Recording gaffs

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think he (?) means phase as in the left and right channels being out of phase with each other !

Yes, this is how I understood Ferret's post - Pye was so keen to be the first company in Britain to release Stereo LPs that they neglected to check the quality of what they were putting on the market. (I bet those LPs are highly collectable nowadays!)

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

To compound the problem, those Pye recordings were often poor when compared with those of rival companies of the period.

[Tony Halstead]

I think he (?) means phase as in the left and right channels being out of phase with each other !

Yes I did understand that but I didn't understand exactly whose Beethoven performances were recorded out of phase and which works in particular.

[Tony Halstead]

Oh dear I think I've been too literal in this. I was thinking that Ferret was instancing Beethoven sonata recordings in particular but he probably meant ALL stereo recordings in general. As it happens, one of my teachers did actually make at least one Pye LP of late Beethoven Piano sonatas which curiously enough I listened to a few weeks ago. Its sound is weird - so probably 'out of phase'!

[cloughie]

Don't remember any Kovacevich on Pye, but I remember John Borwick's brilliant EMI test record as a result of which I followed his advice to switch pos and neg leads on one of my speakers and immediately improved the sound. I suppose now there are less diy stereo systems a test CD is not needed.

[Alain Maréchal]

It happened not only on commercial recordings:

Some of you may recall Robert Simpson's Radio 3 talks about unfamilar pieces by Nielsen, with studio recordings. The performance of "Sir Oluf, he rides" breaks down in the middle, a tannoy voice says "we'll just pick it up from letter M please" and the performance recommences. It was broadcast like that - presumably nobody ever checked the tape.

[Ferretfancy]

It happened not only on commercial recordings:

Some of you may recall Robert Simpson's Radio 3 talks about unfamilar pieces by Nielsen, with studio recordings. The performance of "Sir Oluf, he rides" breaks down in the middle, a tannoy voice says "we'll just pick it up from letter M please" and the performance recommences. It was broadcast like that - presumably nobody ever checked the tape.

Nightmares do happen! When I first worked in radio I was in a recording channel for a performance of an Ibsen play, I think it was The Master Builder. The performance was continuous, so my job involved loading the machines, pressing the record button, making overlaps between reels, labelling and completing the paper work.When the play was transmitted it went on the air with the reels in the wrong order! I had kittens listening at home, but luckily it was not my mistake.
I later learned that there had been only one complaint from a listener, he happened to be the man who had done the english translation !

[umslopogaas]

#31, fhg, I collect classical LPs and I guess those very early stereo Pye discs are worth a few quid, but actually not much, compared with the hundreds people will pay on ebay for some labels (thousands, if you want a first label stereo Columbia featuring Leonid Kogan). I cant remember ever noticing a Pye on ebay, they just arent regarded as collectible. I actually have CSCL 70001, the very first stereo Pye (I think, unless there was a 70000): Beethoven symphonies 1 and 8, with the Halle cond. Barbirolli. I dont think I paid more than a quid for it. Cant remember anything unusual about the sound. I think Pye got out of LPs soon after, by the time I got to Cambridge in the late sixties they were making laboratory equipment such as pH meters. At one stage they absorbed another company called Nixa, I have a number of Nixas and Pye-Nixas. I dont think Nixa made it into the stereo era.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Oh, that's a shame, umslopos: I was thinking that there might be vinyl collectors like stamp collectors who pay more for flawed specimens than they do for mint condition.

[Tony Halstead]

#31, fhg, I collect classical LPs and I guess those very early stereo Pye discs are worth a few quid, but actually not much, compared with the hundreds people will pay on ebay for some labels (thousands, if you want a first label stereo Columbia featuring Leonid Kogan). I cant remember ever noticing a Pye on ebay, they just arent regarded as collectible. I actually have CSCL 70001, the very first stereo Pye (I think, unless there was a 70000): Beethoven symphonies 1 and 8, with the Halle cond. Barbirolli. I dont think I paid more than a quid for it. Cant remember anything unusual about the sound. I think Pye got out of LPs soon after, by the time I got to Cambridge in the late sixties they were making laboratory equipment such as pH meters. At one stage they absorbed another company called Nixa, I have a number of Nixas and Pye-Nixas. I dont think Nixa made it into the stereo era.

I have two Nixa (Stereo) CDs of Barbirolli and the Hallé,
1) NixCD 6003: 'English Music' - Delius, Butterworth, Elgar and Bax;
2) NixCD 6002: Elgar 1st Symphony plus a totally wonderful, 'incandescent' Introduction and Allegro that IMV surpasses JB's later EMI recording with that pick-up band, the 'Sinfonia of London'.

[umslopogaas]

Thanks for that, Waldhorn, I had no idea Nixa survived into the CD era. I just checked and all my Nixa LPs are mono. I know that a lot of recording companies were recording in stereo for some time prior to 1958, but only started to issue stereo discs in 1958. If that was about the time Pye took over Nixa, and then shortly after gave up on LPs, it may be that they had some unissued stereo Nixa recordings. Has anyone ever seen a stereo Nixa LP?

Are the Nixa CDs actually issued by Nixa, or is another company using the name?

Err, fhg, I think you'll find LP collectors actually want to play their discs, or at least own ones that are in playable condition. so the vinyl equivalent of a postmark would not be welcome! There are some people who are prepared to pay money for damaged LPs, especially if they are particularly rare, but I wouldnt, because as soon as an undamaged copy becomes available I would buy that too, and then curse myself for wasting the dosh on the damaged one.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Umslops - I wasn't thinking of damaged LPs (or stamps, for that matter) but "perfect" LPs that leave the factory and are sold for a limited time until it's pointed out that the channels are back-to-front and then they're withdrawn from sale. (Like stamps that have the Queen's head in reverse, or have a wrong price printed on them. There are such collectors!)

[Lordgeous]

Nightmares do happen! When I first worked in radio I was in a recording channel for a performance of an Ibsen play, I think it was The Master Builder. The performance was continuous, so my job involved loading the machines, pressing the record button, making overlaps between reels, labelling and completing the paper work.When the play was transmitted it went on the air with the reels in the wrong order! I had kittens listening at home, but luckily it was not my mistake.
I later learned that there had been only one complaint from a listener, he happened to be the man who had done the english translation !

Mistakes also occurred in the early days of transferring record company catalogues onto CD. A John Renbourn album I recorded in the 70s included one track that was to fade out gradually over a repeated phrase which I'd copied a number of times and edited together, the fade being done 'live' at the vinyl cutting stage. A few years later i went out and bought the CD re-issue to discover to my horror that the end of that track just repeated and repeated and then suddenly stopped in a completely arbitary place!! It made no musical sense at all but why the transfer engineer didnt notice is beyond me! I've no idea if its still in the catalogues like that?

I remember as a music student buying a Beethoven symphony on a cheap foreign label where the opening stopped after a few bars, the conductor tapping his baton and the piece restarting. How I wish I'd kept that now!

[umslopogaas]

Ah, I see what you mean, fhg, but I have never seen such an LP and I think the inspection process would have eliminated them.

I have among my discs both test pressings and factory samples. The test pressings were made by the factory engineers during the process of creating the stamping masters. They were merely intended to check that everything was OK before the masters were used to press a batch for sale, and were never intended to go on sale themselves, but I guess the engineers took them home, and eventually they end up in the hands of dealers. The factory samples were carefully selected from the first commercial batch of pressings before they went on release and were labelled with little stickers "Factory Sample, not for sale". I believe they would have been sent out to critics for review. Collectors like them because they know that the factory would have been very careful to select pressings that were blemish-free, and also they are likely to be almost unplayed: the critic would have played it once or twice, written the review and quite likely hardly played it again.

Anyway, my point is that both the factory engineers and the professional critics would have heard the disc before it went on commercial release, so the chances of defective pressings actually being sold to you and me would have been very small indeed.

Collectors are of course not fully rational beings, but at least by collecting LPs I have stuff that is actually useful in that it provides me with a source of music. I cannot see the point of collecting stamps, other than the purely financial hope that the collection is increasing in value.

[pastoralguy]

To deviate a little, I used to run the school film club and loved operating the projectors. We did 2 shows - one in the afternoon for the junior school then another in the evening for the seniors.

On this occasion, we showed 'French Connection' 1 & 2 which would have been fine had Inot been at the dentist in the afternoon so a junior school person did the afternoon slot. However, he tried to help me by putting FC reel one on projector one and FC 2 reel 2 on projector 2! Of course, I didn't notice until I started projector 2 and saw the leader running through before I did the change over.

Well, the reels were shown in the wrong order but no one noticed although someone did say that all the good bits happened in FC 1 whereas there was a lot of talking in FC 2!

Happy days.