stereo mono

[AshRa]

One thing that's always intrigued me are quadraphonic LPs - i've never met anybody with a quadraphonic setup to play them on, but this review of Black Sabbath Paranoid is mouth watering!!

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/thebookofseth/48

 

[Rambler]

Someone once told me (a university lecturer in fact, so I took it fairly seriously) that the idea that two speakers (or four for quadrophony) gives a true stereo sound is a myth - he said that if you actually look into the physics you have to have three (or five) speakers. He was talking about reproducing live performance on record as naturally as possible - anyone know 1) whether this is true, and 2) why, if it is true, did studios etc all get developed in two-channel stereo, rather than three?

 

[francesco]

2) why, if it is true, did studios etc all get developed in two-channel stereo, rather than three?

When listening to headphones a three channel stereo, were did you put the third channel?

 

[Rambler]

When listening to headphones a three channel stereo, were did you put the third channel?

That's a very good point

 

[hint]

yes - I presume that the move to 2 channels as standard is based on the use of headphones and the fact that as you add more and more speakers (each with its own signal), the more important it becomes that you sit in the "sweet spot" in order to hear everything properly.

 

[DigitalDjigit]

2) why, if it is true, did studios etc all get developed in two-channel stereo, rather than three?

Aside from the headphone thing (it wouldn't be hard to mix in the third channel into the other two) it may be the limitations of vinyl. Stereo information is encoded by having different information on either side of the groove. Quadrophonic sound is achieved through some mathematical trickery which puts 4 channels of information into two. How would you go about doing three?

Dolby surround uses 5 speakers by the way.

 

[Woebot]

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."

I read that book too. Its quite cool. I especially liked the Nirvana/Clinton thing, that the two were part of the same phenomenon.

And I remember that Mono thing as well, and Ive quoted that at a few people. For a while this forum was going to be be called something along those lines. I quote:

"mono.....er dunno

monophonic
monographic
monotonous
monomophic
monomolecular
monopoly

and my favourite...monocerous, one horn or unicorn, also the name of some distant galaxy and an evan parker lp"

i love the idea, and stereo does seem like such a gimmick. i mean, brian wilson only had one functioning ear didnt he?

 

[huffafc]

actually the most interesting time I've encountered this sentiment was in an interview with autechre (in interview magazine, sorry I don't know the issue offhand). they almost never record in stereo they say, and they give a rather interesting reason, that relates to some people's comments: they think that it is a false attempt to recreate the way we hear. that is, stereo is supposed to simulate our listening experience but, in fact, does not.

if I recall they also mention something about 'power' and 'directness' and the directionlessness of bass.

three things about this:

1. isn't it weird no matter what your arguing to talk about 'simulating the way we actually hear' in an elecronic recording that cannot be said to document any single given sound event or environment? when you're recording a band you may attempt to recreate the experience of being there, whatever that would mean. but in, autechre's case or most other electronic musicians there is no there there. so why should accuracy to the way we hear be an issue.

2. what about binaural recording that is supposed to be a more proper recreation of the way we hear?

3. in either case what does 'simulating the way we hear' mean in a medium (audio recording), that is generally experienced non-representationally? that is, we see a photograph and think of what it refers to. we far less often try to think of the 'referent' of an audio recording.

just some thoughts.

I certainly don't see any reason to unilaterally prefer either method, I assume they both have their use. but these arguments raise a lot of good questions.

 

[soundslike1981]

Weird, I've always enjoyed the obviously artificial capabilities that stereo gives a musician. Life--driving down a street with the windows rolled down--is more "stereophonic" than a live performance of music usually manages to be. Stereo is just a tool that happens to align nicely with our ear arrangement. Heavy-handed stuff (like the quick-channel-flip in that Jimi Hendrix track) is annoying and tiring, but just having the opportunity to spread sounds around, a nice widescreen staging--love it. It literally feels good going down my ears, with some nice etymotics. . .

 

[Buick6]

I've still got Licht's 'lovechild' album on homestead....

Mono defintely gives music an 'otherworldliness', especially when you listen to say Phil's Spector 'wall of sound', 'Pet sounds' or all the early blues field recording and swing and be-bop recording have a wild complexity and texture - all done in mono...

But the comparison to cinema is worng, esp when you consider how much cinema relies on an 'immersive' THX/DTS type sounds that is 5.1 and beyond...

Not sure how Licht would take the DVD-audio/SACD 5.1 format, let alone the 'Quadraphonic 4' format that was created in the mid-70s.

and how would Lou Reed's 'bi-naural' sound experiments on albums like 'Street Hassle', 'Take No Prisoners Live' and 'The Bells' stack up?

 

[Rambler]

brian wilson only had one functioning ear didnt he?

Stockhausen can't hear treble too well in one ear, on account of a World War II bomb exploding nearby when he was a kid, so he compensates by listening with his head cocked to one side.

BTW, thanks for the answers to my earlier question...

 

[blissblogger]

i interviewed jason pierce once for a biog for the second Spiritualized album, and he said he'd followed some 60s model (possibly brian wilson) in recording it not in stereo, but having two different mono mixes, one for each speaker... Said it made a real difference. In fact --might have got this wrong, long time ago -- but i think he said he actually recorded a different version of each song for each speaker. Insane stuff anyway. i did wonder at the time who was bankrolling him to do this kind of thing

 

[10:02am]

Hello all, first time poster.

Just wanted to share something I was thinking about: the use of stereo should not be taken as a rejection of mono. On nearly every pop record since the initial wave of stereo hard-mixing (or hard-panning), it is standard procedure to mix at least the drums*, bass, vocals unpanned, dead center. Once the 'gimmick' of stereo died down in the late sixties/early seventies, this method become pretty much the standard. Sure, additional instruments are still panned for aesthetic reasons, but it says something that the track's backbone still benefits from mono presentation.


*By drums, I mean specifically the kick and snare. Often cymbals and toms are panned for effect, but the basics of the beat are nearly always centered.

 

[AshRa]

i interviewed jason pierce once for a biog for the second Spiritualized album, and he said he'd followed some 60s model (possibly brian wilson) in recording it not in stereo, but having two different mono mixes, one for each speaker... Said it made a real difference. In fact --might have got this wrong, long time ago -- but i think he said he actually recorded a different version of each song for each speaker. Insane stuff anyway. i did wonder at the time who was bankrolling him to do this kind of thing

I might have got the wrong end of the stick completely, but doesn't Blackboard Jungle Dub have a Scratch mix in one channel and a Tubby mix in the other...? If that's just a myth, please don't tell me!