I've heard the high res stream. It does sound good, but the difference I find between it and the early presses are that they softened it a lot to deal with the vocal sibilance from Lennon and whatnot, so it very much sounds like a song that you are listening to on tape, rather than a band that's playing in the room with you.
Very roughly, Stereo is having two different audio signals coming from your turntable and cart, a left and a right. They are each different, you can have a voice on one side only and a guitar on the other side. Mono is the same audio pressed into both sides of the groove (I think) so both speakers play the same thing.
They do the same thing basically. A mono cart (I think) only reads one of the groove walls and sums it across both left and right channel (I think) a mono amp button does the same thing so you would use that if you have a stereo cart and are playing a mono cut album. A mono cart is still preferable and has better sound than a mono switched stereo cart due to cross talk from the stereo cart etc etc... (I think)
Thanks (I think)
For stereo one channel is up and down and one channel is left to right (direction of stylus movement). (Edit: maybe that is an oversimplification maybe it is +/-45, which would make your one is each side make sense, but still perpendicular) For mono, only one is used and the other isn't. One of the most obvious advantages of using a mono button or cart is that any noise on the unused channel of the mono record is eliminated. Otherwise it will work fine on a stereo cart without mono button.
There was a period in time (late 50s through late 60s) where stereo recording was fairly new and artists recorded dedicated mono mixes and dedicated stereo mixes. In some cases they are completely different mixes, and even sometimes different takes. Certain artists preferred the mono mixes they did (I think Dylan prefers the mono mixes of a lot of his own early albums).
Thanks for bringing up the different mixes. For me that is the most important distinction as I know I can tell those differences whereas I suspect it may take a more discerning audiophile (or at least a nicer system) to notice the more subtle differences the mono cart could make.
In the "best pressing" world a lot of people prefer mono to stereo mixes/pressings of certain titles even without any mono specific equipment. Like Beatles, Aretha, some jazz where hard panning of instruments is disliked, for example. To each their own of course.
Yeah I've got a pretty punchy system and I can safely say I don't have any mono pressings that even come close to my good stereos. But I put that down to no mono cart and no mono switch.
For sure and maybe why the "certain titles" is key there and I would say it probably depends on what you prioritize. Don't think you could ever compete with a good stereo soundstage for instance no matter how good the mono mix is for obvious reasons. I'm not remotely an authority on any of that though just thinking out loud.
Well it's just the punchy factor that I'm curious about. Like I have the Kinks KPG mono box, and it's great, but the Kinks Lola vs Powerman pressing kills it. Same band, similar era, but the stereo smokes the monos. But again, I think it wouldn't be the case necessarily if I had a mono cart.
