Mono v stereo

[Guest]

A bit late with my reply, BBM, but at the weekend, I powered up my faithfull DUAL CS 5000 turntable and played some of my earliest and most loved 78s and LPs.

Mozart: Horn concerto K447 Aubrey Brain with the BBC Symphony orchestra. 78rpm
Brahms: Horn Trio. Aubrey Brain. The famous recording with Adolf Busch and Leonard Serkin.
Brahms: Piano Concerto No 2. Solomon with the Philharmonia (Dennis Brain opening) 6 record set 78rpm.
Strauss: Ein Heldenleben. Beecham and the RPO. Featuring Dennis Brain and that unpredictable violinist Oscar Lampe.
Beethoven: Horn Sonata. Dennis Brain and Denis Matthews (1946 78rpm )
Scheherezade: Philadelphia Orchestra for me, the definitive performance by which I Judge all others.

All of these performances were, of course, recorded in mono. If you move away from your twin speakers (the suggested listening position is the peak of an equilateral triangle formed between speakers and listener) can you really decide whether this is stereo or mono output from your two speakers?
Of course not; any more than when sitting in the back row of the stalls in a concert hall, despite having two ears, the sound that reaches you is as one - not separated left and right. (Cover either ear and the sound is still the same).

Of course, in playing old records, I do filter out clicks and surface noise, but I keep my hands off the equaliser (RSA) and stereo/mono functions because I do not wish to go down the road of trying to convert something into stereo by artificially boosting the basses on one side and the violins on the other track, for instance.

My little radio in the kitchen has only one speaker, as has my alarm clock radio in the bedroom, but I can still enjoy listening to Radio3 on either.

So what do others think? Are we really wasting money going for the ultimate in hi fidelity capacity, when, to be frank, current BBC Radio 3, whether FM, Digital or iPlayer does not reach those standards anyway?

For me, those early 78s and mono LPs had one vital ingredient which makes them special. They were recorded in one. No messing about with them by technicians, cutting and splicing. In those days, the finished result was produced by conductor and orchestra in the studio. Nowadays it is produced by a techno in the editing suite and the spontanaity, the immediacy, of thos earlier recordings is no longer available to us.

As an interesting fact, The famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Jazz concert of 1937, which was issued as two mono LPs and sold millions, was recorded on a single microphone, placed halfway back in the hall onto acetate disks

My apologies to you, BBM, for highjacking your thread.
Maybe we should start another one on this subject I'm sure that Bryn and ferret-fancy(?) would have some useful contributions on this subject.

[french frank]

I've copied this to a new thread as Ventilhorn suggested it might be of interest in a separate discussion.

[Don Petter]

I think I have voiced this opinion before on an earlier thread (Stop me if you've heard this one ...), but I vividly recall that when stereo appeared in the late '50s, and we all had to buy second amplifiers and speakers, the biggest difference was the glory of hearing any recording, mono included, through the spread of two sources.

In other words the change from one to two channel mono was a bigger improvement than that from two channel mono to stereo.

No, I don't think we are wasting reasonable* money going for the high fidelity that modern recordings and systems offer, but I certainly wouldn't advocate throwing out the old baby with the bathwater. Early recordings have much pleasure to offer, and not just in the historical sense.


*I leave the definition of reasonable to others.

[Don Petter]

For me, those early 78s and mono LPs had one vital ingredient which makes them special. They were recorded in one. No messing about with them by technicians, cutting and splicing.

78s yes, but taping was available even before the mono LP era, being used for some multi-track non-classical records as early as the late '40s.

Peter Ustinov's Mock Mozart, which I have just been listening to with much renewed pleasure, was issued on both a 78 and a 45rpm single, circa 1953, and used two tape recorders to achieve the desired effect.

I agree that, in the classical field, your observations are probably broadly correct, though others may weigh in with more knowledge about the first use of the splicing together of shorter takes.

[Quarky]

"As an interesting fact, The famous Benny Goodman Carnegie Hall Jazz concert of 1937, which was issued as two mono LPs and sold millions, was recorded on a single microphone, placed halfway back in the hall onto acetate disks".

Another interesting fact, the Recording of Diminuendo in Blue Gonsalves/ Ellington, Newport Jazz Festival, which resuscitated interest in Duke Ellington, was recorded with Paul Gonsalves blowing into the wrong microphone, and with the Recording Engineer George Avakian making frantic efforts trying to rescue the situation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QXUYpPa87M

I'm sure you general point is right. The human ear and mind can put with a great deal of imperfection, noise and interference if there is something worth listening to.

Not that I have anything against those who seek perfection in listening experiences. But sometimes it seems to me that this ideal is divorced from real world situations.

[Ventilhorn]

I think we are broadly in agreement here, Don Petter, but my experience from both sides of the microphone at that time is that retakes of passages containing faults were spliced in by the recording engineer almost immediately after the session; in the presence of the conductor and possibly the orchestra leader; not miles away by an audio engineer who had not been present at the original session. Some of the first "Classics for Pleasure" were certainly treated in that way and money being a prime consideration, even retakes were avided as far as possible.

I take the liberty of quoting here from my booklet "Bravo Maestro" which some forum members may not have seen:

[/I]"...... Many a player who had brought off a difficult solo passage to his satisfaction, found himself having to do it again, because some miscreant made a mess of something in the following bars. Maybe, to our soloist's chagrin, it didn't come off quite so well the second time, so one can understand that the aforementioned miscreant would certainly be less than popular with his colleagues and might well not be invited to take part in any further sessions.

However, this state of affairs was beneficial, inasmuch as everyone concentrated really hard to get it right first time. There was no question of `we can always do a retake and stitch it in later' -- the option was not there and the result was that the finished recording had a spontaneity, a feeling of `live' performance which is rarely found on modern recordings.
Nowadays, with mixing and splicing techniques and even digitisation, it is possible to turn a trumpet sound into a clarinet sound, a wrong note into the right note, or to record sections of the orchestra in different studios on different days and then join it all together long after the musicians have gone home.
The result is a reproduction (I refuse to call it a performance) which is technically perfect but musically fraudulent. It is now the `Recording Manager' who has the final say on how the piece shall sound and one can only hope that at least he does so in collaboration with the conductor"....[/I](end of quote)

[Mahlerei]

VH

I've never been a great fan of mono recordings, altho' my first exposure to music was via one of those monolithic old radiograms. I do agree about post-production meddling in modern recordings though, as it can be a mixed blessing. I recently bought - and hurriedly sold - the SACD version of Kleiber's classic Traviata, because all the spot-miking and multi-track artifices are all too clearly heard. I'm a fan of SACD, but not of multi-channel audio, which adds even more variables to the already complicated audio equation.

When all's said and done simplicity works best; those early stereo Decca and RCA recordings are some of the most realistic ever made.

[BBMmk2]

...........and those Mercury recordings to, surely?

[Don Petter]

I think we are broadly in agreement here, Don Petter, but my experience from both sides of the microphone at that time is that retakes of passages containing faults were spliced in by the recording engineer almost immediately after the session; in the presence of the conductor and possibly the orchestra leader; not miles away by an audio engineer who had not been present at the original session. Some of the first "Classics for Pleasure" were certainly treated in that way and money being a prime consideration, even retakes were avided as far as possible.

Ventilhorn,

I do, indeed, agree with you. I think the important differences about where, when and by whom any splicing was done didn't quite come across from your earlier post.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

My mother always used to say that stereo was a waste of time. She claimed that the radio brought together the sounds of an orchestra, saving your ears the trouble. She maintained that an orchestra was arranged in the way it was because they couldn't all sit in the same place.

Fortunately, my father thought differently and took every opportunity to introduce me to live concerts and demonstrations of stereo recordings. When I could afford a stereo setup of my own, I appreciated the benefits of that system more than ever, and now find mono listening quite tiring, even though my favourite conductor is Furtwangler.

[MrGongGong]

f you move away from your twin speakers (the suggested listening position is the peak of an equilateral triangle formed between speakers and listener) can you really decide whether this is stereo or mono output from your two speakers?
Of course not; any more than when sitting in the back row of the stalls in a concert hall, despite having two ears, the sound that reaches you is as one - not separated left and right. (Cover either ear and the sound is still the same).

of course if you are "off axis" then the image is less
BUT
I do have two ears and even at the back of a large hall I hear in stereo (obviously dependent on frequency etc etc )

it all depends on what type of listening (and what type of music) you are doing
Gabrielli or Jonty Harrison in mono ??? no thanks

[Mahlerei]

...........and those Mercury recordings to, surely?

Yes, some better than others. They can sound a bit glassy but still pretty good.

[Uncle Monty]

I rather agree with Alpen: I'm willing to put up with occasional mono recordings if they're of interest (e.g. historical) and of the right quality, in the same way that I'll watch a black and white film if it's good enough, but I don't find myself wanting to claim that it's as good or superior to stereo. I suppose most of us have cherished recordings from past days that give us a warm glow of recognition and comfort, but they seldom sound as good, do they?

If you move away from your twin speakers (the suggested listening position is the peak of an equilateral triangle formed between speakers and listener) can you really decide whether this is stereo or mono output from your two speakers?
Of course not; any more than when sitting in the back row of the stalls in a concert hall, despite having two ears, the sound that reaches you is as one - not separated left and right. (Cover either ear and the sound is still the same).

Can this be right? I can certainly tell whether I'm hearing stereo or mono --as I can in a concert hall! This may be because I habitually listen for one instrument in particular, and went through a lot of listening training, as most instrumentalists do, but in any case the difference between what's coming through the two ears is very marked. I'm not a hi-fi buff at all, just music-obsessed, though of course I prefer good-quality gear of a sensible price rather than poor-quality. My one pricy piece of kit (£1000, well, £999 actually) was a once-in-a-lifetime result of a legacy, and I wouldn't contemplate spending more, and not just because Mrs Monty would ritually disembowel me. I've always suspected that despite all the verbiage generated, only a bat can really hear the difference! And a really musical bat wouldn't care.

I don't really mind cutting and splicing etc. in studio recordings. Let's have them as perfect as the people can make them. However, I normally prefer good live recordings, unedited, though even then I don't mind a bit of touching up if something obvious can be patched easily. It wouldn't ruin a performance for me if the horn player split a note (not that that ever happens, har har), but by all means let them clean it up if they want to. (Pity they still can't seem to edit out audience members in the last stages of TB. . .) Ultimately the experience of listening to a recording is not the same as the experience of attending a live peformance, and probably can't be.

[BBMmk2]

I have Gustav Mahler playing some of his own music on the piano and the remastering is really good. Hardly a crackle can be heard. there's some of his vocal music to, which is very good quality as well.

[Petrushka]

Coincidentally, I took delivery last week of two newly issued CD's on the Eloquence label of Karl Bohm and the VPO recorded in the mid-1950's. The mono sound is glorious, rich, clear and detailed and full credit to Victor Olof and Cyril Windebank for obtaining such splendid results in the Musikverein. You completely forget that you are listening in mono and the clarity is far better than many a more modern effort in the same venue in stereo. Much the same can be said for an Archipel issue which I recently praised of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde in a 1960 radio relay from New York. The wonderful truthfulness of the mono sound here and in the Bohm reissues is a joy.

Great mono or poor stereo? I know which I prefer.