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I saw an announcement of the new Ray Charles mono reissues, the ad said something like this, "in glorious mono". I heard some of the Beatles mono reissues and read how they were originally recorded in mono and the Beatles invented some interesting experimental technics, if you will. As I see other reissues I wonder if you all are really that hungry for mono or are there some other reasons to reissue like with the Beatles, which I thought the mono versions did sound great, whether from being in the original mono or the remaster process.
Or, are we going backward, "glorious mono", LOL
I have to admit some of the "stereo" or 2-channel recordings where the mono was just divided, you know the ones where you have sound from left/right but nothing in the center of the sound stage, on those I have to wonder what was the point.
Follow Ups:
I have a bog standard 2M Black with RP6 and NAD PP2i. For a lot of audiophiles, this is barely entry level.
This re-issue of the mono original fills up the entire soundstage. I was surprised and delighted. It doesn't sound like stereo and it doesn't sound like you've cracked the door open and you hear something coming through the door. It's BIG and BOLD and in your face. Marvelous, and I listen through my stereo system. IIRC, 1940.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
My first concert i paid for (school sponsored before) was December 31, 1966. I took 3 friends to Hollywood for New Years Eve. All of them played guitar, sang and did stuff i could only wish. I had 4 years of piano from a great teacher, 5 teachers direct to Beethoven. My 61 VW was having a real hard time with traffic and so we parked on Hollywood Blvd and walked. We came to the Hullabaloo Club, 60s tv show, and Spence Davis Group was the midnight headliners.
I was the only one who was working then and i paid $20 each to get in at 9:00 to hear what i thought a very good group. Some good music was played by groups i never here of or since. At 10:00 a band started playing that just astounded with there music. Stills, Young and Martin were just amazing, Buffalo Springfield released there first record a few months later.
Move to San Diego Concourse and my next big concert was The Doors...looking back what i heard in each menu was mono coming from a big set of speaker around the bands.
When Chuck Berry marched back and forth across the stage in his live performances and no one there heard it as stereo, the speakers did not move with him.
An acoustic band hear up close will sound stereo to me...the rest are and i dont like the term but...a wall of music the fills the room...like really good mono...
I do have some mono LP's, it's the way it was recorded originally. I agree though about the "fullness" of mono. The mono recordings I've kept and will actually listen to seem to fill the center soundstage. I've heard some mono, especially older music transferred to CD, that sounds like listening to a performance through a door that is cracked open. :)
I have to admit I am a stereo fan. I know Rock and most amplified concerts are mono, but I don't want my system to sound like those concerts either, LOL. I don't attend many these days due to the bad sound and extreme volume.
Anyone have a mono cartridge set up? I've heard that's the best way to listen to mono and it makes a difference.
"
Anyone have a mono cartridge set up? I've heard that's the best way to listen to mono and it makes a difference ".
Yes I do and yes it does. I have a lot of fun watching people listen to it for the first time. They cannot believe the scale of the sound nor that it has depth. They seem to expect it to be similar to what they hear coming out of their mono table radio for some reason i.e. resembling a sort of dimensionless small point of sound.
As I have a double armed turntable I can easily compare a mono disc played with a stereo or mono cart. OK they are not related cartridges or arms but the superiority of using a mono cartridge for this purpose seems so obvious.
i use at microline carts, oc9II and 440mla, and they get down in the grove...once i move and can setup a mono system i will...
I much prefer mono to early stereo. Those records can be spectacular. Keep those records coming! :-)
-Wendell
Hey Wendell
How have you been? I agree totally and I have been buying 1955 thru 1958 mono jazz and vocal recordings that are just phenomenal.The dynamics,the clarity,the accuracy,and just the overall harmonic structure is as good or better than many stereo recordings.I'm also finding that I like dual mono FM better than I do FM stereo for many stations. I listen to NPR mostly on FM.
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong" H. L. Mencken
Doing well. I hope you are as well.
-Wendell
Agree with you totally. I grew up with mono and it took years for me to start buying stereo. I have an original Beatles Paraphone mono Rubber Soul that was so scratched i almost didnt buy. Cleaned up and played it on my stereo TT and wow...everyone hearing it thinks it stereo because the sound is so big. Same with really good recorded jazz and female vocals.
i listened to music, the dodgers and records on my parents mono magnvox console...wonderful, big and tuneful until 66 when i graduated and left home..stereo enter my life...some good some ok...
There are VERY few LPs being issued in mono for the first time.
Maybe a small percentage are ACTUALLY sought after at this point for those that need them.
Otherwise see the subject heading.
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
If you really want that mono sound to be emphasized like it was recorded, I would think so.
Although I am sure that it may be possible to construct a rational case for the superiority of listening to mono recordings via a single mono speaker it seems that, in practice, people tend to prefer listening to mono sound via two speakers if it is executed correctly. I make the latter point as anything that affects things so that the output from both speakers is not identical can destroy the precise central image created.
Use of a mono cartridge, on the other hand, does confer an unambiguous advantage - immunity to any spurious vertical information on the record such as noise.
How about original 78 singles, then put on a 10in lp, then 12in lp with more 78 singles, then maybe re-channeled for stereo, another reissue with different lp title, along comes seedee's, then reissued in 'glorious mono' again!!!
Regards,
Duane in Clearwater
I am sorry but I don't think that I quite understand what your question is.However for most (all?) of the current mono reissues this was the format that the records were originally conceived for. Until the late 1960s stereo for pop/rock records was an (albeit expanding) minority format. As pop/rock records were normally recorded for maximum impact, the mono format had, and has, an advantage in this respect being 3dB louder than the stereo equivalent (everything else being equal).
The "divided" stereo records tend to be recordings that were intended to be mono for release but were made on 2 or 4 track machines where, for example, the instruments were recorded on one channel and the vocals on the other allowing for overdubs of one without affecting the other. In the early days of stereo record companies thought that for commercial reasons they needed to put out a stereo version as well as the mono one. So , as either they apparently didn't properly understand what stereo is or were cheapskates , they simply just used one of these channels as left for the release and the other as right rather than make a true stereo master. Cheap and stupid but presumably they got sales.
Edits: 10/14/16
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-Rod
If you are crazy for Ray Charles... Naturally you already have all his stuff...
But then comes along this new thing.. "in glorious mono'. So you buy him all over again.
Rebuying the same artist in new* versions is big business. And one more way to pry another buck from your wallet.
*in a new format (CD)
remastered.
Reissued on LP by Mobile Fidelity
addd material from the session on new CD,
remastered again
reissued on 180 gram vinyl
remastered by XYZ genius
Mono
Remastered by a monkey with a space alien brain...(to be released in 2038)
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