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In the Forum: Audio For Dummies ™
In the Thread: A new 'chic' foolishness about mono systems

Post Subject: It's not mono vs stereo, but mono dipole vs stereoPosted by Teflon on: 6/4/2012

With stereo you hear sound from more than one source (speaker) and the sound from each source is very nearly the same except for some variations in amplitude of certain frequencies and some phase differences which occur because the microphones used to record these signals were placed in different locations with respect to the instruments. These microphones also picked up ambient sounds - the instruments themselves send sound in all directions so the microphones also pick up reflected sounds from the room boundaries.

Listening to two speakers and the reflections from your room boundaries your ears experience a sound 'field' which allows you to experience the sound as coming not just from two speakers - you hear the 'air' in the sound.

It seems to me very difficult to ensure the stereo playback matches the live performance because the listening room and the place of the performance are different. Even if the recording and mixing were perfect the reproduction will not be correct. Maybe the result is actually confusing, there is a conflict between the recording environment and the playback environment so that the result is actually worse. Perhaps, at most, you can only get a 'sense' and feeling for the original performance.

With mono dipole sound, your also hear sound from more than one source - in this case the speaker + reflected from boundaries.

Listening to one dipole speaker with the reflections from your room boundaries your ears also experience a sound 'field' which allows you to experience the sound as coming not just from one speakers - you hear the 'air' in the sound. But you hear the effects of the listening room without trying to 'force' the sound to match an original venue using two speakers. You reduce the conflict between your listening room and the recording.

When you listen to live music from a distance, such as the back row at the orchestra, you experience sound as if it come from one 'speaker' which radiates sound in many directions. Perhaps a mono dipole is a more realistic way to experience this sound in playback than with stereo ?

So the 'full mono experiment' is the wrong one, you don't want a mono-pole speaker if using mono.

Could it be - that if you sit close to your speakers, which you might have to do if they are very large, then the listening room is not so intrusive and does not contribute itself to the sound field - then you need stereo (or multi-channel) to give you a sound field that does not collapse to one small place. But if you sit further away from your speaker, or listen to music throughout a house with open space, then the room(s) create a sound field and stereo is no longer the only game in town.

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