Long Live Mono!

Unless you are sitting in the right spot with the speakers a certain distance apart and you a certain distance back....or have headphones on(the best way to hear stereo) you don't get the effect anyway.

Not to many people even with HI-FI at home sit and listen like that.

Most of the time you're not hearing the stereo anyway. Spent most of my time listening to a radio....one speaker.

The majority of my music isn't even in stereo.

Mark

Tim in Bovey knows sound and is correct about mono.

In fact, every acoustical instrument including the human voice is a MONAURAL instrument!

Monaural sound yields a COHERENT reproduction of a monaural sound instrument.

The spacial effect of stereophonioc sound is a whole other subject in which the INCOHERENT SPACIAL REFLECTIONS of the performance space gets mixed together with coherent mono sounds.

The standard way of listening to stereo sound is so ignorant and stupid I am amazed no speaker maker has managed to convince the public to seek a more sensible way of reproducing stereo sound at the point where loudspeakers are involved, except that... well there are reasons for keeping the public spending money to "improve" bad systems... if people loved a perfect, simple, low cost speaker system you'd never sell more than one per person.

Having two speakers 8-feet apart, the standard setup, in no way models the real acoustical world... our ears aren't placed 8-feet apart! All it does is create a distorted trick-mirror effect which contorts sound way outside of natural realism.

And speakers in a rectangular box? More hideous distortion! There is no such thing as a rectangular enclosure anywhere in the natural world.

There are techniques for producing very realistic stereo compatible with mono (speakerwise) but the general population accepts low quality and even gets fiesty when "the norm" is brought into question.

I've already said too much.

Suffice to say, "Yes Tim, monaural is great."

Yes, but you put those instruments together in a studio and mono gives you get a false representation of what your ears would hear if you were in the same space. That was the point of stereo. Remember, we have two ears, and we're not listening to the instruments one at a time.

My hifi speakers are at ear level across the room, and placed approx 10' apart.
I listen standing up, so i do get a good stereo field.

This evening i am listening to am stereo through it from my refurbed Carver TX-11a tuner, with full 12khz processed audio, sounds great !

It certainly sounds more exciting than mono.

Paul.

Tim in Bovey knows sound and is correct about mono.

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Suffice to say, "Yes Tim, monaural is great."

Oh my GOD.  Boardmaker is right.  Get a Carver or a  Macintash, Yamaha, Luxman, a pair of KEF 104's or a good pair of B&W Rock Solid speakers and you have the recipe for a great Stereo system.  The problem with most people Today is that for them its all about that Base.  I swear we have a lot of tone deaf folks in America.  Sit back and listen to a Moody Blues album – To Our Children's Children's Children, or In Search Of The Lost Chord.  Pink Floyd – The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn or even Electric Light Orchestra and Queen.  You sit and listen to a REALLY GOOD Progressive Rock album on a system designed for Album Rock and I guarantee you that you'll NEVER EVER want to hear a Mono system ever again till your dying day.  Too often many folks have not heard a system or set up a system to Album Rock standards.   Its a pity because Today the general public is musically challenged at best.  I bet 87% of the population doesn't know that if it were not for Classical music, there would be NO ROCK music.  In fact many Progressive Rock artists I play mix Classical with Rock.  Sweet – Love Is Like Oxygen (Not the dumb down short version) I'm talking about the version from Level Headed is a great example of what I'm talking about.  The Beatles was one of the groups that made Stereo known to the public.  Oh maybe you should also check out The Byrds – 8 Miles High.  Now that is what STEREO should be recorded like Today.  Problem is Today's artists simply use sub divided mono (Synthesized Stereo) where the music is actually recorded in mono and later separated.  I've heard some recordings made Today I knew was not originally in Stereo as far as the way the band recorded it.  If I had a record studio and you came into my office to demo your band and it was Mono it would go RIGHT in the Trash without a second thought and I would tell them to come back when they can learn to mix their recordings in Stereo.  I'm sorry but Most Album Rockers are exactly like I am.  That is why it was hard for me to even conceive the notion of an AM Transmitter at first.  However AM can sound good on a portable like a Grundig or German made Radio.  The problem in America is that they have been brainwashed to a musical disability with the slamming base of Rap and repetitive phrases such as “Brother Bill” slap clap “Brother Bill” slap clap which went on for 4 minutes during the credits of a movie I was watching and waiting for the next one to come on.  Heck you can listen to something like that with a 9 Ft speaker and a 32 inch subwoofer turned to full and think it sounds just beautiful.  Then when you can't hear your spouse 2 Ft from you you actually have to stop to wonder why?

I'll be the first to admit that most people today are clearly brainwashed about what good sound is.  Anyone who ever buys a pair of Beats headphones clearly has NO idea what things really sound like.  

I own a ton of very fine stereo equipment. Both recent and vintage. I know good stereo. Believe me.  I have 40,000 records, and a stereo system in nearly every room in the house. 

What I'm saying is Mono can be amazing as well.

At a typical concert or music event, you're not hearing the music in the same sort of stereo you're hearing in your headphones or your fancy stereo system.  Unless you're sigging in just the right sweet spot. Don't try to tell me that sitting in a 50,000 seat auditorium in row 125 you're hearing that favorite classic rock band in stereo!  Nope. You're hearing a wall of sound with no definition.

I bought all the progressive and classic rock albums long before they were "classic" and I saw hundreds of the bands live when they were current bands. The live shows NEVER sounded like the records, simple because you can't create all the fancy stereo effects in real life, and even if you could about 6 people would be able to hear them, if they were in just the right spot.  Marvels of engineering and recording, yes. "Real"? No.

I must say I had the most amazing stereo sound demonstration ever at a place called Acoustic Sounds in Salina Kansas. 

http://store.acousticsounds.com/

I heard a demo in their listening room.  They put on a vintage jazz LP from the early days of stereo. Louie Armstrong as his band.  As I sat in the room in the perfect "sweet spot" listening I was amazed.  You would swear the musicians were right there on the stage (rather than a few hundred thousand dollars worth of speakers).  I got up from the listening sofa, and closed my eyes and walked up to the stage (yes, it's a stage, but with speakers), then up onto the stage, among the 6 foot tall speakers and I swear I could hear each individual instrument in it's place, right there next to me on the stage.  It was amazing.

But in practical use only true fanatics (and rich ones at that) will have such a system.  In real life people crank up the stereo and go about their business, and they couldn't tell stereo from mono. 

I have a friend who owns a record company who only puts out mono 45's. He insists stereo was invented to sell twice as many speakers and component parts.  LOL.

EVERY record you've mentioned above I have. I bought them when they were new. I've heard them in mono and stereo.  As for the Beatles they were all originally mixed specifically for MONO. There are interviews with George Martin all over the web. Much more care was put in to the mono mixes than the stereo. Most people played their Beatles records on mono record players. That's where they put their effort.  At least through the White Album. 

Mono has it's place.  And that place is just about everywhere.

TIB

Mono Radio can sound amazing, AM Stereo can also sound amazing as can FM Stereo. It's all about the quality of the airchain. There's a classic rocker that simply sounds fantastic in FM Stereo through the Delco in the 82 Chevy P/U. 

As stereo goes, I've found less is more in regards to audio processing.

Funny you mention the Beatles...

Their stereo mixes were AWFUL, lose a channel and you literally lose half the damn song.

Stereo recordings are hard to get right.  The cheap way to create a stereo image is to use the pan control to put some sources centered, some sources to somewhat the left, and some sources somewhat to the right.  A better way to get a real stereo recording is to use pairs of microphones for interesting instruments and record one microphone panned hard left and one panned hard right.  I have seen plenty of effects processors that are mono in but stereo out; an aux fed reverb is a good example.  In that case the quality of the reverb can do a lot to take a mono mirophoned source and add stereo depth to it.  If a stereo recording is mixed down to mono it can have phasing issues.

On the other hand, a mono mix is easier.  Get the levels and EQ right for each source and you are practically done.  A mono mix, presented as dual channel stereo, mixed down to mono, should not have phasing issues.

Tim started the discussion by saying he liked the quality of monaural recordings, and I took that to mean "vinyl monaural recordings."

As far as that's concerned I continued choosing monaural disks over stereo back when both version were available, for two reasons...

I thought at the time that the monaural vinyl records had better sound characteristics... the stereo releases seemed fuzzier and often had phasing problems when mixed to mono, which is what happens when they're played on AM or mono FM radios.

As several have mentioned, making a good stereophonic recording has all kinds of difficulties, the ultimate problem being the mix-down to monaural which will always exist as a problem.

It is very easy to make a stereo recording that sounds great in stereo but sounds terrible when mixed to mono.

The phase problem is a chronic fault of motion picture soundtracks, which are sometimes 5.1 channels, where the actor's voices get buried in the mix, compounded by the fact that many actors today mumble and need speech therapy.

There's the whole dimension of loudspeakers and the problems they introduce to a listening room, and hearing someone tell me their "stereo field" is great admits nothing about the mono-mix heard by radio listeners, which to me is the bottom line.

FWIW many broadcast processors correct phasing issues when swtiching down to mono, making this less of an issue for the big boys. For example the Optimod 9000A at the Class D AM can make a Beatle Stereo Record sound just fine in mono.

am mono when done right with a good processor can sound excellent. i give WSM as a good example.

Some sixties music was manipulated for a more dramatic stereo effect, to give it more wow factor, also the Phil Spectors wall of sound is another effect of manipulation.

For myself i am quite critical on audio quality, having designed and built analogue processing gear over the years, you always want to improve on designs.

I have spent silly amounts of my life, especially 86 through to 2000 modifying and improving broadcast gear, some would say it is an obsession.

Paying particular attention to things such as fm pll loopfilter design, to allow deep bass to be faithfully reproduced without problems.

As i am fortunate to have various pro broadcast gear, repaired and calibrated on my bench.

The problem is if you have this gear, a standard domestic type of round the house tx will not do it justice.

I am talking about fidelity here, not range.

Audio processing is a very subjective thing, for myself listening to off the air processing with Pink Floyd and various other AOR brings me a sense of satisfaction.

I do like various types of music, as i was a teenager in the 70's !

Also i never use mp3 files, only linear.

Paul.