After the initial period of mass audiophilia, stereophonic sound was high fidelity's second act, although the concept was nothing new. It had been more than 20 years since the first Stokowski/Bell stereo explorations, but by the early 1950s, stereo was still mostly a curiosity. The Bell company hadn't done much with its research, largely because there was no easy way to make a stereo disc.
There was Stokowski's "Fantasound" system for "Fantasia" but most theatres were not equipped to take full advantage of it.
Now that magnetic tape was available, stereo was a much more realistic possibility.
By the end of 1952, it had been a little more than 5 years since Ampex had built it's first "Model 200" magnetic taperecorder, based upon the "Magnetofon" that Jack Mullin had imported from Germany. The company was still manufacturing only a single track recorder, but Ampex wanted to make the move to stereo machines.
For this to be a realistic commercial prospect, the recording industry would have to been convinced that "stereo" was the future so that the labels would start recording their acts in stereo.
SHOWING OFF STEREO POSSIBILITIES
Ross Snyder of Ampex then sent a "Model 400" recorder (modified for three channels), to the sales manager at a Los Angeles home audio store.
The sales manager in question, Mr Bill Cara, who chaired the planning for the upcoming audio fair in L.A. pitched to Ampex the idea of having a special exhibit to show off the possibilities of stereo sound. Ampex loved the idea and Mr Cara took his Model 400 set to a train station in the San Fernando Valley.
He connected 3 microphones, spaced 50 feet apart, along the track, and waited for the next train to arrive.
"Far in the distance, when he heard the train approaching, he turned everything on" so Snyder recalls. "He got the train going through, stopping, and blowing out a lot of steam." Cara took the finished tape, which ran nearly 30 minutes, back to his home.
While he and Snyder watched and made suggestions, the tape was cut and spliced and two other recordings Cara had made - of a Wurlitzer organ and of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra - were added.
The finished tape was played every half hour at the Audio Fair of Los Angeles, in January 1953, through 3 speakers placed a good distance away from one another for maximum effect. And the effect was maximum ! "It was really funny to watch people at the fair" Snyder recalls. The way the 3 microphones had been spaced far apart, created the very real sensation of a train bearing down on the listener.
HOW TO MAKE STEREO DISCS
Despite the effectiveness of these demonstrations, the stereo revolution happened gradually, largely because of the lack of stereo discs. Beginning 1954 a few stereo releases began to trickle onto the market but the only way to hear them was on an Ampex reel-to-reel tape player, which cost a whopping USD 700,-....
Tapes cost at least three times as much as LP's. It was because of the large investment required to become a consumer of taped music, that Ampex had decided to go with two channels instead of three. "We felt stereo would fall flat on it's face" Snyder said, "so two was the smallest number that could deliver any kind of stereo effect."
Meanwhile, and throughout 1957, the record industry scrambled to come up with a way to make stereo discs. Mindful of the chaos caused by the "battle of the speeds" (33rpm-45rpm-78rpm)(see part one), they proceeded with care to ensure that, whichever method they chose would be adopted uniformly throughout the industry.
They wound up choosing a system designed by Westrex, a Western Electric subsidiary.
ENOCH LIGHT PUTS WESTREX TO THE TEST
One of the first people to put the Westrex cutter to the test was Enoch Light, a former bandleader, whose "Light Brigade" had been popular during the big band era of the 1930s, and who now helped run a label called "Grand Award Records".
Around 1959 he noticed that most people's understanding of what stereo could do, was limited to sound effects records, largely because it was much easier to get an impressive stereo effect with a non-musical sound.
Renditions of table tennis games, with the balls ping-ponging from left to right were a perennial favorite.
Stereo music recordings were more subtle, owing largely to the fact that musicians don't typically run all over the stage. Recording in stereo meant recording direct to two-track tape. The kind of stereo effect you got was the same kind that Bell and Stokowski had discovered : a geometric sense of where the musicians were in relation to one another onstage. Light realized the public needed stereo music to be thrown in their faces (literally) to appreciate its full possibilities. "Stereo wasn't getting across to the average person" Light said. "I figured that separation had to be emphasized to attract their attention- not ping-pong as such but seperation used as part of a musical continuity."
COMMAND RECORDS
Light's partners were not interested in his idea and so he founded his own label "Command Records" and put together the "Command All Stars Band", built around percussionist Terry Snyder. Making a record was a slow and tedious process.
They needed to be able to record their performance in such a way, that the left channel would only pick up, say, one of Snyder's bongos, while the right picked up the other.
In the end, the project took some 30 four hour recording sessions during the summer of 1959. Then came the fastidious process of mastering the tape to disc, a task that required a minimum of 15 Westrex cutters. All told, what Light had assumed to be a USD 10,000 investment had ballooned to almost USD 80,000.
PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION
Most of the songs on the album, which Light called "Persuasive Percussion" were well known standards such as "I'm in the mood for love", "My heart belongs to daddy" and "Love is a many splendoured thing". But the album was recorded and mastered with such care and the stereo effect was so dramatic, that it was unlike anything most people had ever heard. Even the album's packaging made it seem like a special document for those with discerning taste. The cover featured an abstract pattern of black dots, designed by the painter Josef Albers. The extensive liner notes featured a track-by-track description of what aspect of your stereo system each song was designed to test. "Persuasive Percussion" was like a concept album, with the "concept" being your own hi-fi installation. Listening to it was like taking a tone test, with the liner notes as your guide. "Can you hear air around the flute on "Aloha oe" or is there a buzzing sound ?" " If the answer to that question is the latter, than there must be something wrong with your cartridge's tracking."
"Persuasive Percussion" was an enormous hit.
What the Ampex demo had done to jumpstart the stereo revolution from the production end, "Persuasive Percussion" did from the consumer end. Billboard even claimed that it was the only album from 1960 that merited any attention.
Over the next 3 years, Light put 7 more similar albums into the top-10 of the charts.
Soon, other record companies began releasing records in the same vein. Many of these had the word "percussion" in them, whether they were particularly percussive or not....
ON THE VERGE OF A COME BACK (?)
The magical train of the first stereo demonstrations had left the station and had embarked on a journey that would last for another 20 years.
There are strong indications that the vinyl stereo disc may even be on the verge of a successful come-back......
Acknowledgements
Greg MILNER - Perfecting Sound Forever
The Story of Recorded Music
(P) 2009 by Granta Books
AMPEX MODEL 200
NEUMANN WESTREX CUTTER
ENOCH LIGHT
ORIGINAL ALBUM COVER
TERRY SNYDER ALBUM 
MODEL 400 ADVERTISING
MORE INFORMATION CAN BE FOUND HERE :
More about stereophonic sound
More about Enoch Light
Command Records
Persuasive Percussion
