Specifically The Beatles. I should note I'm no audiophile whatsoever. Sgt. Pepper's has always been a favorite of mine (in stereo) and I came across the mono mix. I did a little research and many say it was meant to be in mono.

What are your guys' thoughts on the stereo vs. mono debate. I like the space you get with stereo, but I can hear a lot of different things in the mono mix of Sgt. Pepper's but it's not spacious.

I think it depends on how it was produced. you can still intend to do something in stereo but the middle can still he a little too quiet and it comes out uneven

I noticed that on a couple tracks of the Magical Mystery Tour, some of the middle was quiet, but overall, I feel like I'm getting a better overall aspect of mono, but it is very upfront and vertical than it is spacious and horizontal.

The ending of Lovely Rita in stereo is also better imo. You can hear the breaths and such. Not as evident in the mono mix. I'm still torn though which is best.

60's stereo is not "spacious" especially if the drums and/or bass are hard panned. Lead vocals being hard panned also irks me.

"Ping pong" panning is the other thing that usually makes me cringe, unless it's very slow. Actually most modulated effects sound like shit to me when they're fast.

why not just listen to new stuff instead of listening to the same old shit in a million different versions

Hey, why don't you mind your own business. But for real, any suggestions on new stuff? I've been on a funk with finding really good late 2010-present music.

by new stuff i meant new to you. could be 200 years old or whatever. but yeah i'd like some suggestions as well, been listening to nothing but 80s shit lately

i prefer mono when driving in my car

Well, hello there thread about The Beatles stereo VS mono!

Specifically The Beatles. I should note I'm no audiophile whatsoever. Sgt. Pepper's has always been a favorite of mine (in stereo) and I came across the mono mix. I did a little research and many say it was meant to be in mono.

What are your guys' thoughts on the stereo vs. mono debate. I like the space you get with stereo, but I can hear a lot of different things in the mono mix of Sgt. Pepper's but it's not spacious.


I noticed that on a couple tracks of the Magical Mystery Tour, some of the middle was quiet, but overall, I feel like I'm getting a better overall aspect of mono, but it is very upfront and vertical than it is spacious and horizontal.

There are three basic reasons The Beatles stereo mixes were so "off":

1) The mixing board at EMI Studios
That model--and I don't recall what it was, but I'm sure you can find that info--the panning knobs were set so that every track could only be panned hard left, hard right, or dead center; there was no way to pan something to, say 10-o-clock or 3-o-clock.

2) The method that The Beatles recorded
Because EMI studios were so precaucious, cheap and beaurocratic, they pretty much hid and refused to let The Beatles use their 8-track recorder, so The Beatles were pretty much stuck using 4-track. Now, as you know they went around their track limitations by bouncing between two 4-track machines. So they'd start with one 4-track tape with, say, drums on one track, guitars on one track, keyboards on a third, and percussion on the 4th. They'd bounce that down to one track on a new 4-track tape, and then add vocals to the 2nd track, backing vocals on the 3rd and bass on the last. So if you look at the final mastertapes used to make the final mix, they had most of the rhythm tracks all crammed on one track! So these stereo mixes, they had no choice but to have the weird panning with the drums and guitars hard left and bass to the hard right. You know what I mean? Pet Sounds has this same problem, but Mark Linnett went back and dubbed the pre-bounced masters to ProTools, then synched up the overdubs recorded after the bounce, then made a true stereo remix. I was VERY dissapointed no one at Abbey Road has done this.

3) Lack of understanding & creation of an industry standard for stereo panning
When you listen to most rock-based music now-a-days, you'll usually hear vocals panned in the center, the bass panned to the center, guitars or keys or whatever rythmic instruments evenly distributed to about 9-o-clock and 3-o-clock, additional things panned even harder left and right, and the drums spreading the whole stereo spectrum (with kick and snare in the center and the rest of the kit reflecting how a drumkit is physically set up). The reason everything is mixed that way is over the course of 40 years or whatever, engineers have just figured out the optimal way to mix rock music: what's the most pleasing to the ears and functions the best. Back in the 60s, no one knew this. "Pan the bass all to one side? Sure, no problem!" They hadn't yet figured out the human ear percieves lower frequences generally twords the center of a stereophonic picture, so the standard eventually became to pan the bass and kick to the center. You know what I mean?

Also remember that The Beatles always intended the final mixes to be in mono, and viewed the stereo mixes as more of a novelty, something no one knew would catch on and become the industry standard. So their method of bouncing sound-elements down to one track when they should be seperated, that was no concern because they knew the end result would just be one channel, you know?

This is why the mono mixes are pretty much THE mixes for all The Beatles early albums. I think they're more, for a lack of better word, rockin! I really hate when drums are panned hard left or right, and same with the bass. They really sound more like a live band when the early records are in mono, you know? But despite all the facts about the mono Pepper, I still find the stereo mix of Pepper easier to appreaciate the sound-design and all the layers they added. Yeah, everything is more balanced in the mono Pepper, but it just feels like it should be a stereo record, you know?

Yeah I definitely get your points. Thanks for sharing! I get the stuff about the early records, but I'm more of a Rubber Soul and onward Beatles fan. When it comes to Sgt. Pepper's, you're right...it should be a very well mixed stereo album. But in several tracks, the panning, like you mentioned, is off and too exaggerated. But stereo just gives it more space, something an album like Pepper's can benefit from. But then you hear all the hype about Sgt. Pepper's in mono...I think each has its pluses and minuses.

Yeah I definitely get your points. Thanks for sharing! I get the stuff about the early records, but I'm more of a Rubber Soul and onward Beatles fan. When it comes to Sgt. Pepper's, you're right...it should be a very well mixed stereo album. But in several tracks, the panning, like you mentioned, is off and too exaggerated. But stereo just gives it more space, something an album like Pepper's can benefit from. But then you hear all the hype about Sgt. Pepper's in mono...I think each has its pluses and minuses.

Haha, yeah I used to be like that. But then I started to analyze the song construction of a lot of the early material, and it's still quite clever, the non-I-IV-V songs anyways. Just excellent songwriting, even though they only got better at it.

Well, also, another thing to remember--and I was orignally going to talk about it in my above post, but cut it because my post was already too long--was that before these 2009 remasters, the mono mix of Pepper was clearer and more pristine than the actual official stereo CDs, because, as George Martin always said, they weren't mastered for the CD medium, you know? Before those remasters, what I believe the very best version of Pepper was the mono mix found on the Pepperland bootleg, which supposedly was the unreleased 1987 mono remaster Capitol records were about to release but didn't, the one where you could alledgedly hear a pin drop! And I heard it, and :eek: it blew my mind... how balanced, how powerfull, how clear it was, how defined the bass was. And of course all the interesting mixing differences in the mono that The Beatles themselves instructed Martin and Emorick to do... But when the new rematers came out, that Pepper was trumped, and now it feels like the mono is dated because we have this super clear and strong stereo mix, you know?

A few months ago I discovered those Beatle Stems extracted from the RockBand game, and I was tryign to reconstruct a stereo mix that doesn't have the extreme panning, a stereo mix that was more "modern" in that the drums, bass and lead vocals were center and everything else was panned left and right or spinning around it. But the project was an EPIC FAIL because the makers of the RockBand game used this shitty CEDAR remastering, in which they could extract and isolate individual elements from those single-track recordings. It works for the operation of the game itself (it has to hear an isolated drum beat or guitar track) but to listen to the actual tracks the extracted, they just sounded like shit. So I abandoned the project. :p

But, do check out the remixes on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, as they did go back and remix like 3 or 4 of the songs in a more modern fashion, and it's pretty good (although Lucy left much to be desired).

Damn, I had no idea about that '87 remaster. I still don't know which I prefer though. I'm really thinking it is on a track per track basis. Some are better in mono, some in stereo. Thanks for the insight.

Well, hello there thread about The Beatles stereo VS mono!






There are three basic reasons The Beatles stereo mixes were so "off":

1) The mixing board at EMI Studios
That model--and I don't recall what it was, but I'm sure you can find that info--the panning knobs were set so that every track could only be panned hard left, hard right, or dead center; there was no way to pan something to, say 10-o-clock or 3-o-clock.

2) The method that The Beatles recorded
Because EMI studios were so precaucious, cheap and beaurocratic, they pretty much hid and refused to let The Beatles use their 8-track recorder, so The Beatles were pretty much stuck using 4-track. Now, as you know they went around their track limitations by bouncing between two 4-track machines. So they'd start with one 4-track tape with, say, drums on one track, guitars on one track, keyboards on a third, and percussion on the 4th. They'd bounce that down to one track on a new 4-track tape, and then add vocals to the 2nd track, backing vocals on the 3rd and bass on the last. So if you look at the final mastertapes used to make the final mix, they had most of the rhythm tracks all crammed on one track! So these stereo mixes, they had no choice but to have the weird panning with the drums and guitars hard left and bass to the hard right. You know what I mean? Pet Sounds has this same problem, but Mark Linnett went back and dubbed the pre-bounced masters to ProTools, then synched up the overdubs recorded after the bounce, then made a true stereo remix. I was VERY dissapointed no one at Abbey Road has done this.

3) Lack of understanding & creation of an industry standard for stereo panning
When you listen to most rock-based music now-a-days, you'll usually hear vocals panned in the center, the bass panned to the center, guitars or keys or whatever rythmic instruments evenly distributed to about 9-o-clock and 3-o-clock, additional things panned even harder left and right, and the drums spreading the whole stereo spectrum (with kick and snare in the center and the rest of the kit reflecting how a drumkit is physically set up). The reason everything is mixed that way is over the course of 40 years or whatever, engineers have just figured out the optimal way to mix rock music: what's the most pleasing to the ears and functions the best. Back in the 60s, no one knew this. "Pan the bass all to one side? Sure, no problem!" They hadn't yet figured out the human ear percieves lower frequences generally twords the center of a stereophonic picture, so the standard eventually became to pan the bass and kick to the center. You know what I mean?

Also remember that The Beatles always intended the final mixes to be in mono, and viewed the stereo mixes as more of a novelty, something no one knew would catch on and become the industry standard. So their method of bouncing sound-elements down to one track when they should be seperated, that was no concern because they knew the end result would just be one channel, you know?

This is why the mono mixes are pretty much THE mixes for all The Beatles early albums. I think they're more, for a lack of better word, rockin! I really hate when drums are panned hard left or right, and same with the bass. They really sound more like a live band when the early records are in mono, you know? But despite all the facts about the mono Pepper, I still find the stereo mix of Pepper easier to appreaciate the sound-design and all the layers they added. Yeah, everything is more balanced in the mono Pepper, but it just feels like it should be a stereo record, you know?

This is quality posting. Thank you, I learned something.