elicantu said:
what do people mean whenever they said they recorded their acustic guitar stereo?
"Stereo" is actually short for "stereophonic". It combines the Greek root words "stereo" meaning solid and implying three spatial dimensions, and "phonics" meaning sound. So, at its most fundamental level, "stereophonics" means an attempt to record and reproduce 3-dimensional sound.
The term "stereo" is commonly used today and used to describe systems that fall far short of that ultimate goal. Richard Heyser is quoted as saying "Stereo is merely an attempt to create the illusion of reality through the willing suspension of disbelief."
Common terms today are monaural, binaural, monophonic, stereophonic and biphonic. These refer to common techniques:
Monaural uses one mike and is played back by headphone on one ear. Binaural uses a dummy head mike with two mikes and is played back with two headphones. Monophonic uses one mike and is played back via one loudspeaker (although typically today it is reproduced by the same signal in two loudspeakers to produce a phantom "center" image of a single loudspeaker). Stereophonic uses two mikes and is played back via two loudspeakers. Biphonic uses two mikes, and is played back via two headphones.
So, a "monophonic" recording of acoustic guitar would use a single mike and be intended ultimately for playback solo or in a mix reproduced by one loudspeaker or, more likely, mixed in some ratio to each of two loudspeakers in a "stereo" system.
A "stereophonic" recording of acoustic guitar uses two mikes in some array intended to produce
a stereophonic illusion when the two signals are played back separately over two loudspeakers. Stereo techniques fall into the broad categories of spaced techniques (where the mikes are separated) and coincident techniques (where the capsules are as close as may be and the two channels differ based solely on directional information differences.).
Cheers,
Otto