stereo mono

blissblogger

Well-known member
reading nyc musician/writer alan licht's amusing monograph An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn, all about him as jim o'rourke-esque noisenik rediscovering his teen love of mtv pop, although the best stuff is actually on the 90s (what a strange time, groups like the melvins signed to major labels), but what caught my eye is this passage, it expresses an opinion i've never encountered before. Talking re. the decline of music, he opines:

"The beginning of the end, though, was the introduction of stereo. Contrary to popular wisdom, mono is much truer and more powerful sound replication than stereo. Just check out any Stones, Beatles or Dylan record from the Sixties in mono--the sound is thicker and more focused.... Multitracking diffuses the sound, separating it into little subdivisions that you have to put back together again in the mix, then repositioning them, by panning, like layering cells in animation, is crazy. When you listen to a mono mix there's a depth of field, like there is when you watch a movie. That's lost in a stereo mix. In fact i'd even suggest that rock's slide into corporate culture began with the introduction of stereo. The music is ill-suited for stereo, and even worse for digital sound. Rock was forced to comply with an industry standard that cut its sonic power in half (literally). I only recently learned that most club PA systems are in mono. This illuminates at least part of my preference for live music as opposed to records, and accentuates the directness of the live experience."

the only time i've encountered an opinion of this lsort, it's a writer who says the mono mix of A Piper at the Gates of Dawn is much more rich and vivid than the stereo mix.

So, any truth in the above, you reckon?
 

bassnation

the abyss
the reason why soundsystems are in mono is because it doesn't make sense to have a particular sound coming out of only one speaker in a live situation as people are going to be distributed right across the room. you want everyone to have the same experience. the same isn't true for home listening though, and stereo does add a lot of techniques (like panning / lfo, which can work very well esp. with dance music).

what i find amusing is the first attempts at stereo - a lot of the beatles stuff tends to be guitar and bass coming out of one speaker with the drums on the other - through headphones this is quite disorientating when compared to modern production techniques.

but having grown up with stereo can't really comment on your other points.
 
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Randy Watson

Well-known member
Is this related to that whole Phil Spector "Back to Mono" thing? I remember Bob Stanley wearing a btm badge in the early 90's but didn't dig any deeper into it's significance.
 

owen

Well-known member
erm, what about dub? or dub soundsystems for that matter?

c'mon, that passage is just daft....
 

carlos

manos de piedra
i first encountered the mono obsession in the early 80s, when i first started learning about 60s rock bands. many of the reissues would make a point of stating "mono" vs "stereo" mixes- usually pushing the mono versions as better

this was reflected in the garage revival bands- some of whom would record in mono. i have a vague recollection of alex chilton or the cramps recording in mono in the late 70s- maybe it was the flaming groovies. to recapture the mono mood.

pretty standard now for reissues to include mono and stereo mixes- look at kinks and zombies for example...
 

soundslike1981

Well-known member
Absurd.

Too bad I have two ears, one on either side of my head--if only I just had one on the front, the whole world might sound fuller and thicker and richer, with more depth.
 

francesco

Minerva Estassi
Well the mono mix of "Piper at the gates of Dawn", and the mono mix of both the first Velvet album and of "Pet sounds" are the original mix, done and approved with/by the band, while the stereo mixes where made ina second moment by studio engieniers to ride the "stereo revolution" that was happening. So probably mono was the right mix to be heard in this case, not that I have heard those records in mono! Mono reissues have ben made, but i'm not rich enough to re-buy an album endessly.

Many mono songs and albums of the sixties were artificially "stereotizated" in the '70, thats why the Phil Spector box is "Back to mono", alas the original versions in the original mix.

To say mono is the key seems luddist, it's ok for original mono recording to stay mono, just like black and white movies should stay black and white (someone other than me remember the orrible add of color to, for example, Oliver and Hardy movies done for tv in the '80?), but then stereo is not bad, really!

"Exotica" by Martin Denny, the stereo version was made two years after the mono replaying the album with even some different musicians! During the recording of "The white album" the Beatles made different mixes for the mono and the stereo versions using different tracks, so the (rare) mono version has some difference in the songs playing (not that i have heard it also!).
 
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carlos

manos de piedra
soundslike1981 said:
Too bad I have two ears, one on either side of my head--if only I just had one on the front, the whole world might sound fuller and thicker and richer, with more depth.

the sound is produced in mono, but we hear "in stereo" - because we have two ears. he's not saying only listen through one ear.
 

hint

party record with a siren
carlos said:
the sound is produced in mono, but we hear "in stereo" - because we have two ears. he's not saying only listen through one ear.

not sure what you mean by this. stereo is two different signals, mono is one signal. I guess you'd be hearing a mono recording "in stereo" if you had each ear in a different acoustic space or something, but you'd either be a freak of nature or have a very strange hifi set up if this were the case, I imagine.

I think much of the anti-stereo sentiment comes from people hearing bad stereo mixes of much-loved recordings, which were made after the initial session. in the same way that a lot of anti-CD sentiment can be traced back to "remasters" made before engineers had a strong grasp of what was required to master for CD and make the most of the format.

the use of panning is no more or less harmful or artificial than EQing, or close-miking, or using reverb , or experimenting with mic placement etc... and much of that is trying to claw back that long-lost sense of natural sound in natural spaces that is instantly lost as soon as you hit record. it's pretty clear that listening to a group of musicians playing together will result in your hearing sounds from all directions, each one being shaped by the position of its source in relation to your ears.
 

carlos

manos de piedra
hint said:
not sure what you mean by this. stereo is two different signals, mono is one signal. I guess you'd be hearing a mono recording "in stereo" if you had each ear in a different acoustic space or something, but you'd either be a freak of nature or have a very strange hifi set up if this were the case, I imagine.

i could possibly be a freak of nature... ;)

but what i'm trying to say is that any signal (mono or stereo, one or more signals) played out loud will reach both of your ears- therefore "in stereo"

in live sound- rock bands play using mono amps- the bass and guitars are played through mono amps. we hear "in stereo" because the sound hits both ears, but the sound is produced in mono
 

nonseq

Well-known member
blissblogger said:
"When you listen to a mono mix there's a depth of field, like there is when you watch a movie."
But the width is gone, it's sacrificing width for supposed depth. In articles about (electronic) music production, like in Sound On Sound, depth is afaik never associated with stereo width, rather with reverb, in the first place. Reverb, because you're mimicking real acoustic spaces. The more reverb, the further away a sound seems. A soundsource very near you hits you before it reaches the walls. The echo comes later, or not if you are exaggerating real acoustics, like in a lot of dance music. So for example in dnb the advice often is: don't put too much reverb on your snare, because that makes it sit further back in the mix. Just a thought, it is maybe also a bit like with landscape paintings. Things on the horizon are more hazy, vague. In-your-face, right-before-you things are clear, sharp, well-defined. Atmosphere or acoustics can't distort your perception of them, so to say.
 
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Gido

night tripper
combined vs seperated force?

the power thing is true. i was involved in some gabber/hardcore productions, and we made sure the kick was MONO because it sounds louder, more direct and powerfull.
it's also true that a lot of PA's have no real stereo, its something you cant count on.. just as a lot of enigineers cut the subbass off, usually somewhere around 40hz i think.
 

nonseq

Well-known member
Yeah, the lower the freq the more useless stereo gets because the ears/brain cannot discern the direction where the sound is coming from (I think this is why there's one single subwoofer in the middle of the studio, not on both sides). Plus vinyl can't have low freqs in stereo, the needle can't handle it. Also, a snare that is too stereo loses its power. One of the reasons for lots of dead center beats in dnb.
 
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soundslike1981

Well-known member
carlos said:
i could possibly be a freak of nature... ;)

but what i'm trying to say is that any signal (mono or stereo, one or more signals) played out loud will reach both of your ears- therefore "in stereo"

in live sound- rock bands play using mono amps- the bass and guitars are played through mono amps. we hear "in stereo" because the sound hits both ears, but the sound is produced in mono


But the bands don't usually stack their respective mono amps on top of one another in the middle of the stage. So even then, there is some stereo separation.

What are you, a monorockist? ; )
 

hint

party record with a siren
carlos said:
but what i'm trying to say is that any signal (mono or stereo, one or more signals) played out loud will reach both of your ears- therefore "in stereo"

...and I'm trying to say that your understanding of what "stereo" means is wrong. ;)


in live sound- rock bands play using mono amps- the bass and guitars are played through mono amps. we hear "in stereo" because the sound hits both ears, but the sound is produced in mono

yes - but the bass amp will be in a different position to the guitar amp. the hi hats will be in a different position to the ride cymbal. all of them will project a signal which will hit each wall of an enclosed space at a different point in time, determined by their position in the room. the sound that reflects back into the room (and therefore into your ears) will vary according to the frequency of the sound, the shape of the surfaces, the building materials used... live sound, in this sense, is above and beyond stereo vs mono.

it's when you start putting microphones in front of things and channelling the signal from these mics into another set of speakers which then act as a focused source for the listener that the issue of mono vs. stereo arises.

if you mic up that mono guitar amp and play it out of 2 speakers equally, the signal is mono. if you pan it slightly to the left or right, it becomes stereo, because the signal in one speaker is different to the signal in the other.
 

carlos

manos de piedra
my response was to what soundslike1981 said- the one ear vs two ears comment.

i put "in stereo" in quote marks because i agree 100% with what you are saying - that live sound is "above and beyond stereo vs mono"

and no, i'm not a monorockist. did i really give that impression...?
 

hint

party record with a siren
carlos said:
my response was to what soundslike1981 said- the one ear vs two ears comment.

i put "in stereo" in quote marks because i agree 100% with what you are saying - that live sound is "above and beyond stereo vs mono"

ah - OK... apologies for the misunderstanding
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
There's a million differences between a contemporary rock recording and one done in the 60s.

I don't see how a casual music listener could fairly attribute any qualitative differences to whether the recording is in mono. " Fairly" being the key word.
 
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