An online shop called "Sundazed" has chosen to issue "Takes Off" and "After Bathing at Baxter`s" by Jefferson Airplane in mono.

My question was why is that, and why should I choose to order by them, instead of getting a used, near mint stereo pressing at Ebay, at a cheaper price, which they also call an "original recording"?

I got the answer that "these are rare mono mixes and are unavailable anywhere else and preferred by many. We wanted to make them available to anyone who could not find, or afford an original mono copy".

I still have to ask, why are they preferred by many? Does something get lost in the stereo mixes? I know that the first Beatles LPs are reissued in mono. I bought them, and they sound just fine to me, but what`s the thing here?

Any views?

A mono mix has all the recorded sounds coming out of one channel. These sounds, of course, are mixed and selected by an engineer(s).

Stereophonic mixes have the sounds split between two channels, these sounds are also selected and mixed by an engineer.

The mono mix is frequently more than just a simple combination of the two stereo channels. Sometimes, 2 different engineers work on the two mixes, often resulting in varying degrees of difference in the selection of balance and loudness of certain instrumentation and vocalisation.

Sometimes, however, a great degree of effort was put into the mono and stereo mixing due to the spatial quality of stereophonic sound. This quality is greatly accentuated when listening on headphones. Artistic decisions were sometimes used to vary the stereo mix from the mono, since it afforded the opportunity to better approximate the home listening experience to that of a concert hall or recording studio. Some engineers went further and the stereo effects were chosen for the unique (and sometimes bizarre) ambiance, which might have been impossible to achieve in a concert hall or recording studio.

Finally, there is the fact that the mono and stereo versions of an album may contain completely different recordings of the same songs, or radically different mixes of songs. The Billie Holiday album "Lady In Satin", one of her last and few stereo recordings even had a different number of songs on the mono than the stereo! (And there were reasons for that.)

In the case of The Beatles, the mono and stereo mixes are frequently of differing lengths, some feature solos or intrumentation missing in the other mix, etc.

LP"s were issued in both formats only for a period of about 10 years (late 50's-the beginning of stereo album era until the late 1960's). Some LP's had only one run of a mono version and then it was eliminated from the record company's catalog. The scarcity of some of these LP's adds to their value, even if there is no perceivable sonic difference.

As to why one should buy these Jefferson airplane LP's I can't say...perhaps there are great sonic differences or maybe they are just really rare.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2009-03-11 21:32 by thkbeercan.

there was som quadrafonic mixes in the 70's too,

yes indeed...in fact, the quad mix of the Jefferson Airplane album "Volunteers" featured completely different takes of some of the songs than the conventional stereo version.