Re: [ARSCLIST] Early stereo LPs: subject to mononuclearosis?

[Don Cox <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 27/08/06, Tom Fine wrote:
> Definitely harder because mono is designed to be from a single point
> source. But, most modern stereo speakers are too directional and
> placed in a room in a way as to not do mono well on their own. You can
> certainly tell how uneven your room is -- and where the bass traps and
> resonances are -- by listening to a full-range mono recording. The
> greatest mono systems of yore had a big (very big by today's
> standards) speaker firing wide and filling the whole room. Or they had
> corner horns (I'm still not sold on those but I've heard excellent
> sounding setups in the right kind of room).

I think either a corner horn, or a big box with a 15 inch Tannoy Dual 
Concentric driver would be suitable as a single speaker. 

You need to shift some air to get smooth bass. A stereo pair does double
the area of the bass speaker.

 
> In the studio, I set up a separate mono monitor, an old Marantz
> speaker, in the middle of my two near-field monitors. It fires wide
> enough to fill the sound-field at 6-8 feet but it certainly wouldn't
> fill a large space. But I find it more focused and easier to discern
> problems with mono sources. Plan B is to just turn one of the
> near-field channels off, but I don't like listening with one ear
> closer than the other. For pleasure listening, as long as I'm sitting
> still, two speakers work fine, in the living room or the studio.

Yes, and if you are listening to a mixture of mono and stereo recordings
(maybe even on the same CD), it is hardly worth the trouble to switch
things around.

Regards
-- 
Don Cox
doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx