Did Brian Wilson ever react to Capitol's Beach Boys Duophonic releases?

[Micha]

Thank you very much for your explanations, mr. Desper!

20/20 was the first true stereo album.

What is the difference between the stereo on Friends and that on 20/20?

[Stephen W. Desper]

Thank you very much for your explanations, mr. Desper!

20/20 was the first true stereo album.

What is the difference between the stereo on Friends and that on 20/20?

COMMENT:   I said 20/20 was the first true stereo album -- operative word here is "true".  If you define stereo as a bunch of mono tracks panned left and right, then Friends and many earlier albums could be classified as being "stereo". By way of example, God Only Knows was recorded with mono being the final release format. Yet, it has a "stereo" release because Mark mixed it by panning the mono tracks to various positions in the stereo panorama. This is all explained in my study-video on God Only Knows available at http://swdstudyvideos.com.

All this left and right panning is called amplitude derived stereo. This was the very early way of making so-called stereo recordings. I remember how, when stereo was first being demo-ed in stores, we were all so impressed with a train going left to right or hearing drums on the right and a sax on the left and a vocal in the center. Stereo was all about separation back then.

True stereo has both amplitude and phase derived stereo elements. Phase derived stereo includes vector summations or frequency selective delays between the left and right signals. This type of stereo not only produces a listening experience of direction (the amplitude part) but also spatial immersion (the phase derived part), called dimension. How both elements are mixed can also produce the impression of depth. 

Thus a true stereo recording has all three elements, not just one or two. The three elements for true stereo reproduction are: Direction – Dimension – Depth  or as the advertising and promotional people call it 3D or the three D’s.

20/20 was the first Beach Boy album that was conceived and recorded with both amplitude and phase derived stereo as its release goal.

My statement is made from a recording engineer's point of view. The A&R department can print any term on the jacket they wish to, but I know what I hear.

~swd

[Andrew G. Doe]

Re: Morgan and the pre-Capitol tapes - apparently there's a letter in the Capitol archives from Hite giving them permission to use his master of "Surfin'" on the first album. That indicates to me that all three parties involved considered him the legal owner of the master. Interestingly... (he looks thoughtfully into the middle distance while tugging gently on his beard)... I don't ever recall anyone referring to any payment for the session, which would establish ownership, so in the absence of said info, we must assume that Morgan donated the studio time against possible future royalties. I know the band did enter into an agreement with Morgan concerning promotion and distribution and that, when he failed to fulfill (I'm doing this off the top of my head, thus caveat lector), handed the band back to Murry, who promptly did the rounds of the LA labels.

Additionally, as previously stated, the band, and BRI, didn't say word one about the myriad crappy comps that the Morgan tapes turned up on from 1969 on, notably the impeccable 1991 DCC release Lost and Found 1961-62, which used the original tapes which had been rediscovered in Bruce Morgan's closet (no, seriously). I would have thought if there was any moment to start waving and say "'scuse me but those are ours", it would have been then.

[Joel Goldenberg]

As we know, Brian Wilson made an artistic decision to mix all albums from Beach Boys Today to Wild Honey in mono (I'm not sure of the circumstances behind the simply produced Surfin' Safari) and yet, Capitol released all those albums in Duophonic and another type of fake stereo. Did Brian Wilson ever react to this intrusion and perversion of his artistic intention — has he ever dealt with this in any interview?

COMMENT :  To the Above Question

In my discussions with the group, not one of them appreciated the Duophonic® product.

In many cases, Capitol released mono versions in Duophonic without their permission and in a matter of course, as they did with many other artists (Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, Miles Davis, etc.) whose careers span both the mono era and stereo era (and even the surround era) so as to bring the entire offering into the stereo catalog. Retailers also were complaining about needing to carry both LP stereo and LP mono versions of many releases, so Duophonic releases of old monophonic albums eliminated the need for double stocking.

As you may know the Duophonic process splits the mono signal into two parts, slightly delaying one side not greater than 50ms with filters on each side favoring highs and lows, respectfully. Even a person with SSD (single-sided-deafness) or a loss of 70% like Brian, will hear a confused sound.

For normal-hearing people Duophonic is interpreted by the binaural hearing mechanism as a nebulous expansion of a point source. That is, no sound seems to come from a specific position in space, rather all sounds seem to come from a vague and imprecise location between the speakers. In our case the brain takes the non-delayed signal and applies The Precedence Effect. This effect, also known as The Haas Effect, is a fairly rudimental psychological acoustic phenomenon, in that when two identical sounds are delayed, as the delay is lengthened the left and right sounds will become sufficiently decorrelated producing a blurred image source (up to 50ms). You and I do not hear the two delays as two delays, rather as one big sound. But the SSD listener (Brian) hears the two delays as two delays or a double-sound. Every drum beat, guitar pluck, and piano note is heard as a quick double-beat or repeat. The SSD listener not only hears Duophonic this way, but also hears regular stereo in this double-sound. If you electronically combine stereo left and stereo right signals to one mono combination signal, the SSD listener does not hear a double sound, but do the same for Duophonic and even YOU will hear a double sound.

Brian mixed in mono because that is how he hears. Capitol Records released Brian’s mono mixes in Duophonic for retail inventory reduction and to make releases containing both stereo and mono mixes sound more similar, i.e., stereo & Duophonic. Before that, and I guess before your time -- before the CD -- when it was vinyl records, the record industry was all mono. Brian had many hits before the stereo LP was popular. 20/20 was the first true stereo album.

Capitol Records has the contractual authority to release product as they see fit for a given market. They control the contents, order, and sound presentation once the masters are signed over to them. The master recordings are paid for by the record company and remain their property. How they release the product they paid for and own is just a matter of property rights. Brian and Brother Records can object, but that is all.

In the interest of “full disclosure” I will tell you that in many Beach Boy recordings I made have, down in the mix somewhere, instruments or vocals are treated with a Duophonic-like widening. Usually this is done to some mono tracks to make them sound better or provide a needed ambiance. I usually worked with the Orban Stereo Synthesizer, which produces a fake stereo signal in a slightly different way, a way that is mono and SSD compatible. Unlike Capitol’s Duophonic, the Orban approach splits the entire audio spectrum into bands a few notes wide each (sort of like the black and white notes of the piano). After that, the “black” notes go to the left and the “white” notes go to the right. This broadens the mono signal into a wide sound, but when combined does not produce any double imaging. I gave a demo to Capitol, thinking they would want to use a superior product, but they were not interested, pointing to the trademark, copyright & patent on Duophonic that they wished to keep using – a corporate thing. So if Brian were to object to Duophonic releases he would just run up against the legal department. Artistic control has its limits!

The only objection ever raised with Capitol management, that I know got their attention, resulted in the inclusion of a MONO version of Pet Sounds in the box set “The Pet Sounds Sessions.”  The story goes that Carl was so insistent with Capitol that the Box Set would not be complete without a CD copy of the entire album as it was originally mixed in true mono – not Duophonic. To use Carl’s words, “Pet Sounds should be heard the way Brian mixed it, in mono and not in fake stereo.”

Good Listening,  ~Stephen W. Desper

Thanks for that great reply.

[DonnyL]

I kind of like Duophonic. I much prefer to it to the 'phase'-adjusted modern 'remixes'. I recently got an old tube Wollensak 1580 stereo reel player, along with a couple NOS BB reels ... the tapes sounds really really good, even though some of the masters are the duophonic versions.

[Amanda Hart]

I kind of like Duophonic. I much prefer to it to the 'phase'-adjusted modern 'remixes'. I recently got an old tube Wollensak 1580 stereo reel player, along with a couple NOS BB reels ... the tapes sounds really really good, even though some of the masters are the duophonic versions.

In my experience, and I'm obviously not in the same league as most of you guys in this area, Duophonic can sound good on the right device. It sounds awful on my 2 year old hi-res turntable, but they actually sound pretty good on the early '60s turntable (that looks more like an end table) that belonged to my great aunt. Like SWD said, it's all about the business, and they were selling these to people who owned turntables like those, not audiophiles.

[Micha]

Thanks for that great reply.

Seconded!