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Stereophonic sound, commonly called stereo, is the reproduction of sound, using two independent audio channels, through a pair of widely separated speaker systems, in such a way as to create a pleasant and natural impression of sound heard from various directions as in natural hearing. It is often opposed to mono, where audio is in the form of one channel, often centered in the sound field.
The word "stereophonic", from Greek stereos = "solid" and phōnē = "sound", was coined by Western Electric, by analogy with the word "stereoscopic". Western Electric first demonstrated it at an SMPTE meeting in 1937, then to the general public at Carnegie Hall in 1940.
In popular usage, stereo usually means 2-channel sound recording and sound reproduction using data for more than one speaker simultaneously.
In technical usage, stereo or stereophony means sound recording and sound reproduction that uses stereographic projection to encode the relative positions of objects and events recorded. A stereo system can include any number of channels, such as the multichannel audio 5.1- and 6.1-channel systems used on high-end film and television productions. However, it more commonly means only two-channel systems.
The electronic device for playing back stereo sound is often called "a stereo".
Stereo recording
Stereo is derived from the term stereographic projection, which here generates a stereo image during playback. During two-channel stereo recording, two microphones are placed in strategic locations in relation to the source, both record at once. Each channel will be similar, but each will have distinct time-of-arrival difference and sound pressure level difference information. On playback, the listener's brain uses the subtle differences in timing and level to triangulate the positions of the recorded objects.
Stereo recordings often cannot be played by monaural systems without a significant loss of fidelity. Since each microphone records each wavefront at a slightly different time, constructive and destructive interference can occur, if both tracks are played on the same speaker. This phenomenon is known as comb filtering.
Various methods of stereo recording
X-Y technique: intensity stereophony
Here there are two directional microphones at the same place, and typically pointing at an angle 90° or more to each other - see also "The Stereophonic Zoom" by Michael Williams. A stereo effect is achieved through differences in sound pressure level between two microphone. Due to the lack of differences in time-of-arrival / phase-ambiguities, the sonic characteristic of X-Y recordings is generally less spacy and has less depth compared to recordings employing an AB-setup.When the microphones are bidirectional and placed facing +-45° with respect to the sound source the X-Y-setup is called a Blumlein Pair. The sonic image produced by this configuration is considered by many authorities to create a most realistic, almost holographic soundstage.
Intensity stereo is an unfortunate linguistic misnomer which has come to mean the recording of stereophonic signals that are distinguished only by level differences. These "level differences" have been called "intensity" differences, but sound intensity is a specifically defined quantity and cannot be sensed by a simple microphone, nor would it be valuable in music recording if it could. Like microphones our ear drums are sensitive only to the sound pressure.
A-B technique: time-of-arrival stereophony
This uses two parallel omnidirectional microphones some distance apart, so capturing time-of-arrival stereo information as well as some level (amplitude) difference information, especially if employed in close proximity to the sound source(s). At a distance of 51.5 cm the time delay for a signal reaching first one and then the other microphone from the side is approximately 1.5 msec. According to Eberhard Sengpiel this is enough to locate the sound source exactly at the speaker on the respective side, resulting in a stereophonic pickup angle of 180°. If you increase the distance between the microphones you effectively decrease the pickup angle. At 70 cm distance it is about equivalent to the pickup angle of the near-coincident ORTF-setup.M/S technique: Mid/Side stereophony
This coincident technique employs a bidirectional microphone facing sideways and another (of any characteristic; Alan Blumlein described the usage of an omnidirectional transducer in his original patent) at an angle of 90° facing the sound source. The left and right channels are produced through a simple matrix: Left = Mid + Side, Right = Mid - Side (the phase-inverted side-signal). This configuration produces a complety mono-compatible signal, the width of which can be manipulated after the recording has taken place, which makes it especially useful for the usage on film-based projects.Near-coincident technique: mixed stereophony
e.g. the ORTF stereo technique of the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française = Radio France, calls for a pair of cardioid microphones placed 17 cm apart at an angle of 110 degrees which, according to Eberhard Sengpiel, results in a stereophonic pickup-angle of 96°. In the NOS stereo technique of the Nederlandse Omroep Stichting = Holland Radio, the angle is 90 degrees and the distance is 30 cm, so capturing time-of-arrival stereo information as well as level information. It is noteworthy that the spacing of 17 cm has nothing to do with human ear distance. The recorded signals are generally intended for playback over stereo loudspeakers and not for ear phones.Binaural recording
Engineers make a technical distinction between "binaural" and "stereophonic" recording. Of these, binaural recording is more like stereoscopic photography. In binaural recording, a pair of microphones is put inside a model of a human head which includes external ears and ear canals. Each microphone is where the eardrum would be.
The recording is then played back through headphones, so that each channel is presented independently, without mixing or crosstalk. Thus, each of the listener's eardrums is driven with a replica of the auditory signal it would have experienced at the recording location. The result is an accurate duplication of the auditory spatiality that would have been heard by the listener placed where the microphones were. Because of the nuisance of wearing headphones, true binaural recordings have remained laboratory and audiophile curiosities.
Playing back stereo recordings
Stereophonic sound attempts to create an illusion of location for various instruments within the original recording. The recording engineer's goal is usually to create a stereo "image" with localization information. When a stereophonic recording is heard through loudspeaker systems rather than headphones, each ear of course hears sound from both speakers. The audio engineer may and often does use more than two microphones, sometimes many more, and may mix them down to two tracks in ways that exaggerate the separation of the instruments to compensate for the mixture that occurs when listening via speakers.
Descriptions of stereophonic sound tend to stress the ability to localize the position of each instrument in space, but in reality many people listen on playback systems that do a poor job of re-creating a stereo "image". Many listeners assume that "stereo" sound is "richer" or "fuller-sounding" than monophonic sound. This is inaccurate — stereo and mono can have equally detailed abilities to play recorded notes. The spatial illusion is what sets stereo recordings apart from mono recordings.
When playing back stereo recordings, best results are obtained by using two speakers, in front of and equidistant from the listener, with the listener located on the center line between the two speakers.
Broadcasting in stereo
Radio
FM
In FM broadcasting, the Zenith-GE pilot-tone stereo system is used throughout the world.AM
Because of the limited audio quality of the majority of AM receivers, and because of the relative scarcity of AM stereo receivers, relatively few stations employ stereo. Various modulation schemes are used for AM stereo, of which the best-known is Motorola's C-QUAM which is the official method for most countries in the world which decide to use AM Stereo.More AM stations are adopting digital HD Radio which allows the transmission of stereo sound on AM stations.
DAB
MP2 audio streams are used.Television
Analog TV (PAL and NTSC)
Various modulation schemes are used in different parts of the world to broadcast more than one sound channel. These are sometimes used to provide two mono sound channels in different languages rather than stereo.- Multichannel television sound is used mainly in the Americas.
- NICAM is widely used in Europe.
- Zweiton is used in Germany.
- EIAJ FM/FM subcarrier system is used in Japan.
Digital TV
MP2 audio streams are widely used within MPEG-2 program streams.History
1881
Clément Ader demonstrated the first two-channel audio system in Paris in 1881, with a series of telephone transmitters connected from the stage of the Opera Garnier to a suite of rooms at the Paris Electrical Exhibition, where listeners could hear a live transmission of performances through receivers for each ear. Scientific American reported,- Every one who has been fortunate enough to hear the telephones at the Palais de l'Industrie has remarked that, in listening with both ears at the two telephones, the sound takes a special character of relief and localization which a single receiver cannot produce. . . . This phenomenon is very curious, it approximates to the theory of binauriclar auduition, and has never been applied, we believe, before to produce this remarkable illusion to which may almost be given the name of auditive perspective.
1930s
In the 1930s, Harvey Fletcher of Bell Laboratories investigated techniques for stereophonic recording and reproduction. One of the techniques investigated was the 'Wall of Sound,' which used an enormous array of microphones hung in a line across the front of an orchestra. Up to eighty microphones were used, and each fed a corresponding loudspeaker, placed in an identical position, in a separate listening room.Several stereophonic test recordings, using two microphones connected to two styli cutting two separate grooves on the same wax disc, were made with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra at Philadelphia's Academy of Music in March 1932. The first, made on March 12, 1932 of Scriabin's Poem of Fire, is the earliest surviving stereo recording.
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra made some accidental stereo recordings on February 3, 1932 for RCA Victor. These were issued on their short-lived "Program Transcription" series. Even through the records are fairly rare, a collector had both versions and noticed that while they appeared to be the same performance, the sound mix was different on each. When the two recordings were synchronized, it became stereo. Apparently, this was not intentional. It was a fairly standard practice in that era to record using more than one microphone and disc cutter. The various versions could be compared, to see which had the best microphone positioning. It also allowed for safety masters in case something happened to the original.
Bell Laboratories gave a demonstration of three-channel stereophonic sound on April 27, 1933 with a live transmission of the Philadelphia Orchestra from Philadelphia to Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. Leopold Stokowski, normally the orchestra's conductor, was present in Constitution Hall to control the sound mix. Bell Labs also demonstrated binaural sound, using a dummy with microphones instead of ears, at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933.B.B. Bauer, "Some Techniques Toward Better Stereophonic Perspective," IEEE Transactions on Audio, May-June, 1963, p. 89.
Two stereophonic recording methods, using two channels and coincident microphone techniques (X-Y with bidirectional transducers / Blumlein-setup & M/S-stereophony), were developed by Alan Blumlein at EMI in 1931 and patented in 1933. A stereo disc, using the two walls of the groove at right angles to carry the two channels, was cut at EMI in 1933, twenty-five years before that method became the standard for stereo phonograph discs.
1940 to 1970
From 1940 to 1970, the progress of stereophonic sound was paced by the technical difficulties of recording and reproducing two (or more) channels in synchronization, and by the economic and marketing issues of introducing new audio media and equipment. To a rough approximation, a stereo system cost twice as much as a monophonic system. Actually, in the 1950s that was an accurate approximation, since a stereo system had to be assembled by buying two preamplifiers, two amplifiers, and two speaker system. It was not clear whether consumers would think the sound was so much better as to be worth twice the price.In the early 1950s, companies such as Concertapes and Victor began releasing stereophonic recordings on two-track prerecorded reel-to-reel magnetic tape. Serious audiophiles, the sort of people who would later be called "early adopters", bought them, and stereophonic sound came to at least some living rooms. Stereo recording became widespread in the music business by the fall of 1957, superseding monaural (single-channel) recording. The small record company Audio Fidelity released the first commercial stereophonic disc in 1958.
The 1940 Carnegie Hall demonstration
The Carnegie Hall demonstration by Bell Laboratories on April 9 and 10, 1940, used three huge speaker systems. Synchronization was achieved by making the recordings in the form of three motion-picture soundtracks recorded on a single piece of film. Because of dynamic range limitations, volume compression was used, with a fourth track being used to regulate volume expansion. The Dolby noise reduction system of the 1970s was a far more sophisticated version of a basically similar technique. The volume compression and expansion were not fully automatic, but were designed to allow manual studio "enhancement", i.e., the artistic adjustment of overall volume and the relative volume of each track.The recordings had been made by the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski, who was always interested in sound reproduction technology. Stokowski personally participated in the "enhancement" of the sound.
The speakers used generated 1,500 watts of acoustic power, producing sound levels of up to 100 decibels, and the demonstration held the audience "spellbound, and at times not a little terrified," according to one report."Sound Waves 'Rock' Carnegie Hall As 'Enhanced Music' Is Played," The New York Times, April 10, 1940, p. 25. Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was present at the demonstration, commented that it was "marvellous" but "somehow unmusical because of the loudness". "Take that 'Pictures at an Exhibition'", he said. "I didn't know what it was until they got well into the piece. Too much 'enhancing', too much Stokowski."
The motion picture era
Bell Laboratories in New York City gave a demonstration in 1937 of two-channel stereophonic motion pictures, developed by Bell Labs and Electrical Research Products, Inc."New Sound Effects Achieved in Film," The New York Times, Oct. 12, 1937, p. 27.In 1938, MGM started using three tracks to record movie soundtracks instead of one and very quickly upgraded to four tracks. One track was used for dialogue, two for music and one for sound effects. These optical soundtrack recordings could easily be "mixed" down to a mono track for film release. The very first true stereo recording MGM made (although released in mono) was "Zing Went The Strings of My Heart" by Judy Garland, recorded on September 16, 1938 for the movie Listen Darling.
The first commercial motion picture to be exhibited with stereophonic sound was Walt Disney's Fantasia, released in November 1940, for which a specialized sound process, Fantasound, was developed. Fantasound used a separate film containing four optical sound tracks. Three of the tracks were audible, and the fourth track controlled the volume level of the theater's amplifiers. The film was not a financial success, however, and after two months of road-show exhibition in selected cities, its soundtrack was remixed into mono sound for general release.
In the early 1940s, the forward thinking Alfred Newman directed the construction of a sound stage equipped for multi channel recording for 20th Century Fox studios. Several soundtracks from this era still exist in their multichannel elements, some of which have been released on CD includiing How Green Was My Valley, Anna and the King of Siam, Sun Valley Serenade, and The Day the Earth Stood Still.
The advent of magnetic tape recording made high-fidelity synchronized multichannel recording technically straightforward, though costly. Motion picture theatres could afford the cost, and that is where the real introduction of stereophonic sound to the public occurred. Stereo sound first became a wide success with the release of This Is Cinerama in 1952. Cinerama was a spectacular wide-screen process fully comparable to today's IMAX. Cinerama practically required a specially built theatre for its presentation. It used seven magnetic sound tracks, six of them audible plus a seventh track that controlled the volume level of the amplifiers. The system was developed by Hazard Reeves, a pioneer in magnetic recording technology. By all accounts, including accounts by those who have experienced the process in rare recent showings, the sound was as spectacular as the picture and excellent even by modern standards.
In April 1953, while This Is Cinerama was still playing only in New York City, most moviegoing audiences heard stereophonic sound for the first time with the Warner Bros. 3-D film production of House of Wax, starring Vincent Price. The sound system, WarnerPhonic, was a combination of a 35mm magnetic full-coat that contained Left-Center-Right, in synchronization with the two, dual-strip Polaroid system projectors, one of which carried an optical surround track, and one which carried a mono backup track should anything go wrong. Only one other film carried WarnerPhonic sound, the 3-D production of The Charge at Feather River. Both magnetic tracks to these films are considered lost.
Many 3-D films carried variations on 3-track magnetic sound. Other instances include It Came From Outer Space, I, The Jury, The Stranger Wore a Gun, Inferno, Kiss Me Kate, and many others.
By the summer of 1953, the movie industry moved quickly to create simpler and cheaper wide-screen systems, such as CinemaScope, which used up to four magnetic sound tracks, and which were capable of being retrofitted into existing theatres. Cole Porter memorialized the era in a 1954 song:-
- If Zanuck's latest picture were the good old-fashioned kind,
- There'd be no one in front to look at Marilyn's behind.
- If you want to hear applauding hands resound
- You've gotta have glorious Technicolor,
- Breathtaking Cinemascope and
- Stereophonic sound.
Broadcasting in stereo
Radio: The BBC's experimental transmitting station 5XX in Daventry, Northamptonshire, made radio's first stereo broadcast in December 1925, of a concert conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty from Manchester, with 5XX broadcasting the right channel nationally by long wave, and local BBC stations broadcasting the left channel by medium wave. The BBC repeated the experiment in 1926, using 2LO in London and 5XX at Daventry. Following experimental FM stereo transmissions in the London area in 1958, the first regular BBC transmissions using an FM stereo signal began on the BBC's Third Programme network on August 28, 1962.Chicago AM radio station WGN and its sister FM station WGNB collaborated on an hour-long stereophonic demonstration broadcast on May 22, 1952, with one audio channel broadcast by the AM station and the other audio channel by the FM station.W-G-N and WGNB to Unveil New 'Visual' Sound," The Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1952, p. B-6. New York City's WQXR initiated its first stereophonic broadcasts in October 1952, and by 1954 was broadcasting all of its live musical programs in stereophonic sound, using its AM and FM stations for the two audio channels."News of TV and Radio," The New York Times, Oct. 26, 1952, p. X-11. "Binaural Devices," The New York Times, March 21, 1954, p. XX-9.
After several years of experimental stereo broadcasts, and six competing systems, the Federal Communications Commission announced stereophonic FM technical standards in April 1961, and licensed regular stereophonic FM radio broadcasting to begin in the United States on June 1, 1961."Conversion to Stereo Broadcasts on FM is Approved by F.C.C.," The New York Times, April 20, 1961, p. 67. WEFM in the Chicago area and WGFM in Schenectady, New York reported as the first stereo stations."Stereophonic FM Broadcast Begun by WEFM," The Chicago Tribune, June 2, 1961, p. B-10.
Television: A closed-circuit television performance of Carmen from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City to thirty-one theaters across the United States on December 11, 1952 included a stereophonic sound system developed by RCA."Theater to Have Special Sound System for TV," Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5, 1952, p. B-8. The 1958-1959 season of The Plymouth Show (i.e., The Lawrence Welk Show) on the ABC network was broadcast with stereophonic sound in some cities, with one audio channel broadcast via television and the other over the ABC radio network."A Television First! Welk Goes Stereophonic" (advertisement), Los Angeles Times, Sept. 10, 1958, p. A-7. By the same method, NBC television and the NBC radio network offered stereo sound for The George Gobel Show on October 21, 1958. ABC's Walt Disney Presents made a stereo broadcast of The Peter Tchaikovsky Story, including scenes from Disney's latest animated feature Sleeping Beauty, on January 30, 1959 by using ABC-affiliated AM and FM stations for the left and right audio channels.
Regular network transmission of stereo audio began on NBC in 1984.
Common usage
In common usage, a "stereo" is a two-channel sound reproduction system, and a "stereo recording" is a two-channel recording. This is a cause for much confusion, since five (or more) channel home theater systems are not popularly described as "stereo". It is worth noting that most film soundtracks are not recorded using stereo techniques, so while capable of stereo playback, most home theater systems rarely do.
Most two-channel recordings are stereo recordings only in this weaker sense. Pop music, in particular, is usually recorded using close miking techniques, which artificially separates signals into several tracks. The separate tracks are then mixed into a two-channel recording which often bears little or no resemblance to the actual physical and spatial relationship of the musicians at the time of the original performance. Indeed, it is not uncommon for different tracks of the same song to be recorded at different times, and even in different studios, and then mixed into a final two-channel recording for commercial release. Classical music recordings are a notable exception.
Balance
Balance can mean the amount of signal from each channel reproduced in a stereo audio recording. Typically, a balance control will have 0 dB of gain in the center position for both channels, and attenuate one channel as the control is turned, leaving the other channel at 0 dB.*
See also Panning#Audio recording
Other uses of the word
The phrase "rechanneled stereo" refers to the artificial rechanneling of mono recordings to simulate stereo that was common in the 1950s-1960s. Because of this usage, "stereo" or "in stereo" is sometimes used colloquially for when two, as distinct from one, of something are present.
See also
- Binaural recording
- Joint stereo
- Quadraphonic
- Stereo photography
- Stereographic projection
- Surround sound
- Subwoofer (Stereo separation)
- Stereo recording techniques
References
Stereo | Stereo | Stereofonie | Sonido estereofónico | Son stéréophonique | Stereofonia | סטריאו | Stereo | ステレオ | Stereo | Stereofonia | Стереофония | Stereofoni
"Stereophonic sound"