Posted on 12/12/2018 9:31:34 AM PST by ETL
He took us to his house and demonstrated the system he built. He said our jaws would drop, and he was right.
Later I “upgraded” to the latest digital offerings and scrapped all that old stuff. I sure wish I at least kept the receiver and speakers.
And then came Quadraphonic, which bombed.
For my first stereo circa 1968 I bought a stereo cartridge for an old mono turntable, an amp board from Laffette Radio and a new pair of Pioneer headphones.
Loved the l-r pan in “Hello I Love You”. Still do.
More on my quad era later. Started with the Dynaco hookup and went onto QSD.
I have heard an experimental stereo recording of the Count Basie Orchestra made around 1930. The quality was astoundingly good.
I was amazed as a young adult to learn how FM stereo worked.
They transmit an A+B signal, and A-B subchannel. The receiver does a little quadratic equation and separates them out into A and B.
And I was so certain that algebra was useless.
Our local wine shop has that receiver.
My son drug home a Luxman receiver he bought at a yard sale. It read “Left channel doesn’t work”. A little Deoxit sprayed into the A/B switch and it was working again. I have it playing through a pair of Klipsh KG-4’s that someone gave me.
The version I heard probably wasn't the version done by the Ames Brothers, but a later version. The record would first play it in mono, then switch it to stereo, so you could hear the difference between the two. I vaguely remember they using a portion of "Victory at Sea" too. I can remember as a teen sitting on the floor in front of that stereo, and listening to music whenever I could. I was the baby of the family. My siblings were all out of school and working, so I had the console all to my self, especially during the summer.
Bfl
I am still astonished, to this day, how well phonographs work. The amount of sound reproduced from a vibrating needle is amazing!
Because humans have two, not four, ears.
Apparently that was obvious to everyone except
to engineers at RCA.
We had a stereo, a nice one too! My parents had a neighbor who moved and sold a whole bunch of stuff, and one of the things that I bought from him was a homemade corner speaker and a wonderful tube amplifier that was high fidelity. He had gotten the plans for the speaker cabinet out of some magazine years before and made a very nice cabinet. I purchased that system for $20 and it was the best sounding system I’ve ever had in my entire life. I think High Fidelity actually sounds better. When you go to a concert more often than not you’re listening the high fidelity.
I think HiFi duplicates the a live sound more accurately than some studio feat of engineering.
“Fifty watts per channel, babycakes!”
(I think it was from a Fretter commercial)
I had a buddy who had a stereo system with 4 speakers that did quad by phase shifting the sound (do NOT remember the brand).
If you played Pink Floyd’s Money through it, you could hear the cash registers each coming out of their own speakers. It was awesome!
I remember the first Stereo broadcast in the SF area. Radio station KIOI(I believe) initiated this and I recall the first time I saw the stereo light pop on on my radio. (Purchased before stereo but with an FM stereo receiver inside. Not much separation but James Gabbert was the pioneer who ushered in this new sound and I loved it.
You could sit there and see the sound move from one side to the other. I was sold. Later became an electrical engineer and a telecommunications instructor. Good stuff.
But I will note that Bob Carver has made my listening life much more enjoyable. With a bit more than 50 watts per channel. And on the even funnier side, you can get new manufacture tube amps, from Amazon, or if you’ve got the big bucks, from Mr. Carver.
Good stuff!
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