alternatehistory.com

Microgroove records originally appeared as a monaural format, with horizontal grooving. When they appeared in stereo, they adopted a combination of horizontal and vertical grooving. This lead to stereo crosstalk, and also meant that bass and treble needed to be more limited than on mono records. Stereo records from the 1960s had thinner sound with less bass than mono ones, especially if each side exceeded 20 minutes.
Also, this kind of stereo grooving is also limited to 2 channels, while many earlier stereo recordings were actually 3 channel.
It would be interresting to see how things would have turned out if the microgroove format were designed with stereo in mind right from the start, not neccesarily stereo at the beginning, but designed with it in mind.
And let's say that half-speed mastering and even direct metal mastering had also appeared earlier.
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