most units used twice the hardware, hence twice the profit.

Veech

 

I actually have a "stereomonic" LP on the Scepter label: B.J. Thomas, "Everybody's Out Of Town". I concur--a stereo record playable on mono. I would almost guess that they might use a variation of that horrible HAECO-CSG processing on it. (This was released in the same era as the Butch Cassidy soundtrack on A&M, which has that CSG processing on it.) I need to clean it up and play it. Through headphones, I should be able to tell.

It was probably a step toward "single inventory" on titles.

 

Ahhhhhh, the dreaded HAECO-CSG processing. Why would they do something like that to a perfectly fine stereo recording. I bought a nice minty copies of Sergio Mendes' "Fool On The Hill" and "Ye Me Le" albums to fill out my collection. Much to my dismay, they have that real nasty out of phase re-channelled stereo sound!!!! I got rid of them right away.

 

I had posted the following in the past about Duophonic/Capitol/John Palladino.


http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?p=120536

 

Oh, some of them do... but they usually care about aspects most of us would choose to ignore. My father-in-law is a wonderful example (and I have tremendous respect for him otherwise):

Alison's parents recently redid their den as a home theatre. HDTV, 5.1 surround system, nice speakers... and when I went over to see the finished product, Gordon was watching television with the electronically rechanneled pseudo-5.1 mix turned on. Not an HDTV program with surround content, just a standard airwave-television program. He likes being able to hear things going on all around the room, even though those sounds bear no discernable relation to how the sound was originally mixed or the logical spatiality of their supposed source. He cares about the fact that his system can do such things to a stereophonic - or even a monophonic - source, and enjoys the results.

But he's happier with his video and sound system than he's ever been, so who am I to criticize? That's what all those buttons on the remote are for... you can turn such "features" off.

- M.

 

The salvation for stereo TV was the MTS system, which employed dbx II encoding prior to broadcast and decoding at reception. This eliminated much of the noise that was common to standard mono broadcast signals. The addition of dbx NR provided a 30dB S/N improvement over what the S/N was in mono. Like stereo FM (which TV audio technically IS), the stereo signal is multiplexed with everything else on the main carrier. TVs in the 50s used vernier slide-rule tuning, not unlike pre-digital radios, so if you tuned below Channel 7, you could pick up an FM station broadcasting at 107.9. If you tuned above Channel 6, you might pick up one broadcasting at 88.1.

Now that HDTV is here, I wonder how DTS signals might be broadcast. DTS isn't as digitally compressed as Dolby Digital, so it has a broader dynamic range on home theater systems. All the HDTV signals of which I am aware only transmit 2-channel audio.

 

And I will add that the DBX was only used on the difference signal, where most of the noise was manifested. This way the summed mono signal was unaffected for people with mono TV's. For those that don't know, the MTS uses 2 carriers similar to the way the FM radio does. The first is the L+R and the second is the L-R (or difference) signal. Decoding runs both of these signals through a circuit that restores the normal L and R signals.

The premise to using NR on the difference signal is pretty simple. I'm sure most of us realize that for distant FM signals, switching to mono can lower the noise floor considerably. There were even FM circuits with various names, such as Hi-Blend, that took the highs and put them in mono, but left the bulk of the signal in stereo. This tended to lower the FM noise considerably and maintain some of the original stereo.

Using DBX on the difference signal was actually kind of brilliant. As Tom mentioned, the noise was lowered considerably but mono compatibility was just fine. Most all MTS stereo TV's have DBX circuitry to properly decode the stereo. In practice, there were some 'non DBX' decoders that attempted to decode the MTS without having to use the licensed DBX units, but most of these did not sound that great.

 

Re-channeled dual-mono? What's the deal with these------?

Check out this blurb in the liner-note for "Freddy King Sings", Modern Blue Recordings(MBCD-722)(1989):

"With one exception, the songs on this reissue are in stereo -- for the very first time. An audio information/image recovery system developed by Keith Keller's Digital Soundscapes was used in mastering the original King Records dual-mono, two-track studio masters, converting them to true stereo for this release. The recovery system delivers live-performance ambience and image information othewise inaudible on the studio masters. This first-ever conversion to true stereo of dual-mono souce material makes this reissue a milestone in archival sound restoration"

The process was also used on Freddy King's "Just Pickin'", Modern Blues Recordings (MBXLCD-721)(1989), where the above blurb is repeated with following addendum:
"Digital transfers and reissue mastering by Randall Merryman. Stereo conversions by Randall Merryman at F.O.C. Sound, Nashville, TN. Audio information/image recovery hardware for stereo conversions courtesy of Keith Keller's Digital Soundscapes (Seven Seas Audio), Seattle, WA."

 

Sorry to be a simpleton, but I don't understand this - could someone please explain it to me. Are they saying that they used the Revox to introduce a slight delay in one channel? if this is the case it is similar to the TISDU technique which is gaining popularity as a method of reprocessing mono live recordings in some trading circles.

 

Just a slight tangent here.... I recently did a needle drop using some songs from that "Stereo Panned Mono" Link Wray LP. Never in my life have I heard a more terrible sounding record (it was so harsh sounding, it hurt real bad and I thought the record was worn out) untill I ran both channels into a Teac 2 audio mixer and panned both channels back to center. All the harshness went away and it sounded similar to the other true mono songs from a different Link Wray LP.

 

I don't really understand this either. The sel sync basically allows the use of the record head as a playback head. This way one can overdub in sync. One can also take the sel sync output, which is basically a preview before the tape passes the playback head, and process it, and delay it a bit and add it back to the signal from the playback head. This is an easy way to get a phasing or flanging effect.

On the other hand, having one channel from the repro head and the other from the playback head will give a slight delay to one channel, as you suggest. The faster the speed and the closer the heads are, the shorter the delay. If the delay is short enough it almost sounds like a doubled part. I'm guessing that this if what the quote refers to, but it's unclear to me.

 

I received my "mono" copy of The Beach Boys' Wild Honey LP today. However, when I opened the package, I found a "stereo" (actually, "fake" stereo) LP inside a mono cover!
That was understandable, given the fact that Wild Honey was released during the time that Capitol was phasing out mono LPs in favor of stereo-only releases. Besides, it is very rare to actually find a true mono copy of that LP (mono LP inside a mono cover).

Anyway, the "fake" stereo rechanneling on my copy of Wild Honey is nothing like the more extreme examples of Capitol's dreaded "Duophonic" mock stereo processing - Capitol simply rolled off the highs on the left channel and boosted up the highs slightly on the right channel on this LP - in fact, mock stereo copies of this LP may indeed sound "better" than the mono edition of this same LP (which was a bit muddy sounding to begin with).

By the way, the other original-pressing Beach Boys LP released during late 1967 in my possession is a Capitol-distributed Brother Records mono copy of Smiley Smile - and that LP is indeed mono.