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Vinyl lovers--in case you haven't tried this yet

One advantage to being home sick with the flu, is that I get to spend time with recent purchases. This week I have finally installed my Lyra Helikon Mono cartridge, cleaned a bunch of old mono recordings and WOW, I am shocked at the warmth, clarity, natural, intimate sound. Perhaps many of you know this already (I bought the cartridge slightly used from a friend, after reading a glowing review by Fremer), but folks this is shockingly good sound. I put on some old Shaded Dogs, mono Archiv recordings of Bach, and frankly, I don't understand this: how can there be a wide, deep soundstage with mono recordings? I'm not missing whatever Stereo does (don't get me wrong, I'm not dumping that side of things), but would someone explain to me how a good mono recording, played with a good mono cartridge, can sound so alive, natural, and present. (As I write this I'm listening to a wonderful Alicia de la Laroccha which I picked up for a buck at Amoeba. ) If you haven't tried this yet, it's worth a listen.
Joe
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Showing 1 response by drubin

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drubin
3,265 posts
 
Is the stylus shape different perhaps, so that the mono cart reads the groove better?

I don't doubt the reports above about the superiority of mono, the problems with horizontal plus vertical modulation, Hobson's test, and so forth. But it strikes me that, given these findings, CDs, which provide effectively two fully-realized mono channels, should have represented a very great leap forward sonically even allowing for all of the problems of the digital format.
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