lateral and vertical cut

[Dan McDonald]

This is an odd one - maybe someone willhave an idea about this -

I am working with some transcriptions of Grand Old Opry broadcasts from 1946-1948. They were put on cassette sometime in the 1970s (approximately). There are 2 sides of music - all Bill Monroe bluegrass performances.

I copied each side from cassette to a wave file. I began working with the first side. I found that I got a little cleaner sound if I converted from stereo to a mono by using the l-r file conversion, which has the preset of the stereo - lateral cut to mono.

I ran all of the files (both sides of the cassette) using this preset. All of the songs from the first side sound very good. When I checked the second side, there was almost no sound left in the file. So, I went back to the original files from the "B" side of the cassette and tried the "vertical cut" preset. That gives results for the B side very much like the results I got for the A side with the "lateral cut" preset.

So, my question is, why in the world would this happen? Any ideas?

Dan McDonald

[Craig Maier]

It sounds like (somehow) one of the channels on the B side were recorded out of phase. That would account for your result; the fix you found is fine to use.