Playing stereo AND mono tracks together?

Is anyone out there playing stereo and mono tracks in the same playlist? I personally would find it a bit jarring from song-to-song but have considered alternating on an hourly basis. Suggestions?

You must be playing some old music, as stereo was normal on even 45 rpm records in the 70's. If you're doing an oldies show some of the music will be in mono. Same with Classical if using older recordings of past performers [like Arthur Rubenstein]. Big Band music is very available on CD having been remastered from 78 rpm records so the hissing and scratches will be gone, but will still be in mono too and the frequency response is what it is. Other than big band recordings made in the 60's on then some would be in stereo.

I'd think that the flow of the music is the point and a listener listening probably realizes much of that sort of music is going to be in mono, not stereo. Maybe an hourly disclamor saying that during this next hour some of the music you'll hear will not be in stereo as those are original recordings that were produced before the advent of stereo recording. Of something like that.

A number of CDS of music recorded on the cusp of the switchover from mono "hi-fi" to stereo in the 50's include both mono and stereo tracks on the same disc; so I'm not sure if it's even that big an issue.

I'd think most jarring would be to go from either simulated stereo or pre-pan-pot stereo to real stereo. There was a point in time when some labels would try to "synthesize" stereo with a box that would split out certain frequencies and try to recreate stereo. It sounded terrible. The pan pot seems like a pretty simple thing. It allowed an engineer to place a microphone in the mix. Before the pan pot, your choice was hard left, hard right, or in the middle. That's why some Beatle recordings have all the vocals in the left, and all the instruments in the right. The pan pot was invented around 1965, and from that point, it was possible to have real stereo. Some purists prefer mono before that point, since the engineers were making records primarily for AM radio airplay.

Actually, the "pan pot" has been around since the late 30's/early 40's; it was developed by RCA for Walt Disney's "Fantasound" system used in FANTASIA, the first "surround sound" process with speakers all over the theatre. But it probably wasn't used much for early stereo recordings due to the industry (and public) preference for gimmicky ping-pong stereo. George Martin, the Beatles' producer, recalled making a comedy record with Peter Sellers doing five different voices by recording them separately in mono, then mixing them left speaker-3/4-50/50 ("center")-3/4-right speaker in stereo to "place" each voice separately.

JeffM said:

Actually, the "pan pot" has been around since the late 30's/early 40's; it was developed by RCA for Walt Disney's "Fantasound" system used in FANTASIA, the first "surround sound" process with speakers all over the theatre. But it probably wasn't used much for early stereo recordings due to the industry (and public) preference for gimmicky ping-pong stereo.

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Or because their studios didn't have consoles with them. Just because something was available didn't mean every studio had them. Martin was famous for jerry-rigging things to make them work the way he wanted. But the photos I've seen of Abbey Road studios in the 60s shows a console without pan pots.

I get unnerved when I hear stereo recordings of songs I heard in mono for years.

TheBigA said:

Or because their studios didn't have consoles with them. Just because something was available didn't mean every studio had them. Martin was famous for jerry-rigging things to make them work the way he wanted. But the photos I've seen of Abbey Road studios in the 60s shows a console without pan pots.

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True enough, but you had claimed they weren't invented until 1965. There were a number of ways of adjusting sound mixes for special effects, etc; George Martin certainly knew how. A couple years ago I read that David Seville's "Chipmunk Song" had been recorded on multiple rolls of 35mm magnetic film track and combined on a synchronizer of the type used for mixing movie soundtracks. The original 35mm rolls were found in some warehouse and used to create a first-ever true stereo mix.

As for "synthesized" stereo, some was better than others. Capitol's "Duophonic" process produced, I thought, some pretty acceptable results; especially on big band recordings. On the other hand, Mercury's and Roulette's fake stereo was horrible; sounded like it was recorded inside an empty 50-gallon drum. Hugo Winterhalter's 50's easy-listening hit "Vanessa" (RCA Victor) sounds better to me in fake stereo, the original recording was very "dry" and the reverb adds some zing to it.

PirateJohnny said:

I get unnerved when I hear stereo recordings of songs I heard in mono for years.

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As I recall, AM radio ruled for Top 40 radio well into the '60s (my '67 Ford Galaxie came with an AM only radio). Many songs were being recorded in stereo in the late '50s. Although those songs showed up on LPs, we of course heard the mono versions on AM radio. When CDs came out in the '80s, record companies cleaned out their vaults and put out those stereo versions. I was ELATED to hear them.

In my own personal collection, I have many songs from the 60's which sound amazing in mono, mainly Motown. Many songs, into the 70's, had dedicated mono mixes.

As long as we were going back and forth (literally!) about "pan pots" and ping-pong stereo, the ultimate combination of both might well be found in RCA Victor's "Stereo Action" series of LPS circa 1960, which sent whole sections of orchestras flying across the room. The best known of them is probably Esquivel's "Latin-Esque," where they literally divided the orchestra in half between two studios half a block apart. (Now that's stereo separation!) Esquivel and second conductor Stanley Wilson were connected to each other by headphones.

Columbia tried something similar (but far less successful) with "Voices In Motion." which pretty much sounded like a 24-voice mixed chorus on roller skates, chasing one another around a track.

eriedj said:

In my own personal collection, I have many songs from the 60's which sound amazing in mono, mainly Motown. Many songs, into the 70's, had dedicated mono mixes.

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Motown put out an awesome CD box set titled "Motown: The complete #1's". It's a 10 disc set, so it's pricey. But it contains stereo versions of most of those '60s songs we've only heard in mono for many years.


http://www.amazon.com/Motown-The-Complete-No-1s/dp/B001NB5CWQ

Where I used to work, most of the Motown hits sent out to oldies stations were the stereo versions. When my city had a stereo oldies station, the Motown hits played were always the stereo versions. It wasn't until I got ahold of a copy of the Motown mono hits CD set (4 discs) that I heard the original mono versions -- some of them superior to what one heard in stereo.

An example would be Edwin Starr's 'War'. The stereo version is cool in that you hear the guitar on one channel, and there is more going on, but the mono hit just slammed you with those horns, right up front. Bam!

The thing I find funniest about people complaining about music being in stereo, is that these same people will watch TV with an older 4:3 picture stretched (distorted) to fill a 16:9 screen.

Captainfirst said:

Is anyone out there playing stereo and mono tracks in the same playlist? I personally would find it a bit jarring from song-to-song but have considered alternating on an hourly basis. Suggestions?

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I run a holiday format and some of my older stuff is mono.

I'm not sure I see or understand the problem with doing so.

frankberry said:

Much of the 50s/60s music was recorded with vocal on one channel and instruments on the other channel. These were the two-channel masters which were never intended to be released as 'stereo' recordings.
They were recorded in this fashion so that the studio could have better control of the mix of the final monaural product.

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I learned how to play the drums listening to some of the early Beatles stuff. Just pan to the side without the drums and you're in business.

PirateJohnny said:

The thing I find funniest about people complaining about music being in stereo, is that these same people will watch TV with an older 4:3 picture stretched (distorted) to fill a 16:9 screen.

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Very good point.