"Enhanced for Stereo" and how to reverse it.

[James]

Does Dcart have a way of reversing those records that have been "Enhanced For Stereo". I know that you can use "file conversion" to switch from mono to stereo, but I thought I understood that some other process was used to create these records.

[DougMac]

Re: \"Enhanced for Stereo\" and how to reverse it.

What does the record sound like? If you're talking about records from the early 60's, many "enhanced for stereo" moved the bass to one channel and everything else to the other. I have a "stereo" version of the Stone's 12x5 that uses this technique. I used channel blending to move the sounds toward the center. In this case, it sounded better than converting to mono. I think other techniques were also used. Maybe someone else has more info.
Doug

[Beautman]

Re: \"Enhanced for Stereo\" and how to reverse it.

Often a prominent reverb delay was added between the two channels. You can channel-blend away the lateral ping ponging, which is certainly a help, but you'll still have the heavy artificial delay left in mono, which I doubt you can effectively remove. A simulated stereo record played in a mono blend still sounds soupier than the mono copy. (They also don't always sound as good because the early stereo cutting heads were lousy at bass, which is why some jazz collectors prefer late 50's mono releases even to the true stereo versions of that era.)

Another method of simulating soundstage space is reversing the phase of one of the channels. I don't think this was much used because it has such a drastic effect, but you can try reversing phase of one channel in Diamondcut and see if it makes a difference.

If the remastering engineers only introduced delay or phase changes and did not play around with anything else such as frequency response (like boosting the bass on one side and the treble on the other), then your best bet could be to just use one channel of the LP for restoration.

However, if instruments are completely separated between the channels on the record (or almost so, allowing for a bit of cross-talk and tracking/alignment error), such as with some early Beatles recordings, then you probably do NOT have simulated stereo, but a true stereo alternate issue from a multi-track master. Albeit one that demonstrates poor production values.

Also, don't overlook the possibility that you can just pick up a non-simulated copy of the album for cheap. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't. But I fail to understand why some people out there, not necessarily those in this group, spend hours and hours of their lives restoring albums that are readily available on CD, or of which there are plenty of mint used LPs for $3.

Incidentally, I add some stereo simulation to most of my remastering projects, but VERY lightly - lower than the various presets in Diamondcut - so that one doesn't perceive they're listening in stereo, which would be a ridiculous distortion of an accoustic recording, but just so the recording has a little bit more openness.



[This message has been edited by Beautman (edited 12-12-2001).]

[DougMac]

Re: \"Enhanced for Stereo\" and how to reverse it.

Beautman makes some good points. I'm with him regarding spending time converting LP's that are readily available on CD.

He mentioned early Beatles LP's. England did not accept stereo nearly as fast as the U.S. When EMI sent tapes to Capital for the Beatle's albums, they sent two track copies of masters that they expected to be mixed down to mono. Capital just released them as "stereo", much to the horror of George Martin. Not only that, but the American engineers added tons of reverb. I've got most of the Beatle's catalog on CD, but they released the correct mono versions with the British sequencing. I've restored some of my early records, just because I grew up listening to them and have gotten used to hearing the songs that way.

Doug

[Craig Maier]

Re: \"Enhanced for Stereo\" and how to reverse it.

That is exactly right. We created the Channel Blender with the idea of fixing, to some extent, the old false stereo ping-pong effect recordings. It is the best tool that we have for repairing that problem.