Mono recording question...


..just wondering if it makes sense to listen to mono digital recordings in mono just as you would with analog recordings. If this is an incredibly stupid and obvious question my apologies, my preamp has a mono switch and I'm listening to a mono cd of some early Miles Davis in mono while reading Art Dudley's latest column on mono lp's in the new Stereophile. It was this conflux of events that got my little brain twitching. Thanks for taking pity on a poor, confused soul.
128x128jond

Showing 1 response by eldartford

The MONO switch on a preamp adds the two input channels together and outputs this result to both channels. This will cancel any signal that is out of phase in the two input channels. This is a good thing to do when, for example, playing a Mono LP where there may be a lot of out of phase aignal, but it's all noise, most notably rumble.

For a Mono CD, the Mono master tape was probably digitized once, and the same digital file put on both CD channels. This means that there will be no out-of-phase signal between channels, and the Mono switch will do nothing.