Post #355940 by Tiki Bill on Sat, Jan 19, 2008 7:54 AM

Just so you know, even back in the "mono" days, a few record companys who were on the ball actually made stereo recordings before stereo was available to the general public. When stereo became accepted as a home format, all the record companys who still cut records in mono had to create "psudo-stereo" mixes from the mono recordings (usually by splitting the mono track and adding a slight delay or chorus effect on one of the splits) So some of those older stereo records weren't really stereo at all. Atlantic records was one of the first to make stereo recordings before it was popular and had the first "true" stereo records available when the first stereo turntables came out. Atlantic would actually mix the two channels together to make a mono record from a stereo recording so it could be played on mono systems. Atlantic was also recording to tape in the early 50's as they had one of the first Ampex 1/4" decks made and recorded in stereo long before Les Paul made his 1" 8 track. Almost everyone else was still cutting right to disc. The tape format is older than you think, there just weren't many record companys willing to take the plunge at the time. There was "post recording mixing" going on in the 50's, just not the way we think of it today. Just a little recording history 101 from an old fart engineer.

Tiki Bill.

[ Edited by: Tiki Bill 2008-01-19 08:00 ]