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 January 15, 2006 Is Stereo Necessary? One of the least-known names of early audio is Alan Dower Blumlein, who for many years was an engineer with Britain’s EMI. While Blumlein was incredibly prolific as an inventor -- in the years leading to his premature death in 1942, he averaged one patent every six weeks -- his main contribution to audio was his invention of the stereo disc.In all important respects, Blumlein’s patent was the model for the stereo LP, first offered commercially in 1958. The remarkable thing was that he received his patent in 1931, and it had run out before anyone thought the world wanted a stereo record. But even Blumlein didn’t think the LP’s stereo aspect would be as dramatic a development as it was to become. His title for it was "Improvements in and Relating to Sound Transmission, Sound-Recording and Sound-Reproducing Systems" -- nothing about Ping-Pong effects or walls of sound, just an improvement. Blumlein’s patent was not followed up on, mainly because of other limitations of the recording systems of the early 1930s. It was only in the 1950s that engineers realized how big a debt they owed Blumlein. By the time the record companies got hold of stereo, hi-fi was going strong, and just such an improvement was appropriate. That it was presented as a whole new dimension of listening, and not just the next step toward more faithful reproduction of sound, was more about marketing than technical advances. Stereo was actually nothing more than an attempt to add perspective to recorded sound. Just listen to some of the good early mono LPs or their CD reissues, and you’ll realize that all the notes are there, and that the recording quality -- particularly of classical recordings -- sounds surprisingly modern. But in the quest for "concert-hall sound," the thing monaural recordings lacked was a convincing sense of the acoustic environment of the original recording venue. This was compounded by the acoustic nature of the listening room. Then as now, most people listened in relatively small rooms. What stereo did was to supply a sort of artificial acoustic by spreading the image across the front of the listening area. Later, the proponents of multichannel sound went a step further by trying to provide the sound with depth, in addition to the width gained by conventional stereo. All of this to short-circuit the listening room. But it seems to me that all of this is in search of a sound that is more dramatic rather than more realistic. With popular music, especially, what comes out of the two (or more) speakers has little to do with what one might hear in a live situation -- creating the stereo effect is an art in itself, and can be a very satisfying one. Nor is there anything holy about live performances. The vast majority of most people’s listening is to recorded music anyway; the fact that they like what they hear is attested to by the astronomical sales that recorded music has enjoyed over the years. As the stereo effect became more and more an end in itself, however, it became less and less the kind of improvement in fidelity Blumlein was talking about. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just something else. Some years ago, after listening for years in typical box-like rooms, I began immersing myself in a more realistic kind of listening. I was able to use a large, irregularly shaped room, which had its own hall-like environment. Listening became a very different experience, and at first I didn’t like it. The room’s volume and "liveness" made the usual stereo image fade away to practically nothing -- a record had to really Ping and Pong before I could hear much difference between left and right. But after getting used to this, I began to appreciate that it was much closer to a live listening experience than the exaggerated stereo I was used to. The sound was not particularly well localized, but then, it isn’t in a concert hall either. The overall acoustic effect was impressive, however; I doubted I would ever go back to small-room listening. The real joy, however, was in rediscovering all my early mono records after so many years. They sounded just fine. I was also more inclined to listen to stereo records in mono now and again, to get rid of the artificial acoustic and let the room do its work. The sound is different, but it’s almost as good -- the stereo just became Blumlein’s improvement. ...Ian G. Masters
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