Mono Replay? The Most Musical?
Posted by: u5227470736789439 on 13 November 2007
Dear Friends,
As nine year old I first encountered “music” as something discrete – a phenomenon significant of itself – enjoyment which was not merely an appendage to life, but seemed to immediately become a major reason to enjoy it. This was in my first week at a boarding school when all but the first form was expected to listen quietly to the Latin Master lecture on classical music with portions played on the large and very fine school gramophone. I was nine and very unhappy being away from home, and quite unsettled by my mother leaving home months earlier.
In January 1971 the gramophone was a valve based mono machine in the corner of a room that would sit fifty people without it being crowded. The Music was Elgar’s First Symphony, the Master, utterly terrifying! I was completely enthralled! A few weeks later we progressed onto the Great C Major Symphony of Schubert, followed after Easter by the Third Piano Concerto of Beethoven played by Claudio Arraw …
In December I was given my first LPs: Elgar’s First, Philharmonia/Barbirolli, The Great C Major, Halle/Barbirolli, The Pastoral, Philharmonia/Klemperer, and the Unfinished Symphony, RLPO/Groves, for my tenth birthday.
Within eighteen months I had played and learned all the records in the LP library, and could identify any of the pieces contained in over 100 LPs. I then taught myself to read the music scores, firstly with the records and subsequently in silence. There were something like 3000 78s, which provided further material over the following years…
By the Autumn of 1973, my complete absorption in the music was noticed and after the summer holidays in the shortening days of the Autumn I was being taken to concerts in Malvern and Worcester, which still resonate in my memory. So music was something I loved but was in my own view not good at playing. I still am a dreadful pianist! Much later I would take up the double bass, and surprise myself, by graduation to the level of freelance professional, and even teaching the instrument, though I never took a grade exam beside theory!
This is the background to my views on replay of music. In 1973 we got a stereo set at home, which I thought was terrible. The issue was not tonal quality, though it did not match the big school gramophone for purity, but the fact that it was stereo. I knew from listening to mono records that little is lost of musical significance, but with stereo the effect was far more divorced from my concert attending experience than the undoubted artificiality mono …
In 1983 I bought my own first set [all Sony] and set about finding a way of reducing the false issue of stereo. I gradually moved the speakers closer and closer together till I was getting something that sounded like the concert experience. Of course there is quite lot about concerts that you would not want to actually reproduce from records, such as people eating sweats and the focus dulling effects of the Hall or Church acoustic. I even conceived a scheme of recording that would entirely do away with Hall acoustic that would not be possible, but it can and is usefully reduced in any case in recordings.
My point is that in my view stereo is a terrible idea in the issue of recording natural instruments in classical music. There are a handful of great works that have antiphonal effects, such as the Monteverdi Vespers, but it amounts to less than one piece in fifty. Also I soon learned when playing ensemble that every effort is made to reduce to the minimum possible the space between players, The aim is as compact a sound as possible so that ensemble is better kept [by means of listening while playing – not everything comes off the conductor’s baton] – and chording becomes lucid and well bound together, rather separated and ill-focussed.
Thus I am going to propose the notion that the pursuit of stereo is a non-musical development with huge disadvantages and no redeeming features - something to be suppressed at every opportunity!
In recent times I have reverted to using my speakers very close together facing out from the corner of the room, and have been forcibly reminded that I have spent the last twenty odd years trying to comply with the false notion of stereo replay for no good reason.
I am sure that this post will cause a few raised eyebrows.
Any thoughts on this would be gratefully read by me…
ATB from George
As nine year old I first encountered “music” as something discrete – a phenomenon significant of itself – enjoyment which was not merely an appendage to life, but seemed to immediately become a major reason to enjoy it. This was in my first week at a boarding school when all but the first form was expected to listen quietly to the Latin Master lecture on classical music with portions played on the large and very fine school gramophone. I was nine and very unhappy being away from home, and quite unsettled by my mother leaving home months earlier.
In January 1971 the gramophone was a valve based mono machine in the corner of a room that would sit fifty people without it being crowded. The Music was Elgar’s First Symphony, the Master, utterly terrifying! I was completely enthralled! A few weeks later we progressed onto the Great C Major Symphony of Schubert, followed after Easter by the Third Piano Concerto of Beethoven played by Claudio Arraw …
In December I was given my first LPs: Elgar’s First, Philharmonia/Barbirolli, The Great C Major, Halle/Barbirolli, The Pastoral, Philharmonia/Klemperer, and the Unfinished Symphony, RLPO/Groves, for my tenth birthday.
Within eighteen months I had played and learned all the records in the LP library, and could identify any of the pieces contained in over 100 LPs. I then taught myself to read the music scores, firstly with the records and subsequently in silence. There were something like 3000 78s, which provided further material over the following years…
By the Autumn of 1973, my complete absorption in the music was noticed and after the summer holidays in the shortening days of the Autumn I was being taken to concerts in Malvern and Worcester, which still resonate in my memory. So music was something I loved but was in my own view not good at playing. I still am a dreadful pianist! Much later I would take up the double bass, and surprise myself, by graduation to the level of freelance professional, and even teaching the instrument, though I never took a grade exam beside theory!
This is the background to my views on replay of music. In 1973 we got a stereo set at home, which I thought was terrible. The issue was not tonal quality, though it did not match the big school gramophone for purity, but the fact that it was stereo. I knew from listening to mono records that little is lost of musical significance, but with stereo the effect was far more divorced from my concert attending experience than the undoubted artificiality mono …
In 1983 I bought my own first set [all Sony] and set about finding a way of reducing the false issue of stereo. I gradually moved the speakers closer and closer together till I was getting something that sounded like the concert experience. Of course there is quite lot about concerts that you would not want to actually reproduce from records, such as people eating sweats and the focus dulling effects of the Hall or Church acoustic. I even conceived a scheme of recording that would entirely do away with Hall acoustic that would not be possible, but it can and is usefully reduced in any case in recordings.
My point is that in my view stereo is a terrible idea in the issue of recording natural instruments in classical music. There are a handful of great works that have antiphonal effects, such as the Monteverdi Vespers, but it amounts to less than one piece in fifty. Also I soon learned when playing ensemble that every effort is made to reduce to the minimum possible the space between players, The aim is as compact a sound as possible so that ensemble is better kept [by means of listening while playing – not everything comes off the conductor’s baton] – and chording becomes lucid and well bound together, rather separated and ill-focussed.
Thus I am going to propose the notion that the pursuit of stereo is a non-musical development with huge disadvantages and no redeeming features - something to be suppressed at every opportunity!
In recent times I have reverted to using my speakers very close together facing out from the corner of the room, and have been forcibly reminded that I have spent the last twenty odd years trying to comply with the false notion of stereo replay for no good reason.
I am sure that this post will cause a few raised eyebrows.
Any thoughts on this would be gratefully read by me…
ATB from George
Dear Sancho,
In a word, yes. But the issue is not so simple. A good deal that Klemperer would re-record in stereo was set down in musically superior performances in Mono tapings, and in some case eclipsed by later "live" recordings which are almost exclusively in mono which is no surprise given the time.
Even the very fine stereo recordings using AD Blumlein's technique with a single point stereo figure of eight microphone set offer more separation than assists in comprehending the music as an organic unified whole, much as it is heard in a concert hall or imagined in one's head, although this last is always an idealisation of it ...
On the other hand as I have my set [and as I plan it for the future, see the illustration], those early stereo recordings using Blumlein's patented stereo recording system are "pure mono" compatible, so that when the speakers are next to each other the result is natural mono, without any of the comb-filter effects, mentioned in my previous post, at all. With non-mono compatible stereo, I have found that the scheme still works effectively, unlike using the mono button on the pre-amp, which only emphasises the comb-filter effect and phasiness ...
I actually cannot wait to get my set into a larger room for the best projection! I have an idea where a sub could be put for best function as well, and would love to experiment with this in time. All that is needed is an absolutely miniscule gain in the lowest bass octave to give the Minstrels enough scale for a much larger room than I have now!
Royd Minstrels sitting on a really solid shelf or frame, above a small, but necessarily very fine sub in the corner of the room ...
I have a feeling this will allow for modern replay to emulate the splendid non directional results produced by Voigt's corner mounted speaker [without the very small point source type effect got with a normal stereo pair of speakers on mono recordings, or the horribly un-natural, and un-necessary separation of lines horizonatlly on stereo recordings], which was developed in the 1930s, which in my view still has not been bettered as a natural replay device, while adapting this old concept to the problems brought about trying to get modern stereo to sound more natural.
ATB from George
In a word, yes. But the issue is not so simple. A good deal that Klemperer would re-record in stereo was set down in musically superior performances in Mono tapings, and in some case eclipsed by later "live" recordings which are almost exclusively in mono which is no surprise given the time.
Even the very fine stereo recordings using AD Blumlein's technique with a single point stereo figure of eight microphone set offer more separation than assists in comprehending the music as an organic unified whole, much as it is heard in a concert hall or imagined in one's head, although this last is always an idealisation of it ...
On the other hand as I have my set [and as I plan it for the future, see the illustration], those early stereo recordings using Blumlein's patented stereo recording system are "pure mono" compatible, so that when the speakers are next to each other the result is natural mono, without any of the comb-filter effects, mentioned in my previous post, at all. With non-mono compatible stereo, I have found that the scheme still works effectively, unlike using the mono button on the pre-amp, which only emphasises the comb-filter effect and phasiness ...
I actually cannot wait to get my set into a larger room for the best projection! I have an idea where a sub could be put for best function as well, and would love to experiment with this in time. All that is needed is an absolutely miniscule gain in the lowest bass octave to give the Minstrels enough scale for a much larger room than I have now!
Royd Minstrels sitting on a really solid shelf or frame, above a small, but necessarily very fine sub in the corner of the room ...
I have a feeling this will allow for modern replay to emulate the splendid non directional results produced by Voigt's corner mounted speaker [without the very small point source type effect got with a normal stereo pair of speakers on mono recordings, or the horribly un-natural, and un-necessary separation of lines horizonatlly on stereo recordings], which was developed in the 1930s, which in my view still has not been bettered as a natural replay device, while adapting this old concept to the problems brought about trying to get modern stereo to sound more natural.
ATB from George
I have a lot of mono LPs inherited from my late uncle. To be honest I don't listen to them much - partly because most need a good clean (roll on RCM!) partly out of my ignorance...
But when I have tried mono LPs, I have been surprised by the sense of space - somehow the effect is not quite the same as just pressing the 'mono' button on the amp.
As a particular example, this LP blew me away earlier this week. If I may quote myself (if that's not too big-headed!!)...
I can imagine that, if you lived in a world of mono, suddenly getting Hendrix etc with stereo effects for the first time must have been incredible. But equally in this world of stereo (surround) there's life in those mono records as well!
James
But when I have tried mono LPs, I have been surprised by the sense of space - somehow the effect is not quite the same as just pressing the 'mono' button on the amp.
As a particular example, this LP blew me away earlier this week. If I may quote myself (if that's not too big-headed!!)...
quote:Originally posted by JWM:
Modern Jazz Quartet : Pyramid
I bought the original mono press vinyl in a charity shop today, gave it a clean on the Knosti (even the Knosti), and we gave this a spin this evening.
WOW!!! Flippin' 'Eck!! This lump of plastic is nearly 1/2 century old, and mono, and sounds absolutely phenomenol! Much better than some allegedly audiophile pressings of today. The sense of 'space' and dynamic interplay between the musicians on this mono pressing is incredible.
The coolest and smoothest track? 'Django'. That vibraphone is just pant-wettingly good.
James
I can imagine that, if you lived in a world of mono, suddenly getting Hendrix etc with stereo effects for the first time must have been incredible. But equally in this world of stereo (surround) there's life in those mono records as well!
James
George there's a guy on E-Bay selling a single SBL. Just up your street. 
