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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Stereo vs mono posted by tesla on October 6, 2016 at 06:47:53:
Think about it from an acoustical physics perspective.The whole idea of "stereo" is to create an artificial "sound stage". Several methods are employed to do that: Widely spaced omnidirectional mics (A-B), "coincident" pair (X-Y), ORTF (typically 8 - 12 inch spacing), Decca tree, among others for simple - but often excellent - stereo. Close micing of individual instruments is often employed in studios and various live performances, usually to provide the engineer and musicians with more control, whether over the artistic goals or because of various acoustical environment constraints.
Way back in the day, I did something like you asked about, except that it was for a live performance. An orchestra, with narrator, was performing Prokofiev's "Peter And The Wolf". I had minimal recording equipment available to me. The narrator needed to be mic'd for the auditorium, and I had two - count 'em, two - mics for recording. So I took two Cabasse hifi speakers and placed them next to each other (below stage level), angled somewhat away from each other, to form a single - but louder - version of the narrator, and used a Beyerdynamic mic for his voice. Then, I took the two Schoeps condenser mics and set them up as an ORTF stereo pair. It worked very well. I still have that recording, and am still very happy with it, especially considering it was a one-off night-of-the-performance recording.
Back to your playback question...
The whole point of stereo is to create an artificial soundstage in a room which isn't the original room (if there even was one!). To accomplish this, the recording and mixing engineers use various methods to fool the brain into thinking the sound isn't what the sound is. This is one area of the field of psychoacoustics. EQ, reverb and delay are OFTEN (always?) employed to accomplish this. To top it off, the reverb (each channel separately) is also EQ'd differently than the direct sound.
As an example of excellent engineering and soundscape design, listen to Linda Ronstadt's "Hurt So Bad" on her "Mad Love" album. She has other examples for audio engineering groupies, as does Carly Simon. Some of the engineering work on her albums is just amazing. And then there's Joe Cocker and Tower Of Power, whose albums have a different kind of soundscape than Linda and Carly, but are equally excellent. I could listen to Cocker's "You Can Leave Your Hat On" all day long. Heck, I'm gonna put it on right now.
So why on Earth would you want to destroy the work which they worked so hard to create?!
Another of the things which creates the stereo illusion is time difference between the ears. Look it up.
:)
Edits: 10/19/16
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Follow Ups
- RE: Stereo vs mono - Inmate51 08:16:35 10/06/16 (2)
- RE: Stereo vs mono - tesla 08:59:41 10/06/16 (1)
- Some people in this hobby - BigguyinATL 14:00:50 10/07/16 (0)
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