Mono vs stereo

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.