State of the Art

by Gerard Rejskind

(Reprinted from issue 55 of UHF Magazine. To purchase the issue, click here.)
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Have you noticed that, nowadays, public pronouncements often mean the opposite of what they appear to mean? A case in point: let's say two banks decide to merge. They announce that they are doing so in order to be "more competitive." But you don't have to be John Maynard Keynes to figure out that the merger will mean less competition, not more. Indeed, that's why they're doing it.
     But this is not a column about banks, it's about high fidelity. When manufacturers talk about a "strong stereo effect," what they often mean is no stereo effect at all.
     This odd misconception began at the very dawn of the stereo age, with what was often called "ping-pong stereo." There were sounds coming from each speaker, and from nowhere else. The strings from the left, the bongos from the right, with lots of alternating contrapuntal effects, so that the owners of new stereo "sets" (the popular term back then) would know they sure had stereo, all right.
     But they didn't. Take those bongos on the extreme right. They're on the right because they emerge from only the right speaker. And what do you call sound that emerges from only one speaker? That's right: monophonic.
     Ping-pong stereo isn't quite so common today, because "stereo" is taken for granted, but a lot of people are hearing mono anyway. Check out the publicity shots showing your favorite singer during a recording session. Chances are that he or she is singing into a microphone. One microphone. That's mono.
     But that fact may not be immediately evident, because the two channels of the final recording won't all come out of the middle. The producer will "assign" each track (the output of one microphone) to a particular position in the soundstage, stretching from left to right. The result will be a curtain of sound, with each instrument placed where the producer wants it to be. But because each performer was recorded by a single microphone, the result is still mono.
     If you have a home theatre system, then ping-pong stereo is back in a big way, with "stereo" (actually contrapuntal mono) effects exaggerated so that consumers will be convinced they really did need those extra speakers. And most producers mix all of the dialog down to mono, so that it is reproduced by the centre speaker only. It is rare to find a film with actual stereo dialog ("panned" mono dialog doesn't count), and many of the exceptions are widescreen films from the 1950's and 60's.
     So far I've been talking about recordings, but reproduction equipment is often evaluated with criteria connected with mono, not real stereo. For instance, many people will set up their systems so that they can readily hear that they have two distinct speakers. That way, they figure, they're hearing the maximum stereo effect. In actual fact they are hearing two channels of mono. Experienced listeners will know that in fact you should seek just the opposite: sound that is independent of the speakers, and gives the illusion that there are real musicians somewhere in the room, not inside the speakers!
     It is in classical music that you find the greatest proportion of true stereo recordings, though some major labels prefer to place an individual (mono) microphone on each instrument. The essence of stereo is that two microphones are used to record the same sounds from two different perspectives. There are several techniques used, including the classic Blumlein method, or spaced cardioids, or spaced omnidirectionals, or other variations, but the heart of stereo is that the same sounds are recorded by different microphones.
     Some producers, of course, would panic at the idea. Record the same sound on both channels? Gee, that would be mono, wouldn't it?
     Not so. Such a recording, reproduced through good equipment properly set up, can give an uncanny illusion of space and depth, and can truly make the walls of the listening room fall away. Just as our two-eyed stereoscopic vision allows us to see depth, so our two-eared stereophonic hearing lets us hear sounds in a convincing three-dimensional space. In prehistoric time that certainly had survival value (and it still may when you're crossing a busy street), but it is a gift when we listen to music in solid space.
     The Greek word stereos means "solid," and stereo sound should give us the illusion of solidity. If it doesn't we should some other word.
     Such as mono.

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