2. music
  3. 127594-79517

Mono vs stereo

Although I like stereo, often I find it contrived.  More fun than actually adding to the music realism.

I see the Beatles have a "mono" collection available.

Are there any "mono"  advocates out there? While I realize there is no "left / right" imaging, is there a sense of realism that isn't captured in stereo? 
128x128jimspov
tostadosunidos's avatar
tostadosunidos
1,197 posts
 
Nice post, bdp.  On the early Beach Boys LPs, I recall that Surfin' Safari, Surfin' USA, Surfer Girl, Shut Down Vol. 2, Little Deuce Coupe, the Christmas album, In Concert and All Summer Long were all stereo.  The Duophonic crap started with Beach Boys Today and Summer Days (at least, I think so).
tostadosunidos's avatar
tostadosunidos
1,197 posts
 
czarivey, I may be in the minority but I prefer the early Beatles in stereo.  Of course I wish they'd done a better job with the panning of the tracks but given the method they used (bouncing between two four tracks, etc.) I'll live with it.  If I"m not mistaken the early mono mixes were done from the stereo mix, so the stereo would be one generation fresher on top of everything else.  I know that later they did separate mixes.
sevs
301 posts
 
When listening in the car, All mono CDs sound so much better to me that I wish car stereo had a Mono button. 
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,581 posts
 
What’s very interesting about The Beatles mixes is that some songs have different instruments either included or not. In other words, a given song on an original pressing of the white album may have a guitar part on the Stereo version that is not present on the Mono! There are a number of such songs, though I can’t name them. Collectors magazines and websites can provide such information for anyone desiring it.
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,581 posts
 

It's been quite a while since I last heard the early Beach Boys LP's in non-Monaural pressings tostado (I used to have them all), but I specifically remember being surprised by the true Stereo Surfer Girl album. Emblazened across the top of the LP jacket's front cover is the huge Capitol Records' <STEREO> banner, while the other BB albums that aren't Monaural are labeled Duophonic (sometimes in very small type ;-). I'm quite certain about Surfin' Safari, Surfin' U.S.A., Little Deuce Coupe, Shut Down Volume 2, All Summer Long, Smiley Smile (a really bad recording anyway, unfortunately. It contains some of my favorite Brian Wilson writing), and Wild Honey. The last two Capitol albums, Friends and 20/20, ARE regular stereo. Their next album---Sunflower, the first for Reprise Records, had a paragraph on the back of the gatefold cover, detailing how the recording was a "True Stereo" one, not a multiple-Mono one as I described earlier. Pretty Audiophilic! I don't know whether or not it's true, but who was talking about such things in 1970?!

By the way, Capitol Records released three Beach Boys albums in 1963, three in '64, three in '65, and two in '67, with "only" one (Pet Sounds) in '66. My how the record business has changed! 

More to discover