Early Stereo...

Although stereo was researched for many decades, it was not until 1958 that commercial recordings and the equipment to play them on became available.  

Included in the latest video is a list from Billboard of every stereo recording available for sale in the United States.  We take one of those and give it a quick listen. 

Following that is the recording as it would sound today, if properly mastered for stereo.  

The singer, Della Reese is still alive, almost 60 years later.  

The recording is very well done.  It is an example of the superb quality of recording in the late 50's, as well as an example of the hard panning that stereo started out with.  

As an aside here, an EQ that was first produced in 1951, 7 years prior to this recording, is still today probably the most popular and widely used EQ box in the world today.  That would be the Pultec EQ and I used it on the second version you hear in the video.  Some day I will do a whole story on the Pultec.  The inventor was a friend who was one of the guests at my wedding and an outstanding man.

So the moral of the story for stereo is that it needs to sound natural in the headphones.   
Mono is not natural in headphones, but hard panned stereo is much worse.

Til next time...