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I have been listening to my Tivoli radio with source input into the Aux for the last 3 months in the bedroom due to some health issues. Seeing this Mono, a good friend gifted me with a shiny new Onkyo CD cum tuner player with two speakers built in. A Boom Box ( my friend meant well ) that played stereo. I simply cannot use it. Where previously Joni was singing standing in front of me, now she is spread into a 7 feet wide voice. Voices come like they are sung by ghosts. Nothing pinpointed anymore, no musicality but only holography.
I turned on my listening room system and everything was wider and louder. No intimacy at all. I am going back to the Tivoli's Mono presentation. Stereo to me now is an 'earwash'. Not a reaction to the medicines. I stopped them last week.
Yours in Mono
Bill
Follow Ups:
Having read your post, I just unhooked one of my Quad 57's, put on a mono Billie Holiday LP from the 50's, and sat directly in front of the still hooked up speaker to listen.
Wow... great! More detail, more intimacy, more engaging.
that the problem lies in your stereo system. A reasonably produced stereo recording, reproduced on even a modest, but carefully chosen system can be a revelatory experience. Just about anything reproduced on a boom box or similar will sound like overproduced phase distorted drek.
I am a fan of mono- albiet recordings originally created in mono. "Mono" is capable of extreme dynamics and depth. While imaging is indeed pinpoint, there can be a sense of holographic realism from the human voice or acoustic instruments that I don't often find in stereo recordings.
I have a Tivoli table radio and my opinion is that it is carefully voiced to be accurate within the frequency response of the single full range speaker. Frequency extremes are deliberately rolled off, leaving a very clean and natural midband. The single driver is essentially a point source, eliminating the phase issues that sometimes affect multi driver speaker systems. Compared to the Onkyo system, the Tivoli may sound much cleaner, and more accurate within the limits of its reproduction spectrum.
Just my opinion- others may differ.
Ditto!
Bill,
Mono platters (78, 45, 331/3) with a mono or 1 channel wired stereo amp and a good loudspeakerenclosure (in my case Magnepan MG1-c or Dali606 is absolute the end. Stereo vinyl/CD wired for mono also.1 Loudspeaker only : lifelike, wide or focussed depends on the recording.
No phase effects on the ears, no combfilter effects, everything flows naturally.For me stereo, quadro, multichannel is a SPECIAL effect.
But I grew up with mono, stereo never impressed me, on the contrary, annoying effect, not necessary for music.Besides, real mono recordings have a great dynamic range, not possible for stereo because of the ping-pong effect, left/right dynamics have to be compressed.
Listen to 45, 33, 78 mono's from the fifties, rock and roll, bluegrass, country, classical, opera. Or quality mono reissues, not the modern compressed dynamics of CD's, look out !
Edits: 04/04/15 04/04/15
Mono is sooo much sweeter on the FM band. With most tuners, the added noise, birdies and phase problems are not worth the tradeoff that stereo would introduce. It would take an extraordinary tuner (McIntosh, etc)---- and an exceptional broadcast signal together to overcome this. My KLH mono radio sounds better than stereo radios, and my KLH eighteen stereo tuner is happiest in mono too.
.
Stereo does offer its enchantments, but I think it is somewhat overrated compared to mono.
2 years ago I bought a Scott 399. It's a stereo Integrated with a mono FM tuner inside. I did use it with it's matching 335 mpx decoder for awhile but started having trouble with the mpx. A better decision for me was to let go of the 335 and listen to FM in mono. It took awhile but I got to really liking FM mono (acquired taste).Enjoy and I hope you're feeling better. Music "is" good medicine.
Edits: 04/04/15
Image is key to me as well. A good system will put the voice in the center where it is most often mixed by the engineer. So if a good stereo is set up properly, in a room conducive to a good image (a lot of "if's") it won't just give a good center mono image but all kinds of other locations as well. But I agree often a good mono beats a bad stereo. Tivolis are nice but I need a good stereo image (when the recording has it)
E
T
Edits: 04/04/15
If you really want to listen in mono get a descent mono system. I have had a Tivoli radio in the kitchen and it is not even close to acceptable for enjoyable listening; it's for listening to the news. I have a mono system in the office that I listen to every day. I use a Arcam CD player driving a Thordarson PP 6B4G all triode amp driving a Tannoy Integra coaxial 12" speaker in a corner. That's full spectrum sound!
I dropped my Tivoli on the hard concrete floor one day and since then the tuner doesnt work but the sound thru Aux improved. Dont know how.
I still have fond memories of listening to a Tannoy 12 inch coaxial (or is it uniaxial) driven Westminster like speaker in Sam Goodeys of Paramus, N.J. in 1975 playing an old Beatles mono record. Such musicality.
Cheers
Bill
But system vs. system.
Set-up vs. set-up.
Or any of the plethora of other ---- vs. ---- we see here daily, weekly, yearly...
Bottom line is always: use what's best for you and your enjoyment of playback.
Feel better soon!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
Thanks for the concern. The corticosteroids are working I guess.
Cheers
Bill
Fun to see their image again. ;^)
Back on topic, when house hunting back in the '70s I was surprised to find a system in one home with classic Marantz electronics driving a single, huge Bozak speaker in a corner. I ask the owner if he considered adding stereo and he replied, "Why, would that be any more musical than what I have?"
"You can't know what the "best" is unless you have heard everything, and keep in mind that given individual tastes, there really isn't any such thing." HP
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