Fun with Stereo

I don't know how many of you are old enough to remember mono records. At one time all recorded music was produced in a single track. Since the output of your record player (for you youngsters out there--a turntable with speakers) and radio were in mono, there was no problem.


The technology for stereo in recordings and radio actually go back as far as the late 1920s but was slow to catch on commercially. There is obviously additional expense (how much I can't say) and when you consider how primitive the recording and playback equipment of the day was, stereo would not have improved the sound greatly. (The motion picture industry took to stereo earlier since movie theaters could more easily be converted to stereo playback.)


FM stations began broadcasting in stereo in the early 1960s. FM radios were not common in most homes, however, an non-existent in cars. Further, these stations tended more to classical music and jazz.


Rock and pop music was the province of AM radio. Stereo came slowly to this band as competing broadcast systems vied for attention. Even today, AM stereo sounds flat to me, probably due to the difference between the ways that AM and FM broadcast.


Records of the early- to mid-1960s were mostly made in mono. They often recorded on two-track machines, but mostly put the instruments on one track and vocals on the other. Then they were blended together in a mono mix that came through fine on your car radio.


As home stereos became more affordable and popular (I got my first in 1964!), record companies took their two-track masters and issued them in "stereo." I remember having to decide whether to buy the Monkees' second album on mono for $2.99 or in stereo for $3.99. When the Beatles catalog was mastered for CDs in the 1980s, George Martin successfully convinced Apple to release the earlier material in mono (Please Please Me, With the Beatles, Hard Day's Night, Beatles for Sale, and Past Masters 1).

I thought of this the other day as I was listening o some old Lovin' Spoonful tracks on my MP3 player. The tracks were released on CD in the faux-stereo that resulted from using two tracks in recording. Using earphones, it sounds quite odd. Not so much the instruments, but the vocals. On You Didn't Have to Be So Nice, John Sebastian records counter-melody vocals on a different track from his lead vocal. So you get one in the left ear and the other in the right. On Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind and Nashville Cats, the lead vocal is in one ear and the harmony vocal the other.

This sounds fine in the car or at home because the sound blends in the room, but in earphones, it comes off a bit weird.