Living Stereophonic High Fidelity

When Hear It Wow first broadcast on Labor Day weekend in 2006, there were two stereo demos included in the show. One of them, The ABCs of High Fidelity, remains one of my very favorite record finds. You can get that from WFMU right now.

As the show moves into its third year, I'm celebrating tonight with two hours of stereo demos. For the collectors out there, these albums fall into one of four categories, listed in my order of preference:

1. Album-length or side-length promotion
2. Brief narratives mixed with catalog tracks
3. Catalog tracks designed to push your system to its limits (Admiral put out a lot of these, as did Zenith)
4. Stereo test records

Nobody wants to listen to stereo test records. They're meant for calibration, not listening. Sometimes an interesting catalog track turns up on those albums that push your system, but most of what's on them is aimed at the audiophile crowd and freely available on other albums.

That leaves groups one and two, selections from which I'll be offering tonight, including an actual Admiral demo and one from Decca. As we all get used to HDTV, it's interesting to go back and hear the last major transforming event in home entertainment. These albums were meant to push the excitement of stereo, which was new in the home a mere 50 years ago, and many of the same advertising techniques used to make us salivate over flat-screen LCD TVs were used to push stereo on consumers.

If you're in the Boston area, it's 91.5 FM. If you're online, visit wmfo.org for the free Web streams. The show can also be heard directly through iTunes under the Radio>Public link.