Is A Live Concert Stereo Or Mono

Depends on how the microphones are placed. Obviously, if there is only one microphone the recording is Mono, even though the live performance could be heard in stereo if the band is divided more or less evenly across the stage and you are sitting dead-center in the audience. It is recorded in Stereo when there are two or more microphones placed to record the right and left side of the stage performance separately. Those two separate channels can have some overlapping music and still be Stereo. Many Mono recordings were actually recorded in Stereo and mixed to Mono, or "folded-down" to Mono. So a Live Concert can be both Mono and Stereo to the audience depending on where you are sitting and whether you are listening to the live sound of the actual performers or to the performance as broadcast over the amplification system used in the concert hall.

This vaguely reminds me of a test in college way, way back when - about something like "directionally-biased point source emitters" or some such gobbledygook. The level and amount of math expected for the answer probably helped convince me that an exclusively academic regimen is not the only way to put food on the table...

Mono? Since when is the whole world mono? Well, unless your name was van Gogh (but don't start with me on that, 'cause yeah I know and that was only meant as a feeble attempt for a feeble laugh...)? Mono might barely describe a solo artist performing in an anechoic chamber - how the heck does mono do justice to a whole wide stage full of orchestra? Tvad knows the deal, and the equation for real is not solved by being some kind of audio cyclops with a single ear growing out of your forehead.

The equation for real is not solved by being some kind of audio cyclops with a single ear growing out of your forehead.

I love it, that is Great English.

I could be off the mark here but the point your emailer may have been trying to make, and how it differs from Tvad's assessment, is whether the performance is amplified or not. If it is not then Tvad is right on that it is not stereo or mono it's real. If however the performance is amplified and played through speakers around the stage or on either side, I think that "reproduction" is normally done in mono so people sitting outside of exact center will hear the entire performance too. Maybe someone will chime in and correct me, but this is what I have surmised from personal experiences. I don't know why a mono recording would conceivably sound better but I'm sure someone else will chime in on that concept.

Concerts are actually reproduced from stage right and left speaker stacks running in a stereo mix. The engineer (the guy sitting in the audience working from a mixing console) runs the show in stereo but mixes it so that there is directionality from the speaker stacks and on-stage amps but with a view towards mixing the show to make sure even those in far right and left seats can hear everything. Bottom line result is sort-of stereo from the front and sort-of mono from the sides.

Nwext time you are at a show ask the engineer before the show when he at the console waiting for the houselights to go down (but not too close to the start of the show). Having worked many years with them they are generally friendly and will answer simple questions.