awesome post

[Skyline609]

This is a great discussion, and i figure id put my 2 cents in. To reiterate what most have been saying here, stereo is just using 2 separate channels of sound info as well as two separate speakers. Just like how quadraphonic was 4 channels with 4 sets of sound info and 4 speakers back in the 70s when that was introduced.
monophonic- 1
stereophonic-2
quadraphonic-4
and now we have 5.1- 5 channels and the subwoofer!

im not sure if i got this right or not, but mono cant be panned. Im almost positive if you panned a track anywhere, and then made it mono, it would instantly go to one channel, which is illusioned as the middle because we are conditioned into listening in stereo; but you need to think of it as taking your two speakers and mushing them together to get 1 speaker. So if you took away the master buss on your mixer, and just pictured the mixer as all single tracks, the pan wouldnt effect the sound at all. (1 channel). Any panned "mono" track, is actually stereo, even if you recorded it with one mic, its still coming out in stereo (2 channels still, just the data for one channel is no sound)

So the way i look at it is this. The channels on a mixer arent really stereo or mono. They are just data carriers. Since most mixers will output in stereo, you get all these options of where you want to put the sound "data carriers". For example you can place a guitar on the right, but have its reverb effect on the left (stereo); or you can have a guitar track on the left, and a copied guitar track on the right (still stereo even though it will sound "mono"); or you can have all combinations of instruments in all parts of the sound field (stereo mix- combined individual stero signals to form a master stereo signal)

i am confusing myself jst thinking about it. but i think if we disassociate mono and stereo all together, it may be a bit easier to understand.

i might be wrong on some of this

i tried though/

[Skyline609]

and also while thinking about this cool stuff, consider this it will really mess ya up.

what if headphones were redevloped into dolby surround sound headphones. Although that seems practically impossible, because unless we grow a third ear in between our eyes to put the center channel, and a fourth ear growing out our ass for the sub channel, it cant be done.

"Illusionary" Dobly SS could be done though, who is to say you cant make headphones with ear pieces that each have a front and real channel in them. the would be so small that they would fit into your ears (like the old school game-boy head phones) Then we could all have the illusion of rear stuff. (you would also have 4 little wires coming out of your headphones instead of 2) Headphones now are pretty much surround sound, there is the left and right fronts with a phantom center (theres the mono again).

damn, you try to think of how sound could get any better but try to imagine where it could go. I mean humans listen in an infinity number of channels, that is 360 degrees. What if one day REAL 360 degree music was made possible. Not just the skimpy 5 channels we think is awesome today. Imagine how amazing that would be! Imagine what your damn mixer would look like! you would have a pan for the front, back, middle, top, bottom, whatever.
damn talk about a HUGE wave file.
cool.

[Edited by Skyline609 on 09-07-2000 at 19:33]

[monty]

Where's Ed? He's good at verbalizing these concepts. I'd explain it, but someone, like Ed, would come along and explain it again anyway, with the appropriate terminology.

[MISTERQCUE]

D@mn that was deep Skyline!Remember the old days when we had
"QUADROPHONIC" sound? Though our brain's auditory senses informed us that this sound was basically "artificial",we
continued to produce replications of sounds to be exactly
what we sonically envision,hence 5.1 surround sound. Can
360 degree sound be reproduced? IMHO,yes! I don't know how
(where is SONUSMAN when U need him?),but technology WILL
produce gear that will allow our auditory senses to experience this concept.

[twist]

Sorry, I just cant let this rest till it's a little clearer.
I too, would be interested in hearing from Ed on this subject.

Skyline; You've made a couple comments in your first post which I think are not completely accurate. Yes mono can be panned. Record a single guitar track. Play it back through your mixer. Adjust the pan control from left to right. The sound will move from the left speaker to the right. This is a true mono signal being panned left to right. If you leave the pan control in the center, you will have the exact same sound coming from both speakers in equal amounts.The sound should appear to come from center if you place yourself equidistant between your speakers. This effect would be exactly the same if you copied the track to another track and played them both back together, whether you panned one track left and one track right, or if you left both pan controls dead center. You would have the same identical sound in equal amounts in both speakers. Again appearing to come from center.

Now try recording your guitar played through an effects processor with a stereo output (separate left,right outputs).
Record the left output to one track and the right output to another track. When you play it back, pan one track hard left, and one track hard right. Correctly positioned between the speakers, the sound will seem to be surrounding you.Try adjusting the balance control on your playback amp left then right.The sound from the left channel will differ from the right channel in some way (depending on the effect you've selected). Be sure to select an effect that is stereo! A CHORUS should be a good example.

If you pan both tracks to center on playback, the effect should be lost; you've just mixed them to mono! Equal and identical signals from both speakers = mono.

Enough for now,

Twist

[Skyline609]

i disagree...stereo doesnt really have to sound cool to be considered stereo. its just the term for using two channels. the reason why a mono signal seems like it can be panned is because the mixer master out is a stereo bus. therefore, as soon as a mono signal is panned, it is now stereo. so techincally, i think if you were to switch your mixer over to mono, the pan buttons would have no impact on the mix. mono cant be panned because mono only exists on one channel, so placement in the sound field can only be in one spot.

so in my point of view
Equal and identical signals from both speakers = stereo that sounds like mono.

I think.

[Edited by Skyline609 on 09-08-2000 at 10:38]

[twist]

Fair enough. You say potato I say potaato.
Twist

[MISTERQCUE]

Some-1. Define "STEREO".

[twist]

Misterqcue,

Aye, there's the rub! My own understanding (and I'm no expert) is that by definition a stereo signal could not be the same information in both channels. That is simply two channels of mono (IMHO).

Twist

[pglewis]

I think the most simplistic way to say it is: if you're not sending the exact same signal to both speakers, you have some sort of stereo image happening.

[twist would have to squeeze the same answer in before me ]

[lazyboy]

I agree with Skyline...I think.

If you want to split hairs, you might call the same thing coming from both speakers "useless stereo" or "stereo that might as well be mono". Skyline, tell me if we're in agreement here, the pan control on a channel strip would better be described as the first point in the stereo bus. And that would make the stereo bus two signal paths that may or may not be different, right?

A pan knob controls how much of a signal is sent to the left or right side of a stereo bus. Therefore, a pan set in any position other than hard L or R is creating essentially a stereo signal because it is being sent along 2 different mono paths (the stereo bus). To the ears it sounds mono, but in terms of signal routing, it is called stereo.

Stereo signal paths were designed to recreate the experience of having 2 ears. With that in mind, you might say that anything coming from more than one sound source is stereo, as our ears will perceive their placement in an environment. But if they are completely different sounds, say 2 different car stereos in a parking lot, we wouldn't describe them as stereo, we would call it noise. Keeping in mind previous sentiments about the ability of the ears to sense a 360 degree environment, stereo is imperfect and illusory. So our ears are trained to recognize stereo, even though stereo is an illusion created by mono signal paths.

It must have something to do with the sounds being perceiveable as purposeful or complimentary, and now we're getting into aesthetics...

Uhm, now I'm getting nuerotic, twisting a thread of logic into a noose which I will now use to hang myself.

[Skyline609]

lazyboy, i agree 100%.

[dobro]

"To the ears it sounds mono, but in terms of signal routing, it is called stereo."

Yeah, and I think someone else called it useless stereo. So you can pan the same signal left and right, but it'll sound like a single sound source in the stereo field unless you do something to change the sound of one of the pans.

Maybe all we should talk about is panned signals (where you put the track in the stereo field) and perceived depth (what it sounds like).

Maybe everybody knew this last week and I'm talking to myself.

[twist]

Thanks to sonusman and everybody else for all your responses including the original thread "Stereo not panned mono". Lots of interesting discussion on this topic from a lot of pretty knowledgeable people.
Actually, I really hadn't intended for this to be a discussion about the definition of "STEREO". I really was curious about how the rest of you were recording, mono vs. stereo, in order to best utilize a mere 8 tracks. 8 is never enough. Especially if you want to record some tracks in stereo, and still maintain control over individual instruments at mixdown.
We are the owners of some pretty high tech (and expensive) toys, and it seems wise to share our experiences, so that everyone might enjoy the highest return for their investment of time and money.

Thanks,
Twist

[John Sayers]

everything is stereo - unless of course you are deaf in one ear!!