I believe there are some classic Kinks albums that were in mono but hard to find in that format without spending $$$
I believe there are some classic Kinks albums that were in mono but hard to find in that format without spending $$$
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
Wrong. With early 4-track productions (like the Beatles) bounce-downs to a single track for background elements like drums or b-vox were standard, so then "foreground" elements like guitar solos and lead vocals could have tracks to themselves for better fidelity and greater control when rendering the final mono mix.Originally Posted by trurl
Some early stereo mixes simply took these mono backing tracks and left them isolated at full-left or full-right pan. Early stereo mixes were all about isolating the individual tracks, to show that everything wasn't one big mono track. "Headphone listening" wasn't the goal in the sixties.
Binaural sound is actually a whole different bag of cats -- binaural recording requires a special rig that duplicates a person's head with microphones where the ears should be.
Normal "stereo" is usually just a bunch of mono tracks panned within the left-to-right sound field. Very, very few productions are recorded in true stereo, and even fewer in binaural sound.
Binaural reproduction requires headphones, or a carefully time-aligned speaker system to reproduce the effect.
Stereo does not.
There is no "sweet spot" where a stereo mix congeals into an accurate reproduction of a band playing in front of you -- not if it's made up of a bunch of mono mixes.
Last edited by rcarlberg; 07-27-2015 at 05:16 PM.
I know how they recorded and that's exactly what I was sayingThey were going to pan those tracks to the extreme with no regard for what was on them or what the result sounded like. Honestly, there was no point whatsoever to trying to get stereo from those masters. Like you say, everything was generally already summed down to a bounce track and there was no way a stereo mix of 4 tracks (actually, I think the first album may have been on only 3; it's been ages since I've read anything tech-y on that) was going to yield anything that made sense.
Hmmm, my dad's first stereo -- as well as that of my aunt & uncle when they added a second channel, now that I remember -- put the second speaker in another room from the first. "Making sense" is all in the location
A very good rule indeed.
regards
KGH
On Cruise to the Edge they had the ships onboard pa wired so one channel was fore on the ship and the other aft. And they were playing stuff like The Who's I Can See For Miles or something like that and you'd hear nothing but the drums and vocals at the front of the boat and as you walked toward the back they would fade out and you'd start hearing the guitar... if you found mid-ships you could hear bothHmmm, my dad's first stereo -- as well as that of my aunt & uncle when they added a second channel, now that I remember -- put the second speaker in another room from the first. "Making sense" is all in the location
Stereo IS pointless nowadays. But back in the day was only ever supposed to be for hifi buffs with money, time and floor space anyway.
Wow...guess I'm kinda surprised by most of the posts in this thread as I highly prefer a stereo mix (even if it's just hard panning an instrument or 2 to opposite sides) over a mono mix any time. I grew up with the Beatles and Stones and when albums went from mono to stereo it was like Dorothy going from black & white Kansas to stepping out in full color Oz
Also, I don't agree that stereo is pointless nowadays, at least not for me, as I usually listen with headphones
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I once heard a classical record that was recorded mono but later on made 'stereo'.
That resulted for instance in a clarinetsolo that started in one speaker and panned to the other and back again depending on how high the notes were.
Fascinating, but sort of distracting.
If 90% of the music I listen to was in mono I would enjoy it much less. Having said that, I'm in the "if it was originally recorded in mono..." camp.
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off
One-track recording hasn't been used since, when, the 1940s?
Wow...guess I'm kinda surprised by most of the posts in this thread as I highly prefer a stereo mix (even if it's just hard panning an instrument or 2 to opposite sides) over a mono mix any time. I grew up with the Beatles and Stones and when albums went from mono to stereo it was like Dorothy going from black & white Kansas to stepping out in full color Oz
There is more to be said on the topic of listening through headphones, which seems to increasingly be the way people choose to listen these days:
When you listen to a mono mix through headphones, you get the same input to each ear. That is quite unnatural, as it gives no illusion of the spatial location of the source of the sound. Clearly many listeners would not be bothered by this or attach great importance to it, but still it's a fact that should be recognised; it's as unnatural as the aforementioned situation of listening through headphones to a stereo mix with complete channel separation, so that you hear Eddie Van Halen singing into one ear only.
There's nothing wrong with finding this kind of listening enjoyable, as long as you don't claim that it's "realistic", because listening through headphones to a binaural recording is the only way to actually get realism, if that's what you're after.
In some ways things would be so much simpler if humans had only one ear...
"Realism" isn't the only goal, for most people, either.
Yes, there seems to be a misapprehension here. People mean mixed rather than recorded.
The fact remains that most 60s pop/rock was made with the mono format in mind.
Generally though I'm not that bothered unless the mono mixes offer something different.
I recall hearing Sonny Bono quoted on this. He was of course a producer as well as a performer, and on one occasion after a recording session he was noticed listening to the finished product on a tiny tinny little single speaker.
"That's where you sell your records", he explained, referring of course to the portable transistor radios which were how most teenagers of the day did most of their listening.
I call bullshit on this.
Most 60s pop/rock was made to be played on portable transistor radios too. Does that mean any other playback is invalid? Of course not.
Yes, and said transistor radios were presumably, um, mono! I'm talking about mono sound generally.
This explains why so many stereo mixes from that time are so shoddy, they were no more than an afterthought. I'm not claiming superiority of mono in general, only superiority in comparison to a crappy stereo mix.
Last edited by JJ88; 07-31-2015 at 06:02 PM.
I prefer stereo. I also enjoy mixes that please me with headphones as well as with my studio monitors.
I prefer sitting in the dark, playing Kind of Blue with a dram of the good stuff in hand.
I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.'- Bob Newhart
With all due respect, these "crappy stereo mixes" you're complaining about have more to do with the limitations of the recording technology of the time -- three- or four-track masters bounced down to mono a couple times in order to layer more elements -- than it does "stereo mixes that are an afterthought."
There is a lot of flat-out misinformation out there, in the "mono versus stereo" discussions, as well as in the "CD versus vinyl" discussions. In some circles mono LPs are being held up as some magical format which transmits the artist's intent more accurately than more recent mixes or formats.
The truth is, as Bob_32_116 quoted Sonny Bono above, successful commercial producers of the time (especially folks like George Martin and the Motown producers) engineered the mix to sound good on cheap transistor radios -- which was the prevailing playback method of the time.
This meant limiting the dynamic range, limiting the frequency response, boosting the midrange, and panning everything to mono. That is hardly maximizing the sound quality of the original multi-track masters.
If you want to experience the limitations of 1960s technology, and hear the music the way 1960s consumers heard the music, then by all means buy mono LPs.
But if you want to hear what the artists actually recorded, and what they and their producers heard in the control room before the mixdown for record release, then you have wonderful new high-fidelity options these days that the original artists only dreamed of.
Hearing some of these old sessions for the first time in all their stunning master-quality glory is, indeed, like walking out of Kansas into Oz. If you prefer sepia-toned Kansas... well, good for you.
This is an entirely different issue. When mono mixes utilize different elements (which they occasionally did) then hearing new stuff you never heard in the stereo mix is a perfectly-valid reason for re-issuing the mono mix.
Although -- to be fair -- an engineer could PROBABLY go back to the original multi-track tapes (if they still exist) and pull out a stereo mix with those same elements...
Last edited by rcarlberg; 08-02-2015 at 06:49 AM.
Mono was all about creating a balance between each element of the recording. All those producers put a lot of work into that balance. Stereo, especially in the early days, wasn't necessarily about balance, thus the lopsided stereo mixes many here dislike. For myself, being a kid and putting Paperback Writer/Day Tripper on the stereo, and using the balance control to isolate elements, was revolutionary listening experience and one I'll never forget. Stereo, when effectively mixed AND reproduced, can present a certain space in a recording; I like that.
To be honest, some surround mixes could pretty interesting too, sitting in the sweet spot and hearing elements fly around the room... but alas, I'm older, and most of the music is so engrained into my head from stereo mixes, it's mostly just amusing, rather then revolutionary.
"Always ready with the ray of sunshine"
Yes, *this* is what I'm talking about- sloppy mixes. In fact I never once made a claim that mono is better than stereo, it's only better than that dodgy 'band in one speaker/vocals in the other' stuff. Those are what I would refer to as 'afterthought' mixes.
In most cases that's all the engineer had to work with, a couple layered-up background mono tracks and one or two mono lead tracks.
It's not "sloppy" or "afterthought" mixing -- it's working with the technology of the time.
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