Is Stereo Sound Twice As Good As Mono?

Megalith

Megalith

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Do any of you actually prefer the mono mix of certain recordings? I sure don’t, since single channel typically means an experience totally devoid of depth and realism. But alas, there are apparently some out there who prefer single-channel listening.

…some audiophiles go out of their way to collect old mono LPs, which they prefer over stereo LPs of the same album. Most monophiles are jazz lovers, but there are legions of Beatles fans who much prefer the mono mixes of their albums. For the true believers among them the mono "Sgt. Pepper's" is the Holy Grail! They claim in the 1960s few UK Beatles fans owned stereo systems, so the Beatles focused most of their attention on mono mixes. I believe that's true, but I always heard the stereo LPs, and the monos seem drab and boring to me.
 
The only case where I've ever felt that "mono" is "better" in any way is when it comes to FM Radio. Even that only applies when the signal quality is less than stellar, as in most cases switching from stereo to mono FM will dramatically make a weak signal sound better. With a good signal I still prefer stereo FM though.
 
It's all crap. I remember back in the early 1990's everyone hated the original Bowie and Zeppelin CDs calling them shoddy and poor sounding. You couldn't give them away. Now the audiophiles will swear blind that the originals are the best versions and any later remasters are terrible.

Now I agree that some re-masterings are modern loudness war fodder but most CDs from before 2000 are fine. After that things got crazy and most sounded terrible. I haven't bought a CD for over 5 years now. Spotify Premium works for me.

It's just trends and if you get enough sway one way...the rest will follow. And as Sycraft says, having stuff others don't have.


And yeah I prefer Page's 1990 Zeppelin remasters. Like everyone else did when they came out...
 
Any recordings that were done in mono and then done in fake stereo are almost always better in mono. The first 2 cream albums are great in mono and some hendrix stuff. For instance the original Stone Free was a mono recording, the stereo version is fake and sounds well kinda shitty. Some of the early floyd and beatles stuff is great in mono too. As far as Zeppelin goes I think the original cd's mastered by Barry Diament are still great and were my favs until the new Hi res reissues recently. These were always stereo though.
 
depends on the source material but there's nothing that says one has to be better than the other. Stereo does have double the bandwidth but again if the environment doesn't take advantage of it there's no reason to force it.
 
Rattle said:
Any recordings that were done in mono and then done in fake stereo are almost always better in mono. The first 2 cream albums are great in mono and some hendrix stuff. For instance the original Stone Free was a mono recording, the stereo version is fake and sounds well kinda shitty. Some of the early floyd and beatles stuff is great in mono too. As far as Zeppelin goes I think the original cd's mastered by Barry Diament are still great and were my favs until the new Hi res reissues recently. These were always stereo though.
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It depends on how it was processed. I have a buddy that created an (new) algorithm/software that does mono-to-stereo conversions and it quite frankly blew my damn mind. He just sold it so a commercial application may be out soon enough.
 
Nope, its way more than twice as good.
I bought my DACs + speakers cos they have incredible stereo and sound stage imaging between speakers.
Mono = bollocks
I'd give up hifi if I only had mono, most of the fun and excellence is gone.

Perhaps these guys have hearing issues.
 
My first radio was AM only with 1 speaker. Actually my FIRST radio was a backpack that went on my six million dollar man doll that had an earphone and an antennae you raised or lowered to change frequency. It was a crystal radio and needed no battery.

Err. Yes. Stereo is better than mononucleosis.
 
Whatever someone likes. About the same as trying to get everyone to agree on the proper cooking of dead mammal flesh or which version of an OS is best.
 
Well, some recordings, like The Beatles, are in the early days of stereo, and as such, they were still figuring out how to properly mix things. Likewise, the mixing in early Pink Floyd stuff can be disorientating.
So, I see value in early recordings where stereo was mainly an after-thought.

Any modern music (or even as far back as the 70s) almost unilaterally sounds better in stereo.
 
GotNoRice said:
The only case where I've ever felt that "mono" is "better" in any way is when it comes to FM Radio. Even that only applies when the signal quality is less than stellar, as in most cases switching from stereo to mono FM will dramatically make a weak signal sound better. With a good signal I still prefer stereo FM though.
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Even then FM radio doesn't sound great. The fact that we still use AM and even FM radio shows that people don't care that much about audio quality. I don't have any sort of audiophile cred, I like to listen to music on the stock stereo of my base model Mazda 3 and even to me radio sounds a bit crap.
 
Processing for a lot of FM stations completely destroys any sense of quality. FM CAN sound pretty good, but much like modern CDs, stations are more focused on having loud audio devoid of dynamic range.
 
Some older songs just sound odd in stereo where the vocals are on one channel and the music is on the other channel, this is where I can see a mono mix may be preferred.
 
Another place mono might be preferred is in a bar, as your usually only sitting close to (and can hear) one speaker anyway. Sadly most bars fail at this, but also most of their patrons are drunk and don't care.
 
Except for the occasional gimmick, most amplified live music is mixed mono so everyone hears the same thing and makes covering large audiences easier.

Conversely, I find listening at low volumes on small speakers is better (clearer, more intelligible) in mono, or through a very closely spaced stereo pair.

Unless I'm in a quiet room with okay acoustics with the intent to listen to music, stereo just isn't that important to me. It's a little more useful for TV/movies IMO.


No audiophile.
 
This one has a mono mix for the vocals and the instruments are left right specific,
 
Well many sounds are point sources, coloured by the environment. So if you want to just record the source in this case, mono is fine. But when you want to hear it + the environment, or multiple sources (e.g. a band) stereo helps.

Depends on the application really.

Soundstaging is often important to realistic reproduction. Close your eyes in front of a well set up HiFi and you'll know what I mean.

Most large subs are 'mono' as bass is practically nondirectional below a certain point.
 
Good stereo mix > mono > bad stereo mix, IMO. I've heard plenty of bad early stereo recordings where each instrument was panned either hard left or hard right. Putting the guitar and drums in the left speaker, and bass and vocals in the right just makes everything worse. It makes sense to me that people who listen to early jazz recordings prefer the mono ones for that reason.
 
I had a roommate who would invariably set my receiver to mono output every single time he turned on the system, even movies. He was a Steve Albini-level sound purist. When I asked why he said, with stereo or surround, no matter what the media he could "hear how the sound was manufactured which bothers me".

I can hear how a particular sound is produced and tracks are interwoven on a lot of material (especially nowadays as everything seems to be made to sound like electronica), but I'm sure glad I can still enjoy watching a film in surround.
 
harmattan said:
I had a roommate who would invariably set my receiver to mono output every single time he turned on the system, even movies. He was a Steve Albini-level sound purist. When I asked why he said, with stereo or surround, no matter what the media he could "hear how the sound was manufactured which bothers me".

I can hear how a particular sound is produced and tracks are interwoven on a lot of material (especially nowadays as everything seems to be made to sound like electronica), but I'm sure glad I can still enjoy watching a film in surround.
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I would have told him to stop messing with my shit. If you care, get your own shit.

Steve01S4 said:
Good stereo mix > mono > bad stereo mix, IMO. I've heard plenty of bad early stereo recordings where each instrument was panned either hard left or hard right. Putting the guitar and drums in the left speaker, and bass and vocals in the right just makes everything worse. It makes sense to me that people who listen to early jazz recordings prefer the mono ones for that reason.
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I have some of today's music that's like that. Where portions were panned to the left or right. Course it was mixed with portions that were on both left/right and portions that would swap to from hard left to hard right and back. They really have to pay attention to how it all comes out together or else it'll come out straight retarded.

I listen to Japanese music, so they really like to do things like that.

 
Megalith said:
Do any of you actually prefer the mono mix of certain recordings?
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The Beatles mono and stereo recordings were mixed separately. A number of their songs sound 'better' (or have cool alternate takes) in mono. The mono versions of Paperback Writer, Taxman, and I'm Only Sleeping are good examples of what I mean by 'better.'
 
I am partially deaf on one ear so sometime stereo can actually be a huge problem (directional dialogue in games is the most troublesome, if the majority of the volume is coming out the left headphone then I can't understand at all).
 
It really depends on the recording. Early Stereo recordings did a lot of "ping ponging" between speakers so people who just laid out the cash for their "new Stereo!" could show off. They did the same thing with Quad-8s (not always intentionally, the tape would slip!)
 
I firmly believe that analog recordings are superior to digital. From the get go, digital seemed devoid of "soul".
 
The Beatles is actually a good example of what audiophiles are talking about.

The analog mono version is the only version where the mixing was monitored by the Beatles themselves. All of the stereo mixes were done by someone else, and depending on the era (70s, 80s, 2000s) do tend to sound different because of the different sources used, the skill of the engineer in capturing the digital master, if they messed with the dynamic range, etc. In a sense, they are a remix of a remix of a remix. I don't consider myself an audiophile but even I can tell the difference in some of remasters.
 
My first radio was this exact model..

il_570x_N_355714062_lb1j.jpg


I use to pretend I was "My Favorite Martian".. and I broke it fairly fast!!

As a guy whose first 18+ of life just listened to AM radio, had a one speaker record player and both family TVs were B&W sets, I have no problem with mono and other "low fidelity" media. I grew up with TVs with rabbit ears & only went from channel 2 through 13, had an external UHF box on top of it with a round antenna, tubes that you could see turn orange and was considered a big piece of wooden furniture so weren't replaced until it became totally non-functional or too costly to repair.

Although comfortable listening to the mono version of a song, I agree that stereo is the preferred form a song should be heard in. Saying that, one song I truly HATE listening to the stereo version instead of the mono is the Stones "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". In stereo, the lead guitar is way on the extreme of one side and the acoustic guitar is way on the other side so there "feels" like an empty gap in the middle that the drums, bass and piano just don't seem to fill very adequately. In the mono, everything is in the middle so this "empty gap" is gone and it just sounds much better to me. I still hear the mono version being played on the radio quite a bit. Some early stereo Beatles where all the vocals are on one channel and all the music on the other channel sound better in mono as well, again probably because the stereo leaves those "empty gaps". The last big song that perhaps was recorded with AM radio in mind was Springsteen's "Born To Run".. there is hardly any stereo separation.. just a few guitar effects on one side or the other but most of it seems smack dab in the middle.. hardly any mono vs stereo difference.

Now you young whipper snaps.. get off my [H] forum lawn!!
 
Some old Beatles stereo recording sound horrible on headphones. It was the early days of stereo and it needed much refinement to sound good. I find lots of 60s rock recordings are just bad in general and unpleasant on headphones. It's not that the mono recordings are great, it just that their stereo recordings are bad from that period.
 
Sycraft said:
More audiophile douchbaggery. They seem to go out of their way to look for weird shit to be "the thing". It isn't about better sound, it is about trying to have something the other guy doesn't so they can feel special.
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This is it. If you have ever watched any of those audiophile pod casts; get use to doing a facepalm.

I have been a audio guy for over 30 years and have seen it all. What you hear is so subjective you can't get a consensus on anything.
There was a double blind study done which compared high sampling/bit rate digital recordings against the old standard 16bit CD recording. A lot of "golden ears" audiophiles took part in the test.
NONE of them could accurately tell the difference between a 192Khz 24bit and a standard 16bit 44Khz CD format.
At this level the 16bit 44Khz captures about all that can really be heard. But what makes the difference in recording really is the HOW of the recording. The final is just how it was mastered in the end. How music is produced and mixed these days does not capture the "feel" and warmth of the live recording. This is the real difference. This is why hipsters will swear that a quality LP sounds better than a CD. Comparing the specs it is a joke. But the mixing technique is quite different on the 2 formats.

Now when we talking about different audio compression; like MP3 vs Flac etc that is a different subject entirely.
I've always been of the opinion that MP3s are crap no matter what sampling rate. All my music is archived in a FLAC format. To me these sound just as good as the CD source.
 
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Dr. Righteous said:
This is it. If you have ever watched any of those audiophile pod casts; get use to doing a facepalm.

I have been a audio guy for over 30 years and have seen it all. What you hear is so subjective you can't get a consensus on anything.
There was a double blind study done which compared high sampling/bit rate digital recordings against the old standard 16bit CD recording. A lot of "golden ears" audiophiles took part in the test.
NONE of them could accurately tell the difference between a 192Khz 24bit and a standard 16bit 44Khz CD format.
At this level the 16bit 44Khz captures about all that can really be heard. But what makes the difference in recording really is the HOW of the recording. The final is just how it was mastered in the end. How music is produced and mixed these days does not capture the "feel" and warmth of the live recording. This is the real difference. This is why hipsters will swear that a quality LP sounds better than a CD. Comparing the specs it is a joke. But the mixing technique is quite different on the 2 formats.

Now when we talking about different audio compression; like MP3 vs Flac etc that is a different subject entirely.
I've always been of the opinion that MP3s are crap no matter what sampling rate. All my music is archived in a FLAC format. To me these sound just as good as the CD source.
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I agree with you.
I'd like to add that the equipment it is played on, how it is set up and the listeners seating position matter a lot.
Some of the tests I hear of make me facepalm.

My system is extremely revealing, its simple to hear the difference between well mastered low and high res.
Everyone who has listened to my system agrees there is a perceptible difference but most dont care for it and wont pay money to get it.
Most of the people I know like to have music as a background extra while they do something else. Very few care about hearing what is in a recording and sitting in the sweet spot to hear it.
Audio is a strange fish.
 
Nenu said:
I agree with you.
I'd like to add that the equipment it is played on, how it is set up and the listeners seating position matter a lot.
Some of the tests I hear of make me facepalm.

My system is extremely revealing, its simple to hear the difference between well mastered low and high res.
Everyone who has listened to my system agrees there is a perceptible difference but most dont care for it and wont pay money to get it.
Most of the people I know like to have music as a background extra while they do something else. Very few care about hearing what is in a recording and sitting in the sweet spot to hear it.
Audio is a strange fish.
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Agreed.
It is funny but stereo imaging is something that needs to be kept simple. It is meant to work with 2 speakers only. not 4, not 5,6, or 7.
When you add all that you muddy up the imaging that was mixed for just a L&R channel. And really if you are listening to a recording of live music, this is what you want.


I deal with live recording every day. Even thought it is recorded on digital stereo gear; for some reason they always mix to a "mono stereo". Exact same on both channels.
Even with just speech; it lays there dead. I will use a simulated stereo effect to bring some life back into the recording for a stereo broadcast. The effect is subtle but immediately the recording has presence it didn't have before.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
There was a double blind study done which compared high sampling/bit rate digital recordings against the old standard 16bit CD recording. A lot of "golden ears" audiophiles took part in the test.
NONE of them could accurately tell the difference between a 192Khz 24bit and a standard 16bit 44Khz CD format.
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Most can only 'tell' the difference if they had recently heard one and can remember exactly how it sounded, so they already know which one is which.

For me, it's how I heard the music the first time around (if it was decent, not scratchy or something). Nearly all of my music in the 60's was mono; we didn't get a stereo radio of any kind until around 1970. So to me, even all the Beatles original stuff was all heard in monophonic until much later when I could buy a stereo album and play it. The 45's were nearly all mono. And yes, the early stereo recordings where the voice was only on the right and the guitar etc, each were all or nothing on one side, were terrible, I too, switched the mono button on when I had to listen to them.

Yes, there are some old mono recordings that were made better when they turned them into stereo. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Things may be changing, as Grahamkraka said there's new tech arriving all the time, so who knows what may end up being converted into a fine stereo version next. But I'm quite happy with a clean monophonic version. What sounded great 50 years ago, still sounds good to me. Now let me get back to listening to my old Beach Boys 45's in a stack on my ancient turntable. Always fun when the little plastic insert pops out when the record drops down, and messes up the whole shebang.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
Now when we talking about different audio compression; like MP3 vs Flac etc that is a different subject entirely.
I've always been of the opinion that MP3s are crap no matter what sampling rate. All my music is archived in a FLAC format. To me these sound just as good as the CD source.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but you are wrong.You can do an ABX test using foobar, which I have done, and failed to tell the dif between lossy wav files and 192mb/s mp3. I tested a friend with it and he failed too.
 
Megalith said:
Do any of you actually prefer the mono mix of certain recordings? I sure don’t, since single channel typically means an experience totally devoid of depth and realism. But alas, there are apparently some out there who prefer single-channel listening.

…some audiophiles go out of their way to collect old mono LPs, which they prefer over stereo LPs of the same album. Most monophiles are jazz lovers, but there are legions of Beatles fans who much prefer the mono mixes of their albums. For the true believers among them the mono "Sgt. Pepper's" is the Holy Grail! They claim in the 1960s few UK Beatles fans owned stereo systems, so the Beatles focused most of their attention on mono mixes. I believe that's true, but I always heard the stereo LPs, and the monos seem drab and boring to me.
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No.

I have Sennheisers for a reason, and it isn't to listen to mono recordings of bad music I've never heard and didn't want to listen to anyway no matter the format.
 
nightfly said:
Most can only 'tell' the difference if they had recently heard one and can remember exactly how it sounded, so they already know which one is which.

For me, it's how I heard the music the first time around (if it was decent, not scratchy or something). Nearly all of my music in the 60's was mono; we didn't get a stereo radio of any kind until around 1970. So to me, even all the Beatles original stuff was all heard in monophonic until much later when I could buy a stereo album and play it. The 45's were nearly all mono. And yes, the early stereo recordings where the voice was only on the right and the guitar etc, each were all or nothing on one side, were terrible, I too, switched the mono button on when I had to listen to them.

Yes, there are some old mono recordings that were made better when they turned them into stereo. But those are the exceptions rather than the rule. Things may be changing, as Grahamkraka said there's new tech arriving all the time, so who knows what may end up being converted into a fine stereo version next. But I'm quite happy with a clean monophonic version. What sounded great 50 years ago, still sounds good to me. Now let me get back to listening to my old Beach Boys 45's in a stack on my ancient turntable. Always fun when the little plastic insert pops out when the record drops down, and messes up the whole shebang.
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"most people" use normal audio equipment which generally is good enough to great for even discerning listeners. I have amps that I play around with, and have customized a few systems, built a CMOY for my headphones. I'm not a grand aficionado, but I appreciate clean, defined sound.

What I'm not is an asshole about it. There are plenty of off the shelf solutions that sound as good or better than things I've put together. Sound quality is also a matter of taste - I *detest Grados* I bought a pair, and to my ears, even after burn in, they didn't hold a candle to Sennheiser.

So, in a nutshell, listen in whatever way suits you best, avoid shysters trying to sell you junk by marketing it as "good"
 
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