And I thought you were going to talk about Frank’s stereo system!

My uncle, Ron Anthony, was a guitarist for Frank Sinatra. Toured with him around the world. Not a bad gig.

I loved Frank Sinatra. He was one of the absolute best vocalists and perfectionist at his craft. Every syllable and vowel he sang perfectly. There will never be another Frank. The definition of class ! So dedicated to his passion. BTW these so called recording artist of this era could not wipe the dust off of Franks shoes and that is my honest opinion. Who in their right mind wouldn't give credit to the musicians who played the music on their C'd . That speaks volumes on a person's lack of integrity....

Thanks, Steve. SInatra was one of the first and most prominent individuals to integrate the entertainment world. He stood fiercely for bringing black musicians - Sammy Davis Jr., for example - before the public, into recording studios and into concert halls. Great man, he was.

I recently spent a month rebuilding a Presto 800, the reel to reel deck shown in that picture is Sinatra threading tape on his music system.

Great food for thought. A love of Frank was a!so passed on to me by my parents.

This is a great sounding album! On my system the orchestra is dispersed high above my speakers. They were set up with those RCA mics in such a way to produce this sound. Frank's voice were rock solid centered. Great album. Thanks for the suggestion!

Sinatra really appreciated musicians and their true talent.

Really nice sounding legacy record, if you can manage to find a clean copy. Back in the day, Sinatra records got played quite a bit. I found a Vg++ copy in Pittsburgh PA and was thrilled with my purchase.

Sonny Bono credited the back up musicians on Cher and his work. True integrity! Thanks Steve.

Frank Sinatra endorsed the 50's 60's Canadian Hi Fi company CLAIRTONE....I guess he was an audiophile......great video Steve.....Thanks.

Based on the segment photo, I would definitely say Frank was a dedicated fan of HiFi. I’m going to have to look for this album. Thanks, Steve!

The Sinatra live at the Sands record was another gem from Frank

Steve , I always appreciate your writing on the subject of audio equipment and music reproduction . You are a truly dedicated human being . Thank you . ( I have been involved in music since 1954 when I first picked up the trumpet and in the audio business since 1969 , when I founded Audio Salon ( later Audio-Video Salon) - The late Jonas Miller , founder of Jonas Miller Sound and Miller & Kreisel Speakers , was a friend. He told me that shortly after he had relocated to Southern California from New Jersey in 1938 and opened a " Music Shop" , young Frank Sinatra , who had just been hired by trumpet king and band leader , Harry James , to go out on the road with with his band as boy vocalist , came to see him. Frank , wanted a custom , portable "Phonograph" with a better record playing system, amplifier and speaker to travel with him. Jonas had one built and sold it to Frankie Boy ! Frank was ecstatic and the rest is history ,.. I'm writing this of course to add some historical perspective to Mr Sinatra's love of high end sound.... Jim Coleman

Thanks for such a great cast! Enjoyed the information and will seek out this LP for purchase. I have a few FS LPs but not this one.

Steve man, THANK YOU! I couldn't agree more with this post! Great morning here in Montreal! Steve bringing musicians to the forefront to hifi heads and I just purchased legal weed from the government of Canada!!! Happy days.

You made me aware of this album and I came across an excellent copy of it in a record store in Portland, Oregon. Snatched it up and it sounds great.

Thank you for speaking about how recording use to be done: The orchestra and the performer in the studio together PERFORMING! There was no overdubbing, little to no EQ, natural sound leakage between mics & channels and a beautiful recording sounding recording stage -- NATURAL LIVE SOUNDING ---not canned. Also, this Concert Sinatra album was recorded on 35 mag film which had better signal to noise and wow and flutter specs than professional reel to reel tape at that time. This album has been remastered to CD from the original mixed down analog 2 track reel to reel master but to my knowledge the original 35mm film masters have not been found. Many believe the dynamic range and noise would greatly improve if a direct to digital transfer could be made from the original mag film. I'd love to hear it because the arrangement and performance are wonderful and so are the acoustics of the MGM scoring stage. It's really an American treasure and ought to be preserved for future generations to enjoy. Thanks again for presenting this.

Living Stereo series. Some SACDs are just amazing. Recorded in the beginning of true hifi and in stereo. Some of the old stuff is so much better than the new stuff.

So were a few other celebs. Werner Klemperer (Colonel Klink) was a musician and audiophile. He was even featured in a number of stereo ads. Ann Margaret also had some kick ass stereo gear and huge music collection.

Looking at the thumbnail, and thinking about when you said Frank had his three channel stereo... I believe the all-original, mid-60s Motorola I have in storage works the same way, because it has separate defeat switches for its three speakers.

I WAS FRANK SINATRAS NEIGHBOUR IN SUNSET BOULEVARD DECADES AGO HE PLAYED MUSIC ALL THROUJH THE NIGHT AND SIMPLY REFUSED TO SLEEP !NICE SOUND ANYWAY !!!

Sinatra`s work during the Nelson Riddle period created some very good recordings....

More than that, Frank Sinatra is regarded as the father of the LP recording, he was first to use the concept of an “album” of related songs.

Frank Sinatra was primarily into Classical Music as a listener.

Couple of things to add: 1) Ribbon mics are some of the earliest mic technology and similar to the way the human ear hears. Ribbons are known for their natural, even sound. One primary reason is that air / sound waves pass over a very thin ribbon and the ribbon vibrates along WITH the waves. By contrast, CONDENSER or DYNAMIC mics employ membranes that FACE the air/sound and are moved much the same way one would bounce on a trampoline. Ribbons tend to translate spikes or transients in air/sound very SMOOTHLY because of the way they respond, whereas condensers and dynamics can reproduce transients rather harshly. 2) Ribbons by their nature are FIGURE 8, meaning they pick up sound front and back, null at the sides. Voice actors make use of this to mimic "walking away" from a scene by simply moving to the side of the mic - your volume decreases until you're (nearly) gone. Sound engineers make use of this too - where they point a ribbon determines what it picks up AND what part of the room behind it too! Check out "Recording, 50's Style" where a 4-pc band is recorded with one RCA 44. 3) The mic in front of Frank is NOT a ribbon, it is the Neumann U47 he favored, a condenser. This mic might have even been on loan / rental from Capitol for the session. 4) One RCA 44 will set you back about 4 grand today. Multiply this by, what did you say? 24? Whew. It was a very good year. Hell, it was a very good era!!

I think we must have had about a dozen 44BX microphones at WBAA. That's the most 44BX I've seen in one place.

Couple of things about that album and those mics. 1) The RCA 44 and its variants was the first high fidelity mic from 1932 onward - until the Neumann U47/48 Frank is singing into, as seen on the front cover. 1) The RCA is a RIBBON mic. The ribbon is sensitive and blowing directly into it can actually stretch the ribbon. 2) The 44's are a Figure 8 pattern of pickup; if you stood above the mic and looked down over it and traced a big number on top - that's how the mic picked up sound. Two sides were active, two sides were dead - so you could tell the mic what to "hear" depending on how you positioned it! Many old radio broadcasts used 44s with two people talking on either side of it. To simulate "leaving the room" all you had to do was move 90 degrees around the mic and your volume would drop. 3) The mic had a WIDE area of pick up, like most early mics. This meant you could cover a good amount of ground with one mic. All this together explains why they are hanging overhead. Although, to be honest, the number of mics used was probably overkill. But the results sound DAMN GOOD, don't they, Steve? : ) : ) www.coutant.org/rca44bx/

My understanding is that at one time, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin each had _three_ JBL Paragons. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JBL_Paragon

One thing about that Sinatra album you mentioned. The one that used 24 RCA 44BX ribbon microphones. This was a strange choice, even in 1960. 44BX mics were at least 25 years old, even then. This “diamond shaped “ mike was the standard of AM radio through the 1930’s and well into the 40’s and is what most lay-persons think of when they think “microphone”. The problem is that this mike had very little frequency response over 10 KHz! It was designed for, as I say, AM radio in the 1930’s, which had little bandwidth above 5 KHz (there were exceptions). So there was no need for HF extension beyond 10 KHz. The mike was used well into the 1950s for Early TV, and was the standard mike for film and 78 RPM recordings in the 1940’s. The mike was at least partially responsible for the sound of 78s in that era. They were and are NOT suitable for stereo orchestral recording in the stereo era. I really wonder why Sinatra chose them in 1960 to make a then “modern” recording? It’s a puzzlement.

That black & white photo shows a trio of 351 Ampex's, but the deck appears to be a quarter inch (A-350?) Three track recording was the norm in the 50's but on half inch tape.

Beyonce is a consumer product while Frank was the artist.

This should be a Facebook page so everyone can post photo of audio equipment

I rented Frank's Palm Springs house about 8 years ago, and his original audio system is still there, but not hooked up. There is no question that it was state of the art for the time. 16" transcription TT and custom made tube gear. All installed by Valentino Electronics of Hollywood. There are photos on the internet.

Say what you want, but Steve sure can tell a story. Brilliant

I once owned one of those 44's, with a shock mount desk stand, in flawless condition. I sold it roughly 15 years ago. The guy collected broadcast RCA gear. He was so happy when he got it home, and upon further investigation, realized that it was actually an ORIGINAL ribbon in it. Apparently the Holy Grail of 44's. He was happy, I was happy. The end.

I acquired, enjoyed and eventually disposed of hundreds of LPs from collections owned by my aunt and my grandmother, dating from the beginning of the LP vinyl format (I foolishly let all the 78 RPMs go). It was normal then for album covers to provide excruciating details about the microphones, recording devices and other minutia about the equipment and techniques used to record the album. The tech notes you quote on this Sinatra album are typical of albums produced in that era and for many, many years beforehand. I find them fascinating too, but they're not unusual.

The Concert Sinatra was not recorded at MGM. It was done on Stage 7 of The Samuel Goldwyn Studio. The very same scoring stage Max Steiner used to record his score for Gone with the Wind. Although Goldwyn used RCA ribbon mics, they also used Neumann condenser mics. The microphone Sinatra is singing into is a Neumann. As for the microphone placement, it’s still done today, only with a lot more mics.

I thought this would be a breakdown of Frank’s audio equipment, all this seems to be is a dissertation about microphones and Beyoncé

I love this kind of stuff. Questions involving observations. All those ribbon microphones operating simultaneously. A technological tour de force. There is obviously a major, high level effort behind a production of this scale. A very varied roster of artists on that label, too. Interesting history historical tidbits.

Truth is funnier than fiction. Thanks B

I read that somewhere back in the mid to late 70s Frank bought a set on Beveridge 2SWs, a very fine electrostatic speaker of the day.

I am not a Sinatra fan but I appreciate the he respected musicians and sound.

Those notes are part of that time's romance with the idea if high fidelity. Before computers it represented advanced technology along with cinemascope and cinerama. As we know many recordings from that time before multitrack recordings have sound quality that has never been bettered. They were essentially live to 2 or max 3 tracks. It's not that you couldn't do that now it's just that no one wants to risk being that exposed. You really have to have your chops together. It's a high wire act. No one can do that today. Then it was all they knew.

I don't know if Sinatra was an audiophile but he was a consummate and very generous musician. Recordings of his live concerts include him giving credit to the song writers and the band. I don't know how seriously he took life. It looks like he had a lot of fun (although reputedly he did suffer from depression), but he took his music very seriously. He said that all he owed his public was the best performance he could deliver and he did his best to keep that promise.

Great video!

Damn! Stereos sure were bigger back in those days weren't they?

Wasn’t that album recorded on 35mm Mag originally? Preserving that stuff is a real headache. Got to applaud any artist that cared about sound quality. Now we have recording studios in our phones. But audio quality is now a niche interest. Funny old world. I guess the difference these days is popular music as a legacy offshoot of our culture’s obsession with fame ( ooh harsh).

i literally just bought this record last week. Soliloquy is excellent and really the only song I like on it (at least for right now). Going to give it another listen after watching this! :)

Why has Raymond V. Pepe, President of the Institute of High Fidelity Inc. (see the back of the album) not been consulted on more of these debates about tubes vs. solid state, CD vs. vinyl, MQA etc? He's the PRESIDENT of the Institute of HiFi for goodness sake!!

As a musician from that era, I thought it might interest your readers to know Sinatra stood in front of the band and the conductor, there were no monitor speakers for the musicians, and everyone listened and heard each other via the good acoustics of the old sound stages. Further, Sinatra rarely did more than three takes, and often he and the band nailed it on the first take.

Ah, the good old days! Music will never be the same ... sad!

I have that album on CD. I don’t remember seeing those notes inside the cd booklet. I do remember reading an article in digital audio magazine (or many mix magazine) about the xfer of Sinatra albums to CD. I think it had Lee Hershburg (sp) from Warner as the interviewee.

I have noticed a 'little triangle' at the upper left hand corner in this video, is it meant for some kind of sound absorption or so?

Beyonce and most of the modern pop singers aren't in it for the music anymore. That's why they want you to know what clothes she wears...

I'd guess that the screaming Nelson Riddle violins are tamed a bit on this album. Yes? When I think of Nelson Riddle, overbearing screaming violins always come to mind! 🙃

Cool information!!! I wonder if anyone has released a 24bit version of this album. 🙃

When I was a kid, I thought Reprise was a disclaimer, like it was devalued content, as in a TV rerun. Or a greatest hits compilation, of previously released material.

There's no question Sinatra was an audiophile. He was also a great respecter of musicians.

This is great. Sinatra trumps Beyonce.

Plus he'd only record with Telefunken U-47s. Still a legendary microphone

Sinatra. The greatest. And really good for making out!

Hey Steve what about Verve Recordings? I think they used just a couple of Microphones to record

The problems I've heard with Sinatra's stuff on Reprise is that the cutting heads were frequency limited. I hear the cut off up top at about 14-15K, and down below at about 40 HZ. making those recordings sounding rather dry and papery to me. To me ALL of his recordings, especially "Sinatra At The Sands" with Count Basie, need to be remastered and reissued. There is just a great recording in there dying to get out.

bring back 3-channel!!! talk about a niche market, but I would be a total sucker for that. I have always, well since I was maybe 10, thought that 3-channel would be the most practical way to get good room-filling sound and a nice "3-D" image in a relatively wide listening area. The Chairman of the Board had it right! 3 channels is the way to go - ring a ding ding!

Listen to!I have dreamed perfection testament to his talent and the genius of Nelson Riddle .In terms of Audio Excellence his best Albums are Nice and Easy and Great Songs from Great Britain,recorded in 1962at the wonderful CTS studio Bayswater,the engineer wasthe brilliant EricTomlinson,who gave us all the music recording for Bond Star Wars and all JohnBarry’s scores#

Well if he wasn't he sure could afford to be one. Im still using an amp i bought way back in 1985! Its badly in need of a re-cap. If you a rich audiophile be grateful. I tell you todays hi fi gear is priced too darn high!!!

The last great American artist, of unmatched talent, immense musical production, producer and multi-instrumentist, and perhaps one of the five best guitarists that the world has seen, was PRINCE. (who was also a fan of the quality of his recordings) Forgive the digression.

He may have been an audiophile, but I don't think he was a hippie.

Do you have any videos on where to start with high fi audio? Where would you recommend a complete Noob with like 1500 dollars to start with?

hi steve. Can you help me to find a( rreciever? not sure what I need here)that I can play my i phone music and my sansa clip mp3 player to send sound to my speakers? I bought Yahama receiver and was dissapointed to find there was no usb port. what is it called that I need?

processed foods, processed music. in the future when we’re all eating soylent green, what will the music sound like?

Maybe sometime you can tell us what made up his home system? Trying to identify the components in the video post..h.h. scott and jbl??...in the wee small hours on original green or grey label mono is one of his best audiophile recordings.

Just a comment about the post where the writer dismisses Sinatra as someone to whom no one listens any more. While I’m not a Sinatra “fan”, I do recognize that people will be listening to Sinatra long after the mention of Beyoncé will elicit the response “Huh? Who?”.

I often wondered about how some performers regarded sound and music reproduction. Visiting Graceland you get to see what Elvis had in his personal spaces and it wasn't all that impressive to say the least. A built-in console radio unit in the rec room of a generic make iirc and given what he could have had in those days of what was available to audiophiles that was not impressive to say the least. A guy with his wealth it looked like he still shopped at K-Mart.

Does it say what kind of tape machine was used? How many tracks?

That's a magnificent album, all Richard Rogers songs. And Frank was in top form.

I've only one minor nit to pick: you mispronounced "Reprise." I've always heard it pronounced re-PREEZE, not re-PRIZE. But I double-checked and found the usage note at www.thefreedictionary.com/reprise

Not sure if he was an audiophile, but without a doubt picky about the equipment. He had some exclusive gir at home, like the JBL Paragon.

reprise..wow..i believe that's the label for Beefheart's 'lick my decals off baby'!

FS still the master of his craft!

Frank Sinatra home in Palm Springs with his home recording studio at 2.20: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z5p3nN2QprWRc30.html

I think Frank sang exclusively in to a Telefunken U47.

Well her ya go! Today, I got this record. It’s an original Reprise not a Japanese pressing. It’s in pristine-just like I openness it in 1963, when I was four yrs old! The idiot sold it to me for 9 bucks! Including the original everything including Reprise’s record jacket with their advertising for that release time. I’d love to send you pictures of this but don’t see a way to include here.

Lol you'd never see Beyonce spinning on my deck.

I bet the Frank Sinatra LP art director was ticked by placing that audio spec bug on the front cover. I would be. Can the AD object to the Chairman of The Board?

Sinatra to Beyonce. It's DEVOlution

I see no "worse"in 68, ony better beside technology.

Thank you for sharing...W-A-Y over my head!😂😂😂

soon.

Of course 24 mics, they were probably using an early 24 track machine with a 36 position board.

Steve, I didn't know you were British. Yes, someone had to say it. The word is "re-preez" in American English. In addition to being an audiophile, I am a linguaphile as well.

I don't know, but I have a feeling that if Frank was an current artist, we would probably only get info similar to that found on the Beyonce album on his. Use what's uniquely marketable.

I have multiple copies of that album and I love it. I believe Frank was an audiophile as he had some of the best equipment of that day to play the music he loved. I would also say that FS Jr. May have b een also. When he died some of his stuff from his estate was sold on eBay and there was a lot of stereo equipment that he had amassed sold.

is it 24 microphones for 24 tracks on 2" tape?

Sinatra hated hippies, you delude yourself sir, he owned the rights of his movies, including the Manchurian Candidate...not a Business man? The money was in movies

So.....how does the album sound Steve?

I've seen pictures of Sinatra listening to his home stereo, using a Fischer tube amp that was exactly the same one that my father had when I grew up. Interesting that the finest Sinatra cold get was also within the grasp of someone on a schoolteacher's salary..

See you again real.... :)

After watching your video I'm still wondering if Frank was a audiophile