How did listeners actually play records before RIAA unification — casual listeners, audiophiles, and professionals

How did listeners actually play records?

Question answered on this page: Before EQ curves were unified under the RIAA standard, how did ordinary listeners, audio enthusiasts, and professionals each play their records?

Casual listeners — they just played the record

Typical home phonographs of the 1940s had no facility for selecting a playback EQ curve.

Most consumer equipment used crystal (piezoelectric) pickups, whose constant-amplitude response roughly canceled the recording curve, producing a reasonably balanced sound without any EQ circuit. (→ How did record playback technology evolve?)

The only control available to the listener was the tone control. Its primary purpose was to reduce surface noise (the hissing sound from the disc surface), and the usual approach was to roll off the treble to a comfortable level.

In fact, a 1945 listening test (B.B. Bauer, Electronics magazine) found that 71% of 100 non-technical listeners preferred sound cut off at 3,000 Hz. By contrast, among over 100 radio engineers, 87% preferred reproduction extending above 5,000 Hz.

For typical listeners of the era, high frequencies were a source of noise, not something they wanted to hear more of.

"Phony high fidelity"

In 1944, music critic D.J. Julian wrote candidly in American Music Lover magazine about his frustration with the recordings of the day:

About this time, 'phony high fidelity' reared its monstrous head, when someone decided that increasing the intensity of frequencies in the 3,000 cps region would impart a spurious brilliance that sounded 'nice' on the cheap sets where the output transformers took a nose dive on frequencies above that point. The effect was ear-splitting enough to cut through the noise of a boiler plate works, on a good machine, unless the treble tone control was jammed down hard to maximum attenuation.

Recording engineers were tailoring their sound for listeners' cheap playback equipment, and this in turn created problems for those with higher-quality setups — a situation already well established by the 1940s.

Audio enthusiasts — eager for information, but none was available

In contrast to casual listeners, audio enthusiasts who sought better sound wanted to know the "correct playback settings" for their records.

The editors of Audio Engineering magazine received letters from readers asking questions such as:

• "Please tell me the correct turnover/rolloff values for record X on label Y"
• "Please provide a complete list of playback EQ curves for all labels"

Editor John H. Potts appealed in the November 1947 issue:

NOW that better phonograph pickups and amplifiers are available, the need for more technical data on records is emphasized. To use this equipment intelligently, the cross-over frequency and amount of pre-emphasis used in recording should be known to the purchaser.

However, the labels did not actively disclose their recording characteristics, leaving enthusiasts with no option but to experiment with whatever tone controls they had.

Julian, in the same 1944 article cited above, also wrote:

I question the wisdom of the thrusting upon the patient classical record buyer the capricious and whimsical babel of languages spoken by the companies' engineers. Experimentation should be done in the laboratory — not on the public.

The professional world — standardized switchable equalizers

In professional settings such as broadcast stations, the situation was different.

Professional transcription turntables were equipped with switchable playback equalizers. However, the available options were not as numerous as those on a modern variable-EQ phono preamplifier.

RCA 70-C1 (1945) / 70-D (1948):

• NAB lateral curve
• FLAT (flat above 500 Hz)
• Several high-frequency rolloff positions (for surface noise, worn records)

Pickering 163A (1948):

• 5-position switch (Flat / NAB Transcription / several high-frequency rolloff positions)

Western Electric 171A + KS10066 switch (1945):

• Multiple positions corresponding to transcription standards

What is notable is that even professional equipment was limited to a relatively small number of options: "NAB standard / flat / noise reduction." Outside of broadcast transcription discs — the only format covered by the NAB standard — identifying the correct curve was difficult even for professionals.

The Battle of the Speeds — further confusion (1949–)

In June 1948, Columbia introduced the LP (33⅓ rpm), and in January 1949, RCA Victor introduced the 45 rpm record. Together with the existing 78 rpm disc, three speeds now coexisted.

The New York Times reported on January 10, 1949, under the headline:

"Trade War Traps Record Buyers; 3 Devices Needed to Play All Types"

The confusion extended beyond speeds. Recording characteristics differed from label to label, and even stylus diameters were not standardized. Record historians Read and Welch wrote in their 1959 book From Tin Foil to Stereo:

The advice of Mr. Julian to his fellow engineers was not followed. In fact the situation with respect to recorded characteristics became much worse than at the time he wrote his copy. The recorded characteristics of the current LP's varied from company to company. There was even a difference in the diameter of the styli used to play them.

Consumer amplifiers and curve switching

In the early 1950s, riding the wave of the hi-fi boom, consumer preamplifiers and receivers began to include phono EQ switching.

However, the options were surprisingly limited.

Examining consumer amplifiers from around 1952–1953 (Bell 2200, Fisher 50-C, Newcomb Classic 25, Stromberg-Carlson AR-425, and others), the microgroove positions were typically limited to just two: "Columbia LP / NAB" and "AES." The Newcomb Classic 25 offered only "AES" for microgroove records. Amplifiers with an "RCA" or "Orthophonic" position were virtually nonexistent during this period.

An exceptionally versatile exception was the Marantz Audio Consolette (1951), which allowed turnover and rolloff to be set independently. However, such amplifiers were still very rare.

To make matters worse, even positions with the same name — "AES" or "LP" — could produce different actual playback curves depending on the amplifier's implementation. This fact, easily confirmed by comparing circuit diagrams, was yet another source of confusion for listeners of the era.

An engineering article published one year before the RIAA standard, in April 1953, describes the situation even more directly (Charles P. Boegli, "New Developments in Phono Equalizers," Radio & Television News). Boegli, an audio engineer at Cincinnati Research Company, describes how he approached various record manufacturers directly for data on their recording characteristics. Some concerns — notably RCA Victor — were cooperative; others were slow to reply, and a third group simply ignored his letters. On the basis of the information he did manage to gather, Boegli compiled playback circuit diagrams for more than ten curves — 250N-FLAT, NAB, Columbia LP, AES, London ffrr, New Orthophonic, and others. In the conclusion of the article, Boegli describes the actual state of consumer record playback:

"Since the listener generally has no way of knowing what the artist and technical director want in the way of reproducing sound, random choice of an equalizer, based on 'ear' tests, will almost never result in reproduction satisfactory in the sense described above, and this is essentially the reason why so much has been published on equalizer design."

A 1954 hi-fi primer (Lewis C. Kendall, Hi-Fi Handbook) neatly illustrates where amplifier manufacturers stood. Kendall describes the record compensator (curve-selector switch) as providing the listener with "more or less accurate compensation," explicitly stating that no compensator will provide exact compensation. The reasons he cites: acoustical variations of rooms, speakers, and enclosures; records themselves deviating from the intended norm due to repeated stamping of the master disk; and the fact that major record manufacturers had not standardized on one recording curve.

Boegli in 1953 and Kendall in 1954 — two primary sources, one from an engineer's standpoint and the other from a consumer-facing hi-fi primer — testify to the same reality: consumer phono playback of the era was not about precise curve matching but about "more or less accurate compensation" guided by the listener's ear.

Rapid convergence in the stereo era

When stereo records arrived in the spring of 1958, the situation changed rapidly.

Some early stereo amplifiers had designs in which non-RIAA curve settings applied only to the left channel, and their manuals uniformly instructed users to "play all current LPs, 45s, and stereo records on the RIAA position."

By the mid-1960s, amplifiers with RIAA-only phono equalizers accounted for 80–90% of the market. Only a handful of high-end models, such as the McIntosh C-20 (1959) and the Harman-Kardon Citation I (1960), retained multi-curve support.

Playback in professional settings

Broadcast stations and recording studios faced a different set of challenges from those of consumers.

Adapting to microgroove (c. 1950)

Even after the LP and 45 rpm record appeared, professional playback equipment did not immediately catch up.

An article in the 1950 issue of RCA Broadcast News (H.E. Roys, "How to Use Standard Filters with New Flat Magnetic Pickup") described how to use the NAB transcription playback filter MI-4975 with the new microgroove records. However, because the recording characteristics of Columbia and RCA Victor differed, it was impossible to reproduce both perfectly flat, and the article presented a "compromise" correction circuit using resistors and capacitors.

Even in professional settings, playback equalization for microgroove records was a matter of trial and error.

Around the same time, the Gray 602 equalizer (1950–51) offered four positions for broadcast use:

1. FLAT
2. Transcriptions (NAB) & Quiet Records
3. Good Records
4. Poor Records

The category names "Good Records" and "Poor Records" vividly illustrate how much guesswork was involved in curve selection at the time.

Standardization through NARTB / AES / RIAA (1953–1954)

In June 1953, the NARTB (formerly NAB) revised its recording and playback standard. In January 1954, the RIAA approved its standard (the standard document circulated formally in June), and in June 1954, the AES gave its final approval as well. The three standards defined essentially identical characteristics.

In response to this standardization, professional playback equipment transitioned to RIAA. Passive playback equalizers such as the Cinema Engineering Type 7087 appeared and were used for studio monitoring.

Playback equalizers built into recording systems

Notably, from the late 1950s onward, recording systems (cutting systems) also began to incorporate RIAA playback equalizers for monitoring.

The Gotham PFB-150WA recording amplifier (c. 1954–55) had a frequency response within 2 dB of the RIAA curve. The Fairchild 641 stereo recording system (1958) and the Westrex 3A/2B system also included RIAA monitor playback circuits.

Examining the circuit diagrams and manuals of numerous recording systems from the 1950s through the 1970s, one finds that RIAA recording equalizers were built into the recording amplifiers and RIAA playback equalizers into the monitor amplifiers.

Even during the transitional period when consumer amplifiers still offered curve switching, professional recording and playback systems were converging on RIAA as a fixed standard.

Resolution through RIAA unification

With the RIAA curve established in 1954 and labels transitioning to it in sequence, the question "which curve should I use for playback?" was gradually resolved — at least for new releases.

However, for the vast catalog of records made before that date, the difficulty of identifying the "correct curve" remains to this day.

→ What EQ curves existed before RIAA?

→ Do I need a variable-EQ phono preamplifier?

→ Why are there so many conflicting opinions about EQ curves?

For details → Pt.9, Pt.11, Pt.12, Pt.13, Pt.17, Pt.18, Pt.19, Pt.22

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