What is the difference between mono and stereo

It can be recorded with just one mic. The concept came about when someone listened to recordings that were done with the mic in different places, and he realised that two mics would 'hear' two different mixes. The best way to check if a recording is stereo is to hear applause. It's very obvious whether it's mono or not. Surround sound takes this idea further. Basically it used a delay to make the sound appear to come from farther away, but with 7 points now, it's achieved using 7 different positions for the mics, which are amplified with 7 different amps and speakers, spread round the room.

The most basic definition of mono or stereo is simply that with stereo you receive information in one ear that is somewhat different to information received by the other. Early stereo pop singles are quite interestingly and idiosyncratically mixed.

If you isolate the left channel you can hear a pleasant instrumental version of the same track. Early producers working in stereo often placed the bass and drums, often relegated to a single track on a 4-track tape, to one channel. By the end of the '60s it was more commonplace to place the drums and bass in the centre of the mix and then subtly pan the vocals, and less subtly pan the guitars, keyboards and other instruments, in a bid to reproduce the spatial layout of a band onstage.

While mono is sometimes seen as the poor cousin of stereo, producers such as Joe Meek were able to commit powerful and lucid mixes to tape in mono. There are some stereo recordings that pretty much require some form of electronic analysis to demonstrate that they are stereo.

Classical performances captured by overhead microphones, no more than a couple of feet apart suspended over an orchestra the width of a concert stage, don't tend to have lively stereo mixes. The two microphones will pick up their subtly different locations with regards to certain instruments, but the effect isn't to produce a jarring or vivid stereo image. Having said that again some early stereo classical records were produced so that 'sparring' instruments were placed at opposite sides of the stereo image.

Finally, if OP isn't hearing any difference between switching from mono to stereo then he could be experiencing a hardware issue somewhere, and legitimately isn't being presented with different audio upon making the switch.

Speaking personally, the rather desultory soundcard in my laptop isn't capable of recording incoming audio in stereo, but recording software doesn't know this and will happily record the same incoming audio to two separate audio tracks. I would be surprised if a soundcard could only output mono audio, but a cursory Google reveals people reporting this exact problem.

As we almost do only have 'Stereo-Sound-Systems' to our disposal I'll make a little add-on with a totally practical approach. When a listener at a certain distance is sitting exactly in the center between the two speakers, the mono signal will appear to be exactly in the middle of the plain between the two speakers.

Headphones leave you no choice. You are always in the middle! Anything that really took advantage of the stereo system will definitely NOT get better by being remastered back to MONO because you are limiting the sound-space to a single channel - which on a CD gets equally distributed to both channels. If the music was absolutely mono in the first place, remastering with modern equipment could definitely help to make the sound more transparent and clear!

Sometimes by even producing some pseudo-stereo-effect out of the mono signal The experience of listening to music in mono from a speaker, eg.

When a speaker is projecting into a room, the sound is reflected off all the surfaces in the room, so there is still a sense of space and presence. When a mono signal is piped into headphones, the sound all seems to be coming from the center of the skull as Consumer Reports described it many years ago an effect which I find drab and lifeless.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. This is called a stereo image. One of these cues is an interaural level difference, or ILD — a difference in the level of a sound between your left ear and your right ear. As we intuitively know, the force of a sound wave is attenuated, or reduced, over distance.

The further a sound travels, the quieter it becomes. If a sound originates directly in front of you, the sound will take the same length path to your left ear and your right ear. So, the sound will be equally loud at both ears. If it originates over to your left side, the sound travels further to the right ear and is quieter in the right ear because of that.

This indicates to the brain that the sound originates from the left side. If I send a signal to the left speaker and the right speaker, but send it to the right speaker at a lower level, it fools your brain into thinking my voice is coming from the left side. Another cue humans use to localize sounds is an interaural time difference, or ITD. If a sound comes from your left side, we know that it travels a shorter path to the left ear. Travelling a shorter path, it will reach your left ear first before reaching your right ear.

Our brains tell us that the sound must have originated from the left side. In fact, the interaural time difference cue is so powerful that even if a sound is equally loud in both ears, if it reaches the left ear first, it will still appear to have originated from the left side. This is called the Haas Effect, and there is a mixing technique that works on this principle. Now the signal from the left speaker reaches your ear first before the signal from your right speaker, causing you to perceive the sound as though it were coming from your left side — even though the sound is equally loud in both speakers.

Up until this point, the examples of stereo imaging have included stereo speaker systems. Most--if not all--people love music. We want to enjoy our music as much as possible, which means making sure our earbuds and headphones are the best quality possible. Part of that quality comes from the kind of sound an earbud or headphone produces. There are two main types: mono and stereo. Mono or monoaural sound only uses one channel when converting a signal into a sound.

Even if there are multiple speakers, the same signal will go to both speakers. This then gives the effect that the sounds, even if they are coming from separate speakers, are coming from one single position or source.

Contrary to mono sound, stereo sound uses more than one channel when converting a signal into a sound. This essentially means that each signal sent out is unique. There is no real answer.