On page 6, I mentioned the fact that John Culshaw was adamant that stereo can not reveal height information.
Let's review a bit. There is general agreement in audiophilia that Decca is the recording company of note when it comes to what another thread here calls "The Golden Era of Records". Decca's releases from the 50/60s are highly sought after, and command arresting prices when available in good condition.
It might therefore be wise to lend a little credence to the opinions of the person who was in charge of Decca's classical music division during the era we are discussing. A person who began recording classical music with great artists in 1948 and who received an OBE for his significant contribution to the development of the art of recording and distribution of classical music.
Yes, the same John Culshaw.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Culshaw
There is general consensus that stereo recordings from this era, and Decca's in particular, are stand-out examples of the best that can be achieved. Well, Culshaw was actually the person who initiated and drove Decca's stereophonic effort. As manager of Decca's classical recording division, Culshaw had enormous influence over the development of the art of recording in stereo. As mentioned in Gramophone's obituary: "he transformed the whole concept of recording."
People can look up Culshaw's discography on their own. But the man supervised and funded the development of mixing consoles, microphone techniques, transfer to LPs as well as improved playback technology for the serious audiophiles of the time.
In 1999, Gramophone polled its readers to find the ten greatest recordings ever made, and Culshaw's Wagner Ring topped the list.
During the production of the Wagner Solti Decca (Culshaw) Ring Cycle, Decca's engineers, driven by Culshaw, worked incessantly to create sound stages for what Culshaw called "a theatre of the mind" opera productions.
They worked for years and years on the cycle, spending time devising how to recreate the sound stages required, how to achieve the sound effects called for by Wagner (and how to record them).
Culshaw would have loved to be able to technically manipulate the perception of height in his recordings. From decades trying to achieve the impossible, he instead had to devise other ways of indicating verticality, because laterally recorded stereophonic sound can't recreate height through laterally placed speakers. (Unless your speakers are placed one above the other, you have a lateral stereophonic system in front of you at home, with identical speakers on the same plane (the floor) placed at a distance from each other, in front of you.)
Culshaw wrote a memoir in 1967, upon completion of the Ring Cycle, which had taken nine years to record and release to the public. In "The Ring Resounding" he goes through the work in chronological order, describing the various challenges that had to be met. We can safely assume that writing in 1967, he applies the perspective of someone who has gone through the entire effort (plus all the other work carried out by Decca's classical division). What follows is his opinion on the topic of height in stereo, from his book and as quoted on page 6 here. I have highlighted the important part - Culshaw had to cheat in order to get his listeners to think they were hearing vertical information, and what a cheat it was:
BTW - for what it's worth: John Culshaw, of Decca fame, was adamant, to the point of being livid, that stereo - can not, will not, is incapable of - depicting vertical information. One could claim that this is due to the speakers he was relating to at the time, but some serious set-ups were created by Decca for demos, so I doubt that's the reason.
Culshaw makes a particular point of this in his book "The Ring Resounding". At the conclusion of Das Rheingold, the Rhine Maidens are heard singing from under the surface of the river, and Culshaw knew that there was no way of capturing that in a stereo field. So he cheated - he described how Decca had gone to great lengths to achieve this depth of projection (solved in Bayreuth by the singers going into the orchestra pit, and by Culshaw through trickery).
p.98 of Ring Resounding, Viking edition:
Stereo will do anything you want on the lateral sense, but it cannot give you a vertical perspective. But sometimes, there are ways of compensating: there are ways, quite frankly, of cheating the ear into informing the brain that it has received an impression which it has not in fact received. We worked very hard to get a special acoustic on the girls' voices and then, in an article published just before Rheingold was released, I drew attention to the way in which the voices appeared to come from below. In fact they do nothing of the sort, but the suggestion worked. One critic after another commented on the remarkable illusion, and letters poured into the office asking how it had been done.
As long as microphones are placed on a lateral plane, they can not register a vertical differential, while registering a horizontal ditto.
