Translated from German to English by Google Translate:
I don’t think you can generally say whether mono is better than stereo because it depends a lot on the mixing.
I don’t know if you were aware of the hype about artificial head stereophony. This was an attempt to get the impression that the orchestra was playing in front of you on the big stage. The instrumentalists are spread out on the stage and you can hear the musicians as they are distributed there, sometimes more to the left, sometimes more to the right and from the middle.
Basically, in my opinion, stereo (apart from quadraphonic or 7.1, which is not what we’re talking about here) is about getting the most accurate image of the stage possible, i.e. the impression as if the band is standing on stage in front of you and playing.
Of course, this cannot be compared with sharp channel separation, as was often done in the 1960s and 1970s, because it is unnatural and sounds like it.
But if done correctly, stereo will provide a better listening experience than mono, I am convinced. However, this has a more noticeable effect on classical music than on pop or rock music.
An example of how it was done well in the 1970s are the albums by Frank Zappa, who always attached great importance to the fact that his music came across well and that no instrument was lost; you can hear, for example, the albums “Over Nite Sensation”, "One Size Fits All” or “Zoot Allures”. Zappa’s analogue albums from this period were far superior to many others from the rock/pop scene.
Just my two cents.
Cheers
Derek
Derek_Jaser - I agree totally! That’s why I had the bias that stereo was somehow intrinsically an upgrade from mono, if one were offered the same recording both ways. I’m not sure that the engineers who produced the original stereo releases knew what the full capabilities of the stereo image were, or at least didn’t have the right tools at hand when all they had was two track, then four track machines.
What I really don’t understand now is why the remastered releases in 2023 that I’ve listened to haven’t been able to capture the sound of the mono mixes. Following GregD’s metaphor of the sound engineer as a painter, maybe it is the tradeoff between “figure” and “ground” in painting terms. Stereo is able to present more audio “ground”, so the “figures” [instruments, voice, etc) simply get lost in the additional space.