The Reel Deal

Sharing stuff found on magnetic tape in the reel-to-reel format.

9/05/2006

Sound in the Round...




This.... is one of the most IDIOTIC stereo demonstration tapes EVER! Imbecilic! Supercillious! Insipid! Dumb!

Robert Oakes Jordan was one of the more reknowned field recording specialists, and along with James C. Cunningham, recorded the material for this piece of DREK. This thing is so campy, it's HILARIOUS! Tom Mercein gives the sappy, juvenile narration, around the sound bites, but you may need a barf-bag after hearing his twaddling efforts at walking us through all the sound samples.

Oh, yes, on some of the samples the microphone was overdriven, and you can hear the distortion from extreme sound pressure levels.

I encoded this and saved this as one long mp3 instead of breaking out the tracks, because there's no way to really break out the tracks. Also, somewhere, the first few feet of the tape have literally vanished... maybe someone's hub brakes needed a little adjustment? I do not know.

Here are the scans of the box:
The front...
The back...

And here is one fo the worst pieces of sonic silliness I have ever heard, Sound in the Round.

Bring your own barf-bag.

--- ADDENDUM ---

This was originally released on ConcerTapes in 1956, someone had one up on eBay so I snagged their picture of the original cover...

1 Comments:

At 9:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

My Father built a heathkit reel to reel in early 60's and there was a steroe demo tape that he would play for us on occation. Although only 4 or 5 it made a large impression on me and can still remember an optimistic narrator playing a clip of music in mono, which sounds pretty good, untill he introduces [BelCanto?] stereo which was so clear and wide it took my breath away. It also had race cars and jets going right to left but also an eclectic variety of music. It was so vibrant and optimistic. Any info let me know at mlbischel@yahoo.com. Great site!

 

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