[BC] Turntables (WAS:Achieving good S/N)

[Robert Orban]

At 10:00 PM 1/5/2006, you wrote:
>From: Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com>
>Subject: Re: [BC] Turntables (WAS:Achieving good S/N)
>To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <7.0.0.16.2.20060105192420.07f71560 at yahoo.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
>
>------ At 09:25 AM 1/5/2006, Mark Durenberger wrote: -------
>
> >This may be urban legend, but I was told this recording was made
> >with one stereo pickup, directly over the conductor's head.  It was
> >felt that the orchestra would sound 'correct' at that spot.
>
>Actually, that's often called the Classical micing technique. Some
>engineers prefer the mic a little further over the first few seats if
>recorded in a concert hall. Then Columbia came along and stuffed a
>mic down the throat of every instrument and recreated the orchestra
>in the mix. Then added phony concert hall ambiance.
>
>Most of the "direct-to-disc" and audiophile recordings used two
>omnidirectional mics to take advantage of halls with great acoustics.

There were two fundamentally different "classic" techniques: Blumlein (AKA 
"coincident" or "intensity stereo") miking, which was developed in Alan 
Blumlein in the '30s for EMI (IIRC), and the "spaced triplet" technique, 
which was developed by Bell Labs and first used for the famous "high 
fidelity" Philadelphia to New York stereophonic transmission of the 
Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowsky (using L/C/R three-channel 
stereophony via 15 kHz equalized telephone lines). I believe that this 
slightly pre-dated Blumlein.

There is a lot of literature about stereophonic miking techniques around 
for those who want to search it out. Suffice it to say that the "classic" 
work in the field was done WAY before Columbia or RCA Living Stereo (based 
on the Bell Labs techniques), both of which date from the late '50s.

Bob Orban