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Wilma Cozart Fine at the Western Electric mixing console and surrounded by a host of components as she poses for the camera at the occasion of the release of another batch of CDs containing transfers of legendary Mercury 'Living Presence' tapes. Connoisseurs can easily spot the modular Audio Suite (designed by Mark Levinson) which is one of the few preamplifiers in the world today that can boast of extreme neutrality.

The utmost concentration is essential when mixing the 3 channels of the original Mercury recording tapes to two channel stereo in order to achieve that perfect stereo-balance and a real to life sound at all instances, at all sounds. Because "real to life" means: dynamics that are detailed and frequencies that are harmonious in all registers - as is the case in the recording of 'Pictures at an Exhibition' played by pianist Byron Janis on Mercury CD 434 346-2.
The grand piano has extraordinary presence and you can clearly imagine that you are almost able to touch the black lid, while seeing the keyboard from the side and part of the bronze frame with the strong, tensed strings, and you hear the wooden construction. As if you were there.

PREPARATION

It is a question of microphone placement, of choosing the right position of the instrument in the studio or concert hall and of using top quality tape recorders, playback amplifiers and monitor loudspeakers. But to mix the three channels down to two-channel-stereo while the master is being cut or when the signal is transferred to a DAT recorder while preparing the reissues for CD, that takes as great a skill as the initial transfer to records. Obviously Wilma Cozart Fine has the ability to concentrate in abundance. The Mercury CD with 'Pictures at an Exhibition' is the eminent proof.

AUDIOPHILE

Wilma Cozart Fine: 'Not so long ago a dealer called and told me that he had some trouble in selling a pair of Thiel high-end loudspeakers. The client had been listening to all sorts of music but was unable to decide if he would buy the speakers. Until the dealer played this CD and the client went home with the speakers and the CD.'
This performance of Mussorgsky's original piano version of 'Pictures at an Exhibition' was recorded decades ago (December 25 - 29, 1961) in New York, in the Ballroom Studio of Robert C. Fine - Bob for insiders - to whom Wilma Cozart was married four years earlier. Today this recording is as modern as it was then, because the sound quality and the total image are a showpiece (in the best sense) of what is possible in recording technique, and will remain so for years to come.

NEW MIX

In recent years Wilma Cozart Fine has transferred over 200 Mercury tapes that date back from the years when analogue recording was an art as well as a science. She mixed the many legendary tapes to a DAT recorder from which the CD-masters were made.
In order to make this possible it was necessary to restore the original Ampex stereo tape recorders, type 300, the 35 mm Westrex machine and the Western Electric mixing console which were used at the end of the nineteen fifties and the beginning of the nineteen sixties.
Naturally it is valve-equipment. Although the transistor had been invented decades before, this was the only quality equipment available. In the process of restoring, not only the circuitry had to be checked, but the heads of the recorder should have the precise gap and should function with the right bias and equalization in order to read the signal to the max. The restoration of the equipment was not without difficulty and took about six months. The Ampex machines are special machines with three heads and three channels, with three head amplifiers. They were built specifically by Ampex for Bob Fine.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS

Wilma Cozart Fine: "Bob handed the specifications to Ampex. You know, he was a technician and an inventor. Already in 1955 he experimented and compared the quality of 2 and 3-track stereo. He said that only recordings made with 3 channels could provide a good stereo-image."
Those of you readers who have witnessed the rise (and decline, I should say, in some sections) of the high-fidelity scene through the years - or have read about the often painstaking trials that led to the wonderful achievements in the sixties when the analogue sound reproduction was at its peak if you owned top quality playback equipment - may know that especially in the beginning of the stereo era, some amateurs used a center-channel, that is to say that a third loudspeaker was placed in between the stereo pair to produce a signal that was the subtraction of left and right channels. Others experimented with a 'mid-speaker' that radiated the addition of the left and right signals, but at a precise adjusted level.

STEREO IN 1956

One of the earliest proofs of Bob Fine's stereo technique is on CD. It is Mercury 432 005-2 with Kodály's 'Hary Janos Suite', 'Dances of Galanta' and 'Maroszek Dances', and Bartok's 'Hungarian Sketches' and 'Roumanian Folk Dances', all performed by the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati. The recording date: November 1956! (It was Robert Blake, Don Gabor's recording technician, already recorded in stereo for the Remington label in November 1953 with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Thor Johnson and with the Helsinki University Chorus; see the link on top of this page). RCA and English Decca (London) followed in 1954. However, Bob Fine's stereo recording is unique because of the use of three microphones and the specific placement to record the performance on three tracks (channels) in order to capture the original orchestral balance.

UNIQUE

So a stereo-recording is only then true to life if the sound stage is picked-up by three microphones. This means in case of an orchestra: one microphone for the left section, one for the right section and one for the players sitting right in the middle in front of you.

DIGITAL RECORDINGS AND 3 MICROPHONES

There are technicians who try to use this basic set up in these modern days of digital recording and conclude that the original 3-microphone set-up has it flaws. They forget that digital formats are completely different from analog. They forget or do not know that the digital format has only 16 bits and is a linear format where close miking of all the instrumental sections of an orchestra, A band or AN ensemble is imperative. Hence they are forced to use more than the three channels as the Mercury team did. Today they are likely to use 24 channels for large orchestral recordings and meticulously have to adjust the sound balance.
In the days of analogous recording, valve amplifiers were used in recorders and steering amplifiers. Naturally the playback system consisted also of valve amplifiers and the big loudspeaker systems had large woofers with a relatively high resonance frequency. If today one wants to make recordings like Mercury did, analogous tape machines have to be used for the recording which can be transferred to a digital format.

TIME CONSUMING

This technique is in essence as simple as it is effective. But it took a master technician like Robert Fine to devise it in concordance with the laws of nature covering the audible frequency spectrum, maintaining a frequency characteristic as straight as possible, while not disturbing time and phase.
When preparing a recording it takes time to position the microphones in such a way that the natural balance of the orchestra is captured as desired. First the microphones were put in the right position: the distance above the orchestra and the angle were determined. The position also depended as a matter of fact on the acoustic energy generated by a 100 piece orchestra, by a string quartet or by a single performer as in the case with Byron Janis playing Mussorgsky in the Ballroom Studio in New York, or performing Chopin in the large concert hall in Moscow. Also the specific acoustic properties of the hall were the orchestra was playing were taken into account. And finally the nature of the work plays an important part in the game.
The 'Organ Symphony' of Camille Saint-Saëns asks for a completely different microphone placement than the Minute-waltz of Frederic Chopin.
Of course the Mercury-people were experienced technicians and had knowledge of the music, the instrumentation and the score, which all added to their method of recording.

PERFECT PRESENCE SOUND SERIES

This 3-microphone technique was specifically used for classical, and symphonic music in particular. There was also a series with excellent sound recordings of popular orchestral music for which the technicians chose to apply multi miking, using a variety of microphones: Telefunken (U-47) and RCA (44 BX, BK 5, KM 56). But now the words "Perfect Presence Sound Series" were added. One of these outstanding recordings was "Frederic Fennell conducts Gershwin" on PPS 6006, from which the notes about Studio A at Fine Recording Studios in New York City are shown on the left. Wilma Cozart was the recording director; Harold Lawrence was the Musical supervisor; Bob Fine the technical supervisor.
Perfect Presence Sound Series recording "10 trombones like 2 pianos" (PPS 6001) was done in Hollywood by recording engineer Mel Chisholm and recording director David Carroll.
"Spanish Fire" (PPS 6025) was another of those recordings made in Fine's ballroom studio in New York. The cover explained the technical ins and outs of f:35d Perfect Presence Sound stereo recording. It also mentioned the advantages of 35 mm film:

1. Film cuts the background noise of a recording to an irreducible minimum. There is no tape hiss.
2. No flutter: film is used on a specially designed recorder which guides it throughout its closed loop sprocket guide path across the recording head.
3. The recording width of film is nearly three times that of conventional one-half inch tape. This allows much more space for each channel in stereophonic recording and eliminates the danger of "cross-talk" between tracks.
4. The 5 mil thickness of film as against 1.5 mils for tape means less danger of print-through in storage.
5. Better transient response and a greatly extended frequency range are made possible due to the faster rate of speed (18 inches per second or 90 feet per minute) for film, and its closed loop path and the low impedance head assembly.

It is clear that in some cases artists and technicians were not always creating beautiful music. They were merely challenging the limits of the possible through perfect phase in microphone placement, the use of specific tape recorders, the cutting of the lacquer in such a way as to achieve great dynamics, and finally through a perfect pressing.

DIFFERENT STEREO IMAGES

Dutch technician Hans Lauterslager, who worked as a recording engineer with 'Philips Phonographische Industrie' (later to be Phonogram and Polygram respectively before it became part of Universal Music), talked in 1988 in Dutch record magazine 'Luister...' about his experience while working with the Mercury recording team when making recordings in London for Mercury and Philips in the early nineteen sixties.
For the recording of the set of the complete Symphonies of Tchaikovsky with Dorati, they used Mercury's 3-microphone technique, but only for the first three symphonies (SR 2-9015), and abandoned the time consuming procedure for the remaining of the symphonies. If you own the symphonies in their original releases or as reissues, you should be able to hear how beautifully (for example) the third movement in the 1st Symphony is executed, both by the orchestra and the Mercury-technicians. It is quite in contrast with the sonic qualities of the later symphonies.

SOUND STAGE

In the original 3 Lp boxed set with Tchaikovsky's Three Suites for Orchestra (SR 3-9018, Antal Dorati and the Philharmonia Orchestra), the inlay states that Hans Lauterslager and Harold Lawrence made the recordings. You can hear that the Mercury technique was not used but the Philips-way of positioning the microphones instead. Lauterslager said in "Luister..." that the Mercury setup was too time consuming and would require a longer recording session. Though Harold Lawrence reported that the three microphones were positioned at three carefully calculated positions, the listener can easily hear the difference in sound when comparing the recording of the Suites to other, earlier Mercury recordings. By then the talented Robert Fine did not work for Mercury any longer. He and cutting engineer George Piros were hired by other labels like Enoch Light's Command Records. The Philips management apparently found Fine's way indeed too expensive, just like other aspects of the final product. The pressings from plates coded RFR were now done in the Chicago factory. They were of lower quality as many Mercury SR and Philips PHS release showed.

MICROPHONE PLACEMENT, PHILIPS AND DECCA

Originally the Mercury people recorded an orchestra as it was seated on stage as can be heard in early mono release and later in the early stereo recordings. Philips and Decca, when recording the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra for instance, generally would do the same in the early years, but later would take the seats out of the big hall of the Concertgebouw and put the orchestra right there, in the stalls area (in the middle of the hall). In this way the acoustic space of the stage is not recorded. Mercury recordings have this natural sound-stage as if you were sitting in a chair in the concert hall facing the stage. This is especially evident in the recordings made in Minneapolis and Detroit. The recordings made in London show the different acoustics of a larger space.

PERFECT BALANCE

The microphones were suspended along the frontal area of the orchestra at a fair distance above the musicians. In all events microphones with omni-directional characteristics were used. Height and distance between the mikes were carefully chosen as to cover the orchestra as a whole.
After listening to the result of the positioning of the microphones, adjustments -if necessary- would be made by the producer and the technician who at the end determined the definitive position of the microphones: height, angle and distances.
The loudest passage in the music was indicative for the maximum recording level. After everything was in order, nothing would be altered. No use of supporting microphones was made, nor were limiters and filters applied. Mixing of the three channels to two-channel stereo was not done at the recording site but eventually later when the lacquer master was being cut. The performance was recorded on three tracks on 1/2 inch tape and later on 35 mm magnetic film recorders were used.

TELEFUNKEN

In the nineteen fifties, the days of mono recording, Bob Fine - who then was employed by Reeves Sound Studios - had proposed a technique that was in essence the same, but then using just one single microphone that covered the entire orchestra. The same technique was used by other recording engineers and technicians, a/o. by Us van der Meulen when recording on a Philips Miller Optical Sound Recording System Bach's St. Matthew Passion conducted by Willem Mengelberg on Palm Sunday 1939 in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. See also:

ONE MICROPHONE

The use of one microphone is certainly also a reason why the Mercury technicians recorded the orchestra seated on stage, so that the sound produced by the instruments in the back of the orchestra was reflected and acoustically amplified by the walls, as compared to their loudness when recorded in a much larger space (as was later done by Philips c.s. placing the orchestra in the hall).
Bob Fine then choose a Telefunken U-47 omni directional microphone. He said that, if you are serious about recording serious music, this is the way to go about it: position the microphone at about 25 feet above the orchestra in the middle of the front-line of the orchestra. In that way you will pick up all instruments in their natural position.

MERCURY 50000

In the beginning of 1951 there was only one recording of the orchestral version by Maurice Ravel of Modest Mussorgsky's now so popular "Pictures at an Exhibition" available on disc. It was the performance of the New York Philharmonic under Arthur Rodzinski on Columbia ML 4033. The Mercury team choose that same score for the recording of their first ever classical Lp production (Mercury was initially a pop label) in the performance by the Chicago Symphony with Rafael Kubelik conducting. The reference number is 50000.
On its release in the fall of 1951, it made a sensational entry in the world of the serious music lover as well as the hifi-fanatic, and in one blow it established Mercury's reputation. Howard Taubman, music critic of The New York Times, wrote in his review that the recording is so lifelike that you feel "being in the living presence" of the orchestra. From then on "Living Presence" became Mercury's quality slogan that distinguished the label from its competitors and adorned all following Mercury-issues.

ARTISTIC DISCIPLINE

The quality of an enterprise depends on its people: from management, producers and technicians right down to the workers in the pressing plant and the shipping department. Those who set the tone were Irving Green (founder), John Hammond (who was known because he had recorded 'Dumbarton Oaks' with Stravinsky for Keynote in the days of 78 RPM), David Hall (producer), Claire van Ausdale (supervisor), Robert C. Fine (chief engineer and technical supervisor), Harold Lawrence (musical supervisor), Robert Eberenz (assistant technician; he restored the tape machines for the CD-transfers) and George Piros (cutting engineer). Wilma Cozart (recording director) joined Mercury after Rafael Kubelik had left the Chicago Symphony in 1953 and the orchestra was no longer available.

CLASSICAL CATALOGUE

Mercury's foray into classical releases actually began when John Hammond and David Hall were sent to eastern Europe in 1948 to acquire the recorded sound archive of Czech radio as John Hammond writes in his autobiography.
David Hall became the producer of Mercury's classical line. Working with Bob Fine and Bert Whyte, he was very much a part of the team that devised Mercury's pioneering recording techniques. David Hall stayed at Mercury until 1956. He wrote best selling books on recording and high fidelity. The first was published in 1941 long before Mercury started. He did much to build the market for classical records in which Mercury ultimately found a secure niche (as his son Peter Dobkin Hall wrote to me).

OVER 350 RECORDINGS

Next to discipline it is the artistry of not only the musicians but of Staff and Producers which can lead to exceptional quality of sound and performance. And: it is not enough to produce something remarkable just once or occasionally. A reputation of true quality only will be established if there is some continuity.
Mercury would not have become the exceptional label that would have set an example that inspired so many labels at the time and continues to inspire modern labels as Telarc, Reference Recordings, Sheffield Lab, etc., if after this loud introduction of Kubelik's 'Pictures' nothing noteworthy had been produced. Some 350 recordings, more or less in the same vein, were going to follow, first in mono in the Olympian Series, and when stereo arrived, Mercury 50000 was replaced by a completely new recording. Not with the Chicago Symphony with Kubelik, because he had received such a bad press from the music critics that he had to make way for Fritz Reiner who became the new conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. And Reiner was under contract with RCA. Enter Antal Dorati.

ANTAL DORATI

Antal Dorati was the conductor of the Dallas Symphony from 1945 until 1948. In 1949 he accepted the post of conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. Wilma Cozart was his secretary. She suggested that the orchestra from Minneapolis with their conductor Dorati could fill the void. That is how Dorati was contracted by Mercury and that is how Wilma Cozart joined the recording company. The contract with the Minneapolis Symphony is significant for the continued success of the Mercury label. It was not common that a small label hired such a big and rather expensive orchestra, especially when the contract was exclusive.
It id that performance which is transferred next to Byron Janis' piano version on the same CD (434-346-2). Just as the grand piano is detailed, well balanced with natural dynamics, the orchestra also has a strong and firm sound. The recording was made on April 21, 1959. Now also M54 and M56 Telefunken microphones were used. They were selected because of the extended frequency band and the ability of picking up delicate sounds as well as powerful crescendos.
In Dorati's 'Pictures' the recorders are 1/2" tape machines which were especially manufactured for Mercury. (The covers of recordings made on 35 mm film are identified by the perforated tape.)

35 MM SOUND FILM CHARACTERISTIC

That same CD carries two encores played by Byron Janis. One of them is recorded on the 35 mm film recorder made by Westrex. Westrex had modified the machine mechanically and electronically so that three heads were aligned and three channels with electronics were built in. 
Since dialogues in movie theaters have to be understood, originally these film recorders had a frequency-characteristic that could not be identified as high fidelity. So they were modified in order to achieve the desired characteristics: an extended frequency range and linearity, with the benefit of an increased signal to noise ratio of the 35 mm sound film
If this correction is not made, the sound gets that slightly "glassy" character as often is heard in Everest recordings.
Also the attention paid to the cutting of the discs and the use of the best cutting-lathe played a mayor role in achieving excellent dynamics and a detailed sound quality. Though not every reviewer was always pleased with the clear and often bright results, those who owned quality-equipment enjoyed practically every first release they bought of any Mercury recording. One should not forget that quality cartridges like the Ortofon A, B and C and later the SPU models translated the modulated groove in a completely different way than modern high end cartridges with their ultra fine line tips do.

Everest also used 35 mm film for recording and explained the advantages on the inner sleeves: thicker tape, less print-through, wider tracks, higher dynamics.
So there are differences in the sound character of a Mercury Living Presence recording and an Everest release. These are caused by the choice of microphones and microphone placement. There are also the differences in the electronics of mixers and amplifiers used when cutting a laquer. These are: frequency characteristics, signal to noise ratio, dynamic capabilities, phase characteristics, and distortion values.
Every record label has its own "sound". In RCA and Decca (London) recordings a slight phase shift can be noticed as if the signal is somewhat weaker in the lower-mid/mid section. Everest recordings show a less chiseled transient.
Often these differences are also brought about by the unfortunate application of the Dolby Noise Reduction System. Mercury did not use a noise reduction system.
A 35 mm film recorder was originally designed for the recording of speech to be put on the sound track of movies. The frequency characteristic and the dynamics were mainly designed to reproduce the dialogues. Robert C. Fine had the electronics of his 35 mm recorders modified for recording music in high fidelity.

MORE QUESTIONS

I was in the privileged position to meet Wilma Cozart Fine in Holiday Inn Plaza Hotel in the center of Amsterdam. We had been talking already for quite a while. But I wanted to know more about Mercury's past and the transfer of the tapes to CD.

RAB: Was this recording technique patented by Mercury? The label Everest also used 35 mm film recording, and Command did the same.

WCF: No, there were no patents. Everest was Bert Whyte's label. He started an audio shop and later on he became a journalist. He died in 1994. My husband and I were good friends of Bert Whyte.

RAB: How about other labels and the competition?

WCF: We came already in the nineteen fifties with 'Living Presence' and only sometime later RCA with 'Living Stereo'. We were so busy with producing that we actually paid hardly any attention to other labels. And there were the big labels: Columbia, RCA, American Decca.

RAB: Did Mercury have their own plant where the records were pressed?

WCF: Yes, we had one for pop. Classical Lp's were pressed at RCA's factory. We cut the lacquer and they manufactured the matrix.

RAB: I admire so much that you have mixed the three tracks manually towards two channels during the cutting of the record. I myself made audiovisuals and had to mix the tape with speech and the tape with music manually and synchronize it with the images. I had to start a fade-in at the right moment and finish the transition to the following image on preselected moments in the music, sometimes slowly and at times very quickly. If I made a mistake I had to start the whole program of 20 minutes all over again. I can imagine how intense your work must have been.

WCF: Yes, we never mixed the channels to a master tape, but always directly to the cutting lathe. A tape would introduce extra hiss and we did not want that.

RAB: As the transfer was in progress you could change the stereo-balance. Did you do that?

WCF: I had to prepare myself well and I had to note beforehand which passages needed small adjustments. Too much correction is not good. That would disturb the natural sound balance of the orchestra.

RAB: Was there more than one lacquer cut from the same recording so that two masters were made, possibly with a small difference, and RCA used both of them?

WCF: No, only one lacquer was cut. Of course things did go wrong sometimes. You know, the groove with a high level of dynamics need more space. It can be done by the cutting machine automatically. We did it manually. I would say to the technician who was cutting the lacquer: 'Here comes the loud passage' and he then varied the distance between the grooves. It could happen that we were busy and
that I had still three more minutes of music on the tape and he had already reached the final groove. And then everything had to be done from the start. But we also have cut lacquers that contained a maximum of information, almost 30 minutes for one side.

RAB: Did you record more than one take and did you splice them?

WCF: Yes, the disadvantage of the Westrex-recorder that we used on location was that it could handle spools with a maximum of 10 minutes. In case the orchestra made a mistake, we stopped and the recorder was prepared with a new reel with magnetic film. The orchestra had to continue in the same tempo. No difference should be noticed. Sometimes we started all over again if the mistake was made in the beginning of the work. That amounted to a lot of tape. A tape that contained a mistake could not be used a second time.
Or we just continued after a mistake, but then a few bars earlier in the score in order to have enough length to make a perfect splice. You know that 35 mm sound film is transported via sprocket wheels. The music and the position of the sprockets on both takes do not always coincide. That is why we needed more tape in order to be able to make the splice much earlier at a spot where music and perforation were identical.

RAB: I first came in touch with 'Living Presence' many years ago as a student on a summer job when I was traveling to New York. On 1600 Broadway I bought the 'Peacock Variations' by Zoltan Kodály with Antal Dorati as conductor.

WCF: With the Chicago Symphony. That was in mono. We did not do mono-recordings in this series of CD's.

RAB: No stereo-version was made in later years?

WCF: No.

RAB: I thought it was very well done. One could hear a big orchestra in quite a natural way. Everything was there in the right perspective.

(I told Wilma Cozart Fine that I bought several Mercury LPs: Brahms' Second Piano Concerto with Gina Bachauer and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski (SR 90301), Rachmaninoff's 1st and Prokofiev's 3rd with Byron Janis and Kyril Kondrashin (SR 90300), and Prokofiev's Fifth Symphony with Dorati (SR 90258). We talked about how in the 3rd movement of Brahms' Second Concerto you could almost see the strings of the cello, and how beautifully Janis played the second movement in Rachmaninoff and the variations in Prokofiev. Exceptional were the sections of Brass and percussion in Prokofiev's 5th Symphony. But all instruments are all there in the right proportions. Nowhere there is an emphasis on a single instrument in particular or on some specific aspect of an instrument. These works are also available on CD.)

RAB: Not long ago I bought a Nixa Lp with Vaughan-Williams' 8th Symphony, out of curiosity and I was amazed by the excellent recording. Now I do read in the notes of Polygram Classics & Jazz that you and the 'Living Presence' team made this recording in England in 1956.

WCF: Nixa was a subsidiary of the Pye factories. We made various recordings for them. Later the contract between Philips and Pye ended and Pye was purchased by EMI. EMI releases the recordings that we made for Nixa.

RAB: Apart from the Sviatoslav Richter-recordings for Philips, did you make recordings for other labels?

WCF: Yes we made a number of recordings for the Italian publisher Ricordi. They too do not belong to Philips. The specialty of the releases of the Mercury-recordings on CD is that we restored the old equipment and use it, I do not know how EMI does it. They do not have our equipment.