Now this is interesting.

One day , unbeknownst to him, someone or something flipped the "mono" switch on his preamp. He chalked it up to a number of things, but had no idea as to the real cause... anyway, he decided to mess around with placement to see if that could take care of the multiple problems(main one being no soundstage!). Well, after many hours of moving the speakers about, he got them situated to where they sounded the best..it was at that point he noticed the mono switch being engaged, and switched it back to stereo... well, he said the sounds he got from that point on were amazing, better than any time before, huge, saying how he got hit with a wall of 3d sound stage..... , as a result, he does this any time he has a speaker setup gig, and of course recommends this course of action to all the junior audiophile types.

I had never thought about doing that, but when I think about it, it makes perfect sense. As a recording engineer, I know that I will always get great results in stereo(once ive folded the multitrack down to 2ch) by first getting it right in mono...but I had never thought of doing it with speaker setup.

Learn something new every day. going to be doing this myself, both here at home and at the studio.

thoughts are welcome.

January 18, 2009 - 6:20pm

Buddha

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Joined: Sep 8 2005 - 10:24am

Re: Now this is interesting.

Killer post.

I'll be curious to hear what you think it may do for vertical/height cues!

Cheers.

January 18, 2009 - 7:32pm

mrlowry

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Joined: May 30 2006 - 1:37pm

Re: Now this is interesting.

Using mono recordings with accurate tonality to determine speaker position by first obtaining a strong center image would probably be a very good starting point. I always use the center image (although with stereo recordings) as my main guide for determining the distance between speakers and for deciding how much toe in is required.

In a related topic I've often found that mono recordings with a proper tonal balance are a great way to determine the tonal balance of a system by removing stereo as a variable. For example a system that may sound a little bright on stereo recordings will almost inevitably sound very bright with well recorded mono material. So slight problems in timbre that show up in mono are an indicator of problems that might go unnoticed in stereo.

January 19, 2009 - 6:09am

tom collins

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Joined: Apr 3 2007 - 11:54am

Re: Now this is interesting.

i ordered a stereophile test disk which provides exact duplicate tones from each speaker and the instructions state to set it up as nc described. worked wonders. best $9.95 i have ever spent on the hobby. also, there is some great music on there too including songs that are often referred to in the reviews.

January 26, 2009 - 10:15pm

absolutepitch

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Joined: Jul 9 2006 - 8:58pm

Re: Now this is interesting.

Another option is to use pink noise in either channel. You'll probably find that the two speakers sound differently from each other. Then you might be able to move the two to their optimum locations. Let us know what you find.

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