Am I totally nuts or just a bit off?

Of course, one man/women sitting on a stool reciting poetry might favor a mono recording. The more complex and numerous the musicians the larger the hall all lend to a multi microphone/input recording.

Casablanca is magical in black and white and I would not even watch it in color, neverless hdtv.

What I meant is when you mic live musicians (other than orchestras) through a normal PA system you can't mix it in stereo because some audience members are sitting much closer to one side than the other and would wonder why the drummer's high hat was missing and demand a refund and punch me in the face.

Many Classical Fans DO want a the sound of musicians in a space, For instance, I know what the Gewandhaus in Leipzig sounds like and thats what I want to hear.

Wouldn't ALL classical fans want to hear "musicians in a space?" What are the options? Spaceless orchestras? Orchestras in space? Orchestras revealed in a soundstage that makes them sound like they were playing in a dumpster? I have nothing against dumpsters. Just want that to be clear.

It's true that stereo playback can approach re-creating the spatial characteristics of the recording event. And as much as I like that sensation, tonal accuracy and balance is more important. I'd rather hear voices and instruments sounding real before I care about who sat where or how big the recording venue was.

Mono-mastered LPs have an inherent advantage for tonal balance and traceability because the mastering cutter and the playback stylus don't have to split duties between two channels. From what I've read, some early stereo records had trouble achieving the rich tonal balance of their mono counterparts.

In America most of the Capitol pressings of Sgt. Pepper were in stereo because the US market had already switched. At EMI, however, the engineers spent much more time on the mono mixdown than the stereo one. I finally chased down a Capitol mono pressing w/o breaking the bank, and it has none of that thin brittle sound I often associated with that record.

Right now I'm listening to Acoustic Sounds' 45 rpm re-master of the 1957 Nat King Cole record, "After Midnight" on Capitol in glorious mono. It is one of the gems of my record library.

For any of you wondering if those 45 rpm Acoustic Sounds re-masters are worth it, the answers are Yes! and HELL, YES!