Although I like stereo, often I find it contrived. More fun than actually adding to the music realism.
I see the Beatles have a "mono" collection available.
Are there any "mono" advocates out there? While I realize there is no "left / right" imaging, is there a sense of realism that isn't captured in stereo?
Your post is well received as you are in the "learning mode". This is always good!
I have the Beatles mono box and many others. I've been trying to ad to my mono collection and have a mono cart.
Here's what I've found out through my own investing in mono recordings over the past 2/3 years.
Since I listen mostly to rock... the early rock recordings that were initially recorded in mono, do sound the best reproduced in mono. Although you can have a good experience through a stereo cartridge, the absolutely best way is in mono with vinyl.
I was surprised early on, how dimensional mono records sound even when through a stereo cart. This just improves with a mono cart. Your question "Is there a greater sense of realism?" is a great one! My answer is yes!
In the end, I think it all depends on how much "the best" reproduction of the music in your own home actually means to you. Then, it IS worth the investment.
When you listen to mono, you should use a single speaker, in the center, not two speakers playing the same signal, it won't sound the same.
When you listen to stereo, one thing you will notice is instruments at the sides get brighter than those at the center, even when you have ideal imaging. This is caused by your head. Neo:6 music mode and multi-channel playback gets rid of this.
I personally like the spatial illusions a great deal. I do think there is something about music not captured in mono. If you have ever seen a painting with texture and depth, and try to photograph it, the 2D image never captures the richness you have with the painting in front of you for this reason, in addition to issues of ink color matching. This 2-eyed perspective changes everything.
At the same time, recordings matter a lot. I'm not big on the wall of sound type productions. I rank that right up there with excessive compression and noise to fill time between commercials.
Music recorded in a studio on a multi-channel recorder is not really a "Stereo" recording. It is a "multiple-Mono" recording, each individual mono channel having recorded the sound of a single microphone. Each channel’s signal is then "panned" somewhere between the left and right Stereo loudspeakers during the "mixing" of the recording. True Stereo recordings are usually made with a recorder have either two or three channels, fed from a mixer combining the sound received from a microphone array (containing as few as two mics, up to maybe a dozen) placed in a large room (concert hall, church, etc.). The individual channels are NOT panned between left and right during post-recording production as are multi-Mono recordings, the mic positions having been arrived at before recording began to achieve the desired sound stage and instrument images. True Stereo recordings date mostly from the 1950’s and early 60’s.
Prior to the late 60’s, Pop And Rock ’n’ Roll LP’s were offered in both Stereo and Monaural pressings, Stereo retailing for a dollar more. The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan spend days mixing the Monaural versions of their albums, leaving the Stereo mixes for an Assistant Engineer to crank out in about an hour (time is money, especially in a professional studio, now over $300/hr for the good ones). Bob Dylan’s early albums sound ridiculous in Stereo, his voice coming out of one speaker, his guitar out of the other!
Consumer alert! If buying original pressings, avoid at all costs any and all "simulated Stereo", "reprocessed from Monaural", LP’s. All they are is Monaural recordings that have had the left and right channels equalized in grossly different directions, for instance the left with all the bass removed and the right all the treble. That was done to many of the early Beach Boys albums (though the Surfer Girl album was not, for some reason. The Stereo version of that album is not reprocessed Mono), Capitol Records labeling the fake-Stereo pressings "Duophonic". They sound TERRIBLE! Reprise Records did the same thing to some of the Kinks albums. The early Kinks sound phenomenal in Mono!
In the late 60’s Rock ’n’ Rollers starting using the studio to create intentionally un-lifelike sounds---guitars jumping from left to right, for instance. The very beginning of "Listen My Friends" on the 1st Moby Grape album features that exact effect. When heard on a Monaural pressing, the beginning sounds wrong! But for Rock ’n’ Roll, the sound of all the instruments and voices combined into a single image can be much more powerful and explosive than if they are spread apart in space. The early Who albums, for instance. Live concerts are in Mono, both the left and right P.A. stacks pounding out the same sound. I like "small" music (Bluegrass, Jazz ensembles, Baroque groups, etc.) recorded in an intimate setting without a lot of post-recording electronic "sweetening" (reverb, echo, etc.) in Stereo, as the separation between instruments and voices allows the playing and singing of each to be more clearly heard, each sound inhabiting it’s own space. It fits the music, too. Those musics are often performed in small venues, and the physical positions and separation of the instruments at a live performance is replicated in the Stereo version (even if in reality actually a "simulated" Stereo multiple-Monaural recording) of the album.
The early Beatles releases are very poorly mixed in stereo so mono is better in that particular case. In most of other cases stereo gives you imaging and mono does not.
Nice post, bdp. On the early Beach Boys LPs, I recall that Surfin' Safari, Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, Shut Down Vol. 2, Little Deuce Coupe, the Christmas album, In Concert and All Summer Long were all stereo. The Duophonic crap started with Beach Boys Today and Summer Days (at least, I think so).
czarivey, I may be in the minority but I prefer the early Beatles in stereo. Of course I wish they'd done a better job with the panning of the tracks but given the method they used (bouncing between two four tracks, etc.) I'll live with it. If I"m not mistaken the early mono mixes were done from the stereo mix, so the stereo would be one generation fresher on top of everything else. I know that later they did separate mixes.
What’s very interesting about The Beatles mixes is that some songs have different instruments either included or not. In other words, a given song on an original pressing of the white album may have a guitar part on the Stereo version that is not present on the Mono! There are a number of such songs, though I can’t name them. Collectors magazines and websites can provide such information for anyone desiring it.
It's been quite a while since I last heard the early Beach Boys LP's in non-Monaural pressings tostado (I used to have them all), but I specifically remember being surprised by the true Stereo Surfer Girl album. Emblazened across the top of the LP jacket's front cover is the huge Capitol Records' <STEREO> banner, while the other BB albums that aren't Monaural are labeled Duophonic (sometimes in very small type ;-). I'm quite certain about Surfin' Safari, Surfin' U.S.A., Little Deuce Coupe, Shut Down Volume 2, All Summer Long, Smiley Smile (a really bad recording anyway, unfortunately. It contains some of my favorite Brian Wilson writing), and Wild Honey. The last two Capitol albums, Friends and 20/20, ARE regular stereo. Their next album---Sunflower, the first for Reprise Records, had a paragraph on the back of the gatefold cover, detailing how the recording was a "True Stereo" one, not a multiple-Mono one as I described earlier. Pretty Audiophilic! I don't know whether or not it's true, but who was talking about such things in 1970?!
By the way, Capitol Records released three Beach Boys albums in 1963, three in '64, three in '65, and two in '67, with "only" one (Pet Sounds) in '66. My how the record business has changed!
bdp, yes, the later Beatles mixes can be very different between stereo and mono. Listen to the stereo version of the song Yellow Submarine and you don't hear "a life of ease--everyone of of us" and on the stereo Sgt. Pepper's Reprise you don't hear McCartney's "barker" shouting at the end, right before the segue to A Day In the Life. Somebody fell asleep at the board on those. But the early Beatles recordings are not that way. As I said, the mono mixes of those were (according to George Martin) made from the stereo mix. He made the stereo mix the way he did to facilitate the making of the mono mix. The Beach Boys mixes were a bit weird anyway, in concept, because you've got an artist with only one good ear trying to mix in stereo. Doesn't work so well. Brian did assist with the 90's Pet Sounds stereo remix (which I prefer to any other mix of that work).
Regarding Beatles albums, the group was largely involved with Martin for the mono mixes but spent very little time, in some cases none, for the stereo mixes. They felt the true expression of the recordings were the mono versions.
Right tostado, Brian Wilson being almost deaf in one ear is why he always mixed to Mono. And though Capitol Records insisted on putting Nik Venet’s name as producer on The Beach Boys albums, Brian was producing them right from the beginning. What would Venet know about putting Four Freshman-style vocal harmonies on top of Chuck Berry Rock ’n’ Roll and Dick Dale Surf songs, which is what the early BB sound was? And though the recording studios Brian used had Union rules requiring one of their engineers be at every session, Brian did his own mixing. No other Artist in R & R had ever done that, though Buddy Holly came close, working with Norman Petty in Petty’s small independent Clovis New Mexico studio.
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