Steven C. Barr(x) wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Lennick" <[log in to unmask]>
>> I've just been listening to a recording of Rachmaninoff's 3rd Concerto which
>> keeps shifting between the piano present and the orchestra a mile away and the
>> orchestra up close and the piano sounding as if it's at the wrong end of a
>> flooded subway tunnel. At no point is there anything remotely resembling
> "balance".
>> And no it's not the Horowitz atrocity from the 70s..it's Gilels from 1955.
>>
>> I mean we occasionally make allowances for historical documents and legendary
>> performances that could only be captured on the fly, but this was 1955 for
>> cryin' out loud! Did anybody at the time think this was a "good" recording? I
>> would have fired the producer, or at least demoted him to recording oompah
> bands.
> Monophonic LP? Thus a question of balancing the levels of two mikes (or
> sets of mikes)? So, the question is: How much multi-input recording was
> being done that far back?!
> 
> Steven C. Barr
>                                                   
> 
You'll find it as far back as the 1930s if not earlier. I was once playing a 
1935 Stokowski 78, from the Firebird Suite, in a studio at CHFI and engineer 
Burrell Haddon (ex BBC I think) walked in and said he thought they must have 
used 5 mics on it. One mike recording (Living Presence) became more popular in 
the 50s..in fact I have some Mercury Classics 78 sets from the late 40s which 
make a big deal of using this technique.

dl