Ear on Chicago; Unidentified (open=boat whistle)

This is Hugh Hill speaking from the offices of the Public Relations Board which is located at 75 East Wacker Drive in Chicago. And this is the story of high five and what it means to the people who listen to high five throughout the Chicago area. This is something new in the recording industry. The sound you heard a moment ago were played on high five. Played on stereo sound as a matter of fact. We're going to walk over here and listen to the announcer right now as he plays some more sounds. We'll be about 10 feet away from those speakers. Listen. That is the sound of an L train circling Chicago's loop. Let's walk over here now and talk to the man who's been operating this machine. Rob could you

turn that down just a little bit in fact turn it off for me would you because we'll pick it up at that point a little bit later. At that point he was we were listening or beginning to listen to some sounds of the chapel, Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago so I'd like to pick it up when we come back here. But first of all let's get into the story of what is going on here. We were standing about 10 feet away from two speakers and as I said it was being played in what is called stereophonic sound. Ralph you're with the company that manufactures the equipment, the Ampex Corporation that we're listening to here. Now first of all tell me about these two speakers. This is what is known as stereophonic sound. Is that right? That is correct. The stereophonic sound is a multiple channel in this case two channels. Well now explain that to me. For example this is a tape recorder here and if there's anything I'm used to it's a tape recorder and it looks like any normal tape recorder. Is the tape recorded differently than any other? It's recorded in the same manner as a

HEPTRAC tape or two channel tape except that the two channels are recorded simultaneously in the same direction instead of one at a time in opposite directions. Well now how is this recorded in the first place and where? The sound of the stock yards let's say for instance was recorded at the stock yards with two microphones approximately 30 feet apart. As the sound approached from one side the microphone nearest to that side picked up the sound and as the horses hooves and the cart traveled past the first the second one also picked up and mixed the sound with the first microphone but on its own separate channel. And then as it passed the far microphone that microphone was hearing the sound before and louder than the first microphone therefore the apparent traveling of the sound from one direction to the other. The microphones were about 30 feet apart approximately so yes. So that we heard the hoof beats on this left speaker and moments

later we heard the same hoof beats only a little bit later on this speaker on our right. That's true but it's important to know that we also heard it in the middle where there is no speaker because both microphones were hearing it and reproducing it through two speakers so that there was no hole in the center. Well is it the purpose then of playing this stereophonic sound to reproduce sounds as you would hear them if you were actually there on the scene? That is absolutely correct. The intention and the development of stereophonic sound is to reproduce in your home the sound that you would hear if you were actually present. Be it at the stock yard or at the concert. Do you have to have two speakers? Yes. We couldn't play it over one. Stereophonic sound cannot be produced over one speaker nor can it be produced over many speakers if those speakers are all hooked to one channel. Each speaker must have its own channel. The stereophonic sound then is that just

part of high -fi or is that true high -fi? I think that it transcends high -fi. I think high fidelity is one thing, stereophonic sound transcends it. I think we like to say that it breaks through the high -fi barrier. Now let's give the listeners a little bit more of a demonstration of what you have on this tape recorder. Now once again let's remind them that these tapes were made some time ago in the city of Chicago and sounds were recorded for the purposes of playing them back in a show which is coming up September the 18th through the 21st beginning next Wednesday. It's the show held by the Institute of High Fidelity Manufacturers. Now Ralph, I'm going to go back to where I was a moment ago, approximately 10 feet away and I suppose the best place for me is to be well about in the middle of the two speakers, isn't it? Yes, that's right. Since you're picking it up manually you'll want to pick up the sounds from both speakers. All right, let me move back here and then you go ahead and turn that tape on at approximately the spot

where you left it and that was just about where they were playing the bells of that Rockefeller Chapel. Go ahead. The University of Chicago's world -famous Rockefeller Chapel, here's another sound that makes Chicago famous. Yes, the sound of Chicago jazz was played in the modern jazz room, aren't Chicago's famous Ringo Street. Okay, Ralph, thank you very, very much. If you turn it off now Ralph and do me a favor and put on the record that you had a little while ago of music because we want to come back to this stereophonic sound and a little later when we get any music

tape, put a music tape up and we'll listen to one speaker only and then move over and listen to the other speaker to show you how it's done. But we're going to talk now about something else that's being set up here for the purposes of this broadcast and also for the purposes of the show that I mentioned just a few moments ago. I want to talk to Bill Grammys, who is with the Grammys High -Five, High Fidelity Components Manufacturers. They have some instruments over here and if I can talk Bill to come on over into this particular area of the room, I want to ask him exactly what's going on here. Now a little while ago when we were looking for some power to run our stereophonic equipment down here, Bill, somebody was asked to blow into this microphone. Why? This is a microphone that triggers the amplifier which in turn sets off the relay, it turns on your high fidelity equipment. This high fidelity equipment is going to be programmed by this mechanism here, this tape with the amplifier, the really microphone

to amplifier to the relay set up is going to open the show. Well, now what's the white button on here for? Does that mean anything? Is it all right to press it? No, that's the reset button. So if it's to trigger again, go through the same sequence. This equipment was built specifically for the show coming up. That is right. Bill, I'd like to talk to a colleague of yours who is with the same company, Al Hart. Now, let's get back to the original idea of what we're really getting at here. And that's to describe exactly what high -fi is. High -fi, first of all, is a contraction of high fidelity, is that right? That's right. It means a higher degree of faithfulness to the original sound. High -fidelity simply put is just a reproducing of sound by a means of phonograph records of tape, a radio tuner, reproducing it in the home over a high -fi system so that the sound that is reproduced cannot be told from the original sound. You're trying to reproduce

the original sound exactly as it is. Exactly. Without adding anything or taking anything away. You know, most of the time when you hear high -fi in a home or, for example, as we heard it here on Stereophonic Sound, you hear it very loud. Why is that? Well, we like to play back the music at its original volume. We like to feel that we're sitting right in front of the orchestra. It's not always louder than the original. Some people may play it that way, but true high -fidelity enthusiasts play the volume at the original recorded level. Well, now let's find out how high -fidelity recordings are made, first of all, is there special equipment that you have to use, well, special equipment first, we'll talk about the hall in which you recorded second, but equipment first. Well, equipment used to record is nothing but the best obtainable. All companies now used the top equipment and all record companies and tape companies are putting out true high -fidelity products. What about the hall in which you record? I understand that Columbia Records,

for example, searched for a high -fidelity hall for a number of years and finally came up with one in New York that had the proper acoustics that they were looking for. I don't know if that story is true, but I heard that somewhere. Well, it does improve the lifelike quality of the recording. It adds nothing to the sound, it sort of at the maximum enjoyment upon playback. Well, now so much for the recording now, let's talk about the playback. If you go to a store and buy a high -fi set and no absolutely nothing about it, how would you answer the man if he said, what have I got? Well, it's up to the person that sold in the system to tell him what he has and he should know before he buys it, and true high -fidelity is only obtained that these stores that sell individual components and the personnel that sell these components are trained. And it was a simple aid of a screwdriver and a few pieces of wire and instructions. Anyone can assemble a true high -fidelity system in his home. You mean you can't buy a high -fi set, a complete set in a

store and have a real good one? Usually if you do, the system is in one cabinet. That means that the speaker and the phonograph and the tuner and amplifier are all located in one cabinet, and that impairs performance because it is impossible to reproduce full base when the all equipment is located in the same enclosure. The speaker must be separated because there are tremendous vibrations coming from the speaker, which will distort the sound if they're in one cabinet. All right, now let's say that I want to start building a high -fi set. What's the first thing I do? Well, you must familiarize yourself with high -fi by reading publications and talking to friends, and finally you get the bug and you start visiting the various high -fi establishments and eventually you pick out your equipment. Well, what do I begin with when I pick out equipment? Do I get a speaker first or an amplifier or what? Well, the amplifier is actually the heart of a high -fi system. You must have all components at one time. You must buy the amplifier and a speaker with a suitable enclosure. And your phonograph changer, and then if you want to add a radio tuner later on, you can add a tuner and

last a tape recorder. Al, what about the, I think I'm going to say the right word, woofer and tweeters, what is all that mean? Well, that's part of your speaker system. You see, in the better high -fi systems, the speaker consists of two or more speakers. One speaker call the woofer, which will amplify and reproduce the low frequencies, and the tweeters are designed to reproduce the upper frequencies, the treble, so to speak. Now Ralph Sprig here a few moments ago told me that stereophonic sound is much finer than what we call high fidelity. Do you agree with that? Well, it is a, what we would say the ultimate in high fidelity. It is, I would say it's a coming thing and eventually it will take over, but it is very hard to beat good, monaril sound, which many will agree. Well, now, when you go to buy a record in a store, when you buy a high -fidelity record, you can buy lots of records on high -fidelity, right? Just about all records reproduced by the major record companies are true high -fidelity today. Well, now, what about these tapes that we just

heard? Can you go into store and buy a tape that plays a binaural? Oh, yes. Sure. And my Sprig is down here shaking his head, so I suppose we better go talk to him about that. I'll get back to you in a minute, but I see that Ralph has got that tape set up there, and I want to listen to some music, and to give them a better idea of what binaural sound is like, we're going to listen to one speaker and then the other, and well, we'll work it out somewhere another in just a moment. We're back down here with the Ampex, man, a Ralph Sprig. Ralph is about ready to turn on this tape recorder here, which is playing stereophonic sound, and a moment ago he corrected me, said that stereophonic sound is not synonymous with binaural sound. What's the difference, Ralph? It's the recording technique, first of all, and the reception of the sound is different as well. Binaural is listened through headphones, and stereophonic, not being limited to two channels may be listened through loudspeakers. I see. Well,

now, what we're going to hear next is some music. What is the recording? This is the David Carroll tape marketed by Mercury, it's called Let's Dance. Well now, you played it for us a little bit before we began, before we got ready to record, and on one speaker we were hearing one thing, and on another speaker we were hearing another, but it blended, of course, very beautifully. Now, I'd like to demonstrate that if we can, so how would we go about it? Can you control the volume here for us, or should we just go from one speaker to the other? The only way we can do that is for you to move from speaker to speaker. All right, you turn it on, and I'll start over here on the right speaker, and then we'll switch over and see what we get. Ralph's running the tape down at fast speed now. All right, that's all right, let it run for a little while, because here is

a tape now where rhythm can be heard very distinctly over on the right speaker, but you can hear the rhythm that drums, and the bass. Drums and bass on one side, now listen to the other. Turn that off for just a minute if you don't mind. Now let's go back again, we were talking about how those sounds were recorded, the sounds that we heard at the opening of the program, where you had two microphones 30 feet apart. How do you do it with music? Essentially the same way, only the microphones are placed at a distance compatible with the aggregation that you're recording. That is to say that five people on stage would not require the wide mic placement that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra would require. The room plays an important part, certainly in a

12 -foot room we couldn't place microphones 30 feet apart, nor would the recording aggregation occupy that space. So we simply tried to get the stereophonic sound as exactly or rather reproduce it exactly as it was recorded if you were sitting in front of it. Now in this instance was the one microphone placed in the rhythm section of the orchestra, and the other microphone placed over the brass section? Well not being present at this recording session, I can't tell you that. I can only tell you the usual way, and that is that when you sit in front of these speakers and hear the percussion on the right side, let us say, that is the way the orchestra was seated. If, on the other hand, you should hear another tape and the percussion is on the left side, the orchestra was seated that way. In other words, we reproduce for you the exact seating arrangement of the orchestra.

And you play it back over one tape recorder. Right. How does that do? Because the playback head, as we term it, is an inline or stacked and these two are synonymous, head arrangement whereby one half of the head picks up one half of the tape, and it is channeled to its own amplifier and then to its own speaker. The other half of the head picks up the other track of information, channels it to its own amplifier and hence to the speaker. Well it certainly produces one of the most interesting sounds that you could ever get by recording. It sounds exactly like you're in the room with the orchestra or where you were with the sounds a little while ago. Ralph, if there's more questions, I know you're going to hang around for a little while and perhaps we'll come back and talk to you, but I think we've pretty much wrapped up the story of stereophonic sound. I'll get it correct this time. And unless we come back, thank you very much for talking to us. Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Let's talk now to Joe Delaney, who is an attorney and an advisor to record companies. Joe, I don't know. Ralph Sprague has got a tape here that may someday put you out of business if you're going to be only an advisor to record companies. I doubt it very much. It will just help us to make the next step, which will be tape and then stereo. Of course, stereo is here. And as they improve that, we will improve what we're doing right with them. Will you be putting stereo on disk? That is something that we are working toward, but so far, I don't know if anyone that promises anything in the future or the immediate future. Well, Joe, as the high -fi industry has been developed, the record companies have gone along and made high -fi recordings. They're doing it, of course, more and more every day, aren't they? Well, as the equipment manufacturers make better and better equipment for reproduction, we have been forced to use that equipment in an effort to get more

on the disk so that or on the tape so that in the playback, you hear exactly what comes out in the studio. And it gives the listener the feeling that he is actually present as the music is originally being played. You know, when you and I were mentioning somewhat rather facetiously the fact that record companies might go out of business, actually what they're doing is going into the tape business, right? That's right. Because right here in front of us, we have some tapes, which were made well, for example, here is RCA Victor, another RCA Victor, perhaps they're all RCA Victor, are they Ralph? Mercury? Mercury? Calabria? Calabria makes them? Even the independent companies who specialize, such as audio fidelity and cap records and cadence records, are now making tape recordings, and they're not only recording music for listening, as we played earlier by David Carroll, but they're recording sounds of steam engines, sports cars, and the bullfight. Bringing them into your home to play on your home tape recorder? That's right. It gives you the

experience, the or all the emotional experience of actually being present at a bullfight ring in Mexico, or at the sports car races, such as you had a Sunday or so ago up at Elkhart. Well, there's no question about the fact that their tape recording industry has grown immensely recently, and many more people are owning tape recorders in their homes and in their offices. And actually, when you got a tape recorder in your home, you would like to have a half an hour of tape recorded music, and I suppose if you wanted to, you could tape it right off the radio, but if you can go out and buy tapes such as this, you could come home. Of course, this is stereo, but you could come home with a half an hour of real good music, and you wouldn't have to be worrying about changing records all the time. Well, thanks, Joe. We want to move along. There's some other stuff we want to talk about down here, and thank you very much for talking. Thank you very much. We'll see you with the high price show. Right. Now, in order to more completely describe what Joe and I just got through talking about, the way that record companies have developed throughout the year, throughout the years, in comparison to the way that

reproducing equipment is developed. We have a playback machine here, which is going to play some disc music, which has recorded many years ago. This one is, you ain't heard nothing yet, a medley fox trot, and by the old star Trio, I'm going to talk about these records to Al Hart. Al about what year was that? Oh, I'd place that record between 1920 and 1922. Let's listen to it. Yeah, well, that's not so good in comparison to what we have today. No, that was acoustically recorded without any electrical means. What do you mean by that? It was entirely mechanical recorded. What have we got here? Let's see this one. Bees knees. By the Dixie daisies, this was recorded on a cameo label. I don't think they're recording anymore, are they? Oh no, they're out of business a long time ago. They were

in the early 20s also. Okay, go ahead. Okay, could we get another one? Is this recorded in the same fashion as you mentioned the other one was? Yes, that's a mechanically recorded. What's this? Where'd you get those eyes by the radio aces, Macy and Small, by the banner recording company? Is that out of business, too, Al? Yes, that's long gone. Where'd you get those eyes? Where'd you get those eyes? Where'd you get those inkful honey? Where'd you get those miles of honey? No, Kim. No, no, no. No, throw the key. I'm gone. This is smash back in the 20s now. Oh, that was a big hit. We get another one, at least one more. Bring one up a little bit closer if you could. Let's see what this one is. The waltz you saved for me,

Milton Brown and his brownies. Well, Dekka certainly is still going, isn't it? Oh, very good. Now this one was electrically recorded and I would place that between the years of 1934 and 1935. Now, after the 1930s, they went into the 40s and I could recall that 78 RPM records back in those days playing on the old Nickelodeon sounded very good to us in those days. Yes, they were approaching high fidelity, but not quite. They were very good quality. Well, what about the 78 RPM's? The ones we were playing were all 78. Are they pretty much going out of existence? Yes, they've given way to the 45s and the 33 and a third. Al, thank you

very much for talking to us. I want to get back over here to a man that we haven't talked with yet and we're about running out of time, so we're going to have to close it out. But thanks a lot for telling us about high five. Very glad to be here. You know, one of the things that has amazed the industry, electronics industry recently is the amazing success of high five. Now, these gentlemen that we've been talking to are in the business of selling components to a high five set. We're going to talk now to Newell Parsons, who is with the grandma's company. And Newell, I like to find out about how much you would cost me if I wanted to build a high five set from the components that I would buy from your firm. Well, we would supply amplifiers in kit form that you can build up by yourself, or we would supply amplifiers factory build and AMFM radio tuners factory built to which you would add speakers and a source of music like a record player, a changer, a turntable, a tape recorder,

some other source of music. You can get a very effective high fidelity system in component form for very low cost depending on what the environment in which you want to play it may be and the purse that you have to spend. It is possible to buy good high fidelity packages of components for approximately a hundred dollars. In general, from a hundred dollars, you can go to four thousand dollars depending on what your appetite is. Well, my appetite wouldn't be quite four thousand dollars, but I suppose you'd have to go a little bit higher than a hundred to get real good equipment, wouldn't you? I wouldn't like to put it in terms of quality. I would like to put it in terms of capacity rather than quality. I think that when you limit yourself to a very low price in high fidelity, you limit yourself as to your speaker equipment, you limit yourself as to the capacity of your amplifiers also. Now, that's the story of high -fi, its manufacturer and its sale and the story

of the institute of high -fidelity manufacturers. The company or the institute which is putting on a show on September the 18th through the 21st at the Morrison Hotel. We certainly have enjoyed talking to all of you, gentlemen. We want to thank you very much for cooperating and telling the story of high -fi. This is Hugh Hill speaking.