Concert stage layout -- who made who?

Picking up on Rcprince's point where Russ leaves off, recordings like "Time Out" were recorded in the early days of stereo as a commercial sensation in reproduced sound. There was felt to be an imperative in those days to really "show" the music consumer the stereo difference - hence mixes tended to exagerate separation to the extent that instruments seemed to come from one channel or the other, with something (often the vocal if there was one) mixed to the center. Remember, a lot of the home stereos sold at that time were console types, so both channels were often located in one longish cabinet, but not with the degree of physical separtion that's usually used for individual L/R speakers. Played back on a modern system, these early stereo jazz and pop multitrack studio recordings typically display the kind of unaturally diced-up and isolated 'multi-mono' soundstage that you notice, whereas classical orchestral recordings of the same period were recorded in live performance in a concert hall from a more distant perspective, using minimal, true stereo microphone techniques.

Tvad: Yes.

I understand what you are saying Sean, but not sure I understand the need for it, unless there was a dearth of stage monitors for the players and not much more than the vocals being routed through the L/R PA mains for the audience (which is certainly sometimes the case, but usually only in venues so small that it might not make much difference). When I've played onstage, having the other guy's amp on the other side of the drums has been just about right in terms of my own personal mix balance, where I want to hear myself louder than the other amplified instrumentalists.

I concur about the annoyance factor sometimes associated with listening to early 'ping-pong' stereo mixes. I often wish for a preamp cross-mix 'blend' control, where you could balance the trade-off between excessive panning separation and the cancellation effects that can degrade a 100% mono'ed stereo signal. Unfortunately, these days it's a victory just getting a preamp with a mono button at all, much less the type of channel assignment capabilities you see on older Macs (or even 80's C-J's).