Beatles Mono Box - best way to listen?

People of the SH Forums. Please, please do not disconnect one of your speakers. You could ruin your amplification electronics that way.

I actually cannot believe this thread. We listen to stereo and mono every day on the same system, don't we? Why is this case any different?

 

The only time you sum up the two signals (with a y cable or by using the mono switch on your amp) is to listen to Mono LPs.

A search will provide you with a multitude of threads on the subject.

 

THANK YOU! You may have saved me from destruction. My appologies, I don't have time to search every thread so a quick response is GREATLY appreciated.

 

Pun intended?

 

Oh just look around and you'll top this one in no time. BTW do I have to fade my car speakers all the way forward and to one side.

 

If I still had my rig(Katrina took care of that!), I'd sit in the sweet spot and let it rip! NAD Powertracker Amp, Pioneer Elite CD, and Metronome 7's and 3's(with the hood for that speaker look). What a sweet sound that put out. I do know...when I played the UK Singles and EP boxes, the MONO sound blew me against the wall. This is the way the Beatles were meant to be heard.

 

Bottom line: Sum with Y-Cable (or switch, if applicable amp) for Vinyl.....do nothing for CD's. Do not disconnect one speaker. You can learn something everyday on here!

 

I'll make it even shorter: play your mono CDs just like you do any other.

 

It's as simple as this!

 

Bottom line: Turn on just one of your monoblocks, and leave the other one off. If you have a receiver or integrated amp or something like that, turn your balance all the way left or all the way right, and listen to one speaker. There is no need to disconnect anything.

 

I believe I read it years ago in Lewisohn's Recording Sessions book.

Anyway, it stands to reason. Why on earth would they mix to mono using two speakers?

 

And I thought M-O-N-O stood for May-Only-Need-One speaker.

 

Nicely summed (pun intended???)

 

I am not understanding this at all. Why do you want the sound to come out of only one speaker? All I can guess is that your stereo image is in big trouble or something.

Don't you remember what your system sounds like when one speaker shuts off due to the wires falling out or something? Why listen to the Beatles with your just your left speaker over by the wall? The sound shrinks down to tiny size. You wouldn't listen to an old mono Miles Davis LP that way (or would you?)

Don't be a dink. Use both speakers and live a little; fill your room with sound.

 

Well that is surely the way it was done in any studio I've ever been in, and I've been in a lot of them.

Why, well having the phantom image in the center of the console would seem to be a good enough reason. Who wants to mix with the sound coming from one side?

I imagine that in the early days, well before my time, things were different because there was no stereo. In those days I'd imagine people mixed mono with one speaker.

If you have a studio, or a listening system, with two speakers I can't imagine why you would not want to use them both and work with a phantom image. If you have a good room and a good system it should sound pretty much the same as a single speaker in the middle, assuming you were listening from a point equidistant from the speakers.

 

The best way to listen to the mono box is to cut off one ear

 

I would absolutely not want to ever listen through one speaker! It was seeming like that was really the way to get a true mono experience (again, with vinyl). When I needledrop my mono records, of course I only choose one side over the other.
But I also don't want to be a dink!! hehe, Two speakers sound better and better as the day goes on......

 

Agreed. Although, I've never read anything specifically stating they did it one way or the other. Haven't read the Lewisohn book (yet). I only brought this up because of the pics showing L/R pairs of speakers in the various Abbey Road control rooms circa '63. It makes perfect sense that they would have used only one speaker when mixing to mono, though without verification from someone actually present, it's really just conjecture, no? I mean, as illogical as it may seem, it's certainly possible two speakers were used for mono mixes.

(And what about the tracking sessions? Were mono mic feeds only routed to one speaker when setting mic placement and determining EQ & compression settings when recording each instrument or vocal?)

Apologies to the OP...I suppose this is getting a bit off-topic.....

 

Do other people agree that mono is better out of speakers than headphones?

 

Loads of old tube radios featured auxillary inputs. Though they were designed to reproduce AM radio signals, they can be fun with modern sound sources. I put some old radios to good use with the Bee Gees mono CDs and plan to do the same with those from the Bealtes. The sound is not hi-fi, but is certainly nostalgic and pure mono.

 

From Lewisohn’s Recording Sessions, p. 108:
‘Geoff Emerick confirms this view and points out that almost all of the Beatles recording sessions – including those for Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band – were monitored in the control room through just one mono speaker anyway, except for when stereo mixing was being done. “We did have two speakers but everything was put through the right hand one. We weren’t allowed to monitor on both because they were saved for stereo orchestral recordings!”

Let me add that it makes perfect sense to monitor a mono recording through one speaker only, if you know that listeners are going to hear the recording in that way. It makes a tremendous difference in the frequency response perceived by the ears, whether you listen to mono through a centered speaker or through a stereo pair with the sounds coming from the sides.

Try for yourself – play a mono recording through a single speaker facing your forehead. Then turn your head 45° or so, until the speaker is pointing directly to one of your ears. You will experience hearing a notable increase in treble response when the sound hits your ear from the side – simply because of the physiology of the outer ear pinna/auricle and the sophisticated way it amplifies different freqencies. (From Wikipedia: The pinna works differently for low and high frequency sounds. For low frequencies, it behaves similarly to a reflector dish, directing sounds toward the ear canal. For high frequencies, however, its value is more sophisticatedly reckoned. While some of the sounds that enter the ear travel directly to the canal, others reflect off the contours of the pinna first: these enter the ear canal at a very slight delay. Such a delay translates into phase cancellation, where the frequency component whose wave period is twice the delay period is virtually eliminated. Neighboring frequencies are dropped significantly. This is known as the pinna notch, where the pinna creates a notch filtering effect.)

So the EQ curve of a given mono recording will probably be different depending on whether the engineer did the mixing listening through a stereo setup or through one single speaker.

I personally prefer listening to mono through a single speaker, as I think that produces a more well-defined and “pin-pointed” sound. In the end, it is just a matter of personal preferences.

 

I have a little circular thingamabob on my old Dual 1228 tone arm next to the cartridge. It has an "S" and an "M" on it, which I assume stands for "stereo" and "mono." Not quite sure what it does, exactly, or if it even works.

 

Maybe Emerick is correct in remembering that they mixed to mono one speaker, but that line about having to save two speakers for stereo orchestral recordings seems a little suspect.

 

Thanks for the quote - very interesting (I need to read that book!).

So is Emerick saying that the mono mixes were done using the right-hand speaker only, or just the "recording sessions" (which could mean only the instrument-tracking sessions)?

And are we to assume that the engineers did not physically move one speaker to the center-mix position during mixing sessions? If that was the case, then I guess we should all set our balance controls to the right when listening to the Beatles in mono!!!

 

It’s not “stereo” and “mono”.

It’s “standard [groove]” and “microgroove”.

This designation was used on cartridges with flippable styli, which had two stylus tips: One for standard groove records (or coarse grooves = 78s, typically with a tip radius of 0.002 in. at the end of the 78s era) and one for the microgroove records introduced in 1948, with a spherical tip radius of 0.0005–0.001 in. for early mono vinyls.