Ken's Recordings on Roland AT 900c - Mono or Stereo?
Posted: 27 Aug 2019 22:42
Ken,
This post is to continue the discussion about why your Roland 900c recording ended up as 'two-track Mono' and not Steeo.
Your original recording of Hey Look Me Over is here:
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab
http://www.tierce-de-picardie.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7968
Having said I thought it was a great piece of music, I then added:.
But ... (there's always a "but", isn't there?) ...
I would have preferred to have been in your music room hearing you play this rather than listening to you playing through headphones or speakers. Why? Because what I am listening to through headphones is 'two-track' MONO .. not STEREO. Now you may very well have had your brass section 'centred' (which would then have sounded towards the 'middle'), but you could tell as soon as the STYLE started that this would be a two-track mono recording. Roland would definitely have 'panned' some of those 'backing parts' to the left channel, and some to the right to give a stereo effect. When you play your MP3 through Audacity the two green bars for left and right channels run together. Here is the waveform of what is going on:
As you can see, both channels are the same. It least you do have sound on both channels so you're not getting all the sound just from one side. If one was playing your piece on a device that only has a mono output (eg. from the speaker on an iPad, Tablet or Laptop) you wouldn't be aware of any of this. But as a musician, I never listen to music this way. My grandchildren do and they think everything they listen to is great! But then, they are not musicians.
This post is to continue the discussion about why your Roland 900c recording ended up as 'two-track Mono' and not Steeo.
Your original recording of Hey Look Me Over is here:
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab
http://www.tierce-de-picardie.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7968
Having said I thought it was a great piece of music, I then added:.
But ... (there's always a "but", isn't there?) ...
I would have preferred to have been in your music room hearing you play this rather than listening to you playing through headphones or speakers. Why? Because what I am listening to through headphones is 'two-track' MONO .. not STEREO. Now you may very well have had your brass section 'centred' (which would then have sounded towards the 'middle'), but you could tell as soon as the STYLE started that this would be a two-track mono recording. Roland would definitely have 'panned' some of those 'backing parts' to the left channel, and some to the right to give a stereo effect. When you play your MP3 through Audacity the two green bars for left and right channels run together. Here is the waveform of what is going on:
As you can see, both channels are the same. It least you do have sound on both channels so you're not getting all the sound just from one side. If one was playing your piece on a device that only has a mono output (eg. from the speaker on an iPad, Tablet or Laptop) you wouldn't be aware of any of this. But as a musician, I never listen to music this way. My grandchildren do and they think everything they listen to is great! But then, they are not musicians.