Mono recordings - two questions...


1) While I have been an analog fan since the 70's, I never ventured into mono recordings... from an audiophile perspective, how does one listen to mono recordings?  For example, does 'imaging/soundstage depth' matter and is it accomplished through a well-mic'd mono recording?  Obviously tonal balance, impact, resolution are all qualities that should shine through...

2) Would appreciate recommendations of well recorded MONO LP's -- recently bought a Julie London LP in mono it sounded surprisingly nice/natural... not so hot as many later stereo pop recordings...  my musical preference would be for vocals in pop, jazz and soul/r & b realms... in modern artists I would equate these to Diana Krall, Gregory Porter, Adele, Kurt Elling, Sam Smith, M Buble etc etc - 

Thanks in advance
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Showing 1 response by folkfreak

Glad to hear you are getting interested in Mono and the Julie London disc is a good place to start. However one of the great things about Mono is that you do not have to be restricted to re-issues and instead you can go and dig in a wealth of dirt cheap 50s and early 60s material

There is a ton of depth and imaging in a good Mono recording although all in one dimension of course. Reproduced well you can place all of the instruments in relative position to one another

One of the other benefits of mono is actually wider frequency range (i.e. more and cleaner high frequencies) than stereo. The reason for this is that it is easier to design a mono cutting head, it weighs less and can cut the high frequencies more accurately than the corresponding stereo. This is one of the reasons why mono versions of discs that exist in both mono and stereo may be better sounding (and of course the mixes are different)

Anyway on to recommendations.

Anyway good luck!