Is A Live Concert Stereo Or Mono

I would say that live shows are better....

Unamplified music is perfect and can not be reproduced in the home via a stereo or mono system. Amplified events will vary by venue and seating position. Without stereo or multichannel reproduction at home our ear/brain system will not be able to accept the illusion of real instruments playing. Mono is psychoacousticaly less dimensional and directional which is picked up quite easily by the average person. Some people are tone deaf, can not process spatial acoustic information or discriminate between even a violin and a viola. Whatever floats your boat is what you should listen to...the human animal is very fickle:O)

Listen to the Stones live. Not so good. But when they track over in the studio, they sound great, as long as you like their music. Very few bands sound as good or better live, although I've heard Ten Years After and Black Oak Arkansas sound as good or better live, most of the time you're better off listening to studio music IMHO. Srereo is better.

Unamplified concerts I would suggest are multi-dimensional, essentially you have the sound of each seperate instrument mixing with all the other instruments. All this sound arrives at the listener with varrying intensities and timings. I don't hear anything close to stereo or mono at these concerts, this is 'real' sound. I hear only a poor facsimilie of this sort of soundstaging with stereo.

As for mono vs. stereo recordings. I generally prefer stereo except in earlier stereo mixing when sounds were often hard panned to either side. Therefore, a voice may come directly out of the left side speaker, drums out of right, ugh! Listen to late 60's, early 70's rock recordings, way too many do this crap, I prefer the mono releases on these, much more natural sounding.

How many ears do YOU have? If you have two...EVERYTHING you hear is in stereo. Your ears help your brain to place 'noise making' things in your spatial recognition.

Additionally, there are select ranges of frequencies that actually 'trick' the brain into thinking that things are in a different 'place'. For instance, a frequency right around 3000 Hz may sound as though it is coming from behind you, rather than from in front of you. This is the effect of the brain's interpretation of sound.

For me, I almost always prefer stereo recordings...that is except for the mentions Sns made...I hate it when a voice is coming right from a speaker...it drives me MAD!