Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Mono Record - #1

PART 1


It is May, the year of our Lord 2012, as I write this. The way human beings listen to pre-recorded music, as opposed to live music, is now by way of digital media. The various types of digital storage methods can be classified by way of "bits", and "frequency". The earliest popular form was Compact Disc which stored music digitally at 16bits, 44.1kHertz. At the time of writing, the highest "resolution" of digital music is 24bit, 192kHz. This will no doubt be surpassed sometime in the near future. Stereo (using the familiar 2 speakers) is no longer the only way to reproduce music, at the last count it is now possible to have up to 64 speakers in a single sound system in cinemas, and this will no doubt trickle down to the home theater consumer one day, who will have a way of using 64 discrete speaker points or more in his own home to listen to music or watch movies.

Before CDs and digital music came along, the predominant music medium was the 12" Long Playing (LP) vinyl disc, equalized via the RIAA frequency curve. Playing an LP requires a turntable, which is basically a piece of circular rotating mass on which the LP sits (much like that of a microwave oven, without the microwaves!), and an arm that will hold a tiny little needle that will run along the groove of the LP. There is no surround sound format on LPs (although some have tried, famously the Quadrophonic system rolled out without proper industry coordination in the early 70s) and the technology for producing LPs have stood still since the 1960s, with only minor refinements to the basic design being carried out today.

And the reason why I am still writing about the LP, which by any stretch of the imagination should be obsolete and consigned to the dust heap by now? Nostalgia? Hardly. I may not be a spring chicken, but I have never owned a record player in my life. My childhood experiences with recorded music were mainly through the Compact Cassette (remember those CrO2 tapes?) and, to a lesser extent, Elcaset cartridges. If you dont know what those are, dont bother to google them unless you aspire to be an audio historian. These formats are, truly and convincingly, part of the dust heap. No, I came to LPs from this background, followed by the digital revolution. And I honestly, unprejudicedly, from the bottom of my heart, do NOT believe humankind has yet devised a better way of reproducing music. Let me give you the why - in its potted layman version.

The way digital music works is to take a continuous signal (known in audio parlance as an "analogue" source), such as a soprano singing an aria, or an alto saxophonist playing Giant Steps - in other words, 'normal sound' as you and I know it. Digital media record this sound by cutting it up; mincing it is probably a more accurate description. The "bits" referred to earlier determine how finely this analogue sound signal is chopped up into digital pieces, the bigger the number, the smaller the piece. In theory, after all is said and done, what digital recording tries to do is to use the latest technology to cut up this sound into ever smaller pieces, in the hope that these smaller pieces will help capture the tiniest nuances in sound information, thus allowing better music reproduction later when one plays the recording back.

Once the analogue sound is cut up and stored digitally, it then has to be put back together again like Humpty Dumpty, so that it will sound like something we can recognize. Otherwise its just a jumble of data consisting of 1s and 0s. A timing device known as a "clock" is used to piece back the signal together, and various other devices will smoothen it out, fill in the missing pieces so that the signal looks more like its continuous original self, rather than something resembling a stepped ladder. Voila, and there we have it in a nutshell.

So far so good, except that reproducing music digitally has been described as trying to make minced meat back into a steak again. And like Humpty Dumpty, some may argue it cannot perfectly be put back together again. Which then begs the question, why cut the signal up in the first place? Why not just find a way to continuously record the analogue signal, then use a simple way to reproduce that continuous signal without having to piece it back together again? The simple answer is, this technology already exists. Its called, wouldn't you know it, LP playback.

Okay fine, you - of the digital age - say. Lets say yours truly is right about LPs sounding better than digital music. Then what about stereo? Why write about MONO LPs? Isnt stereo supposed to be the golden standard? And didnt you say that there are now 64 speakers in cinemas? Are you seriously asking anyone, in 2012 no less, to listen to a SINGLE speaker, when he can listen to 6, 8 or 64?

No, well yes, but not necessarily a single speaker. There is indeed a cult in Japan, and I believe elsewhere in the West too, that advocates listening to monophonic records using just a single speaker. Yes, in May 2012. And that movement is gathering steam, believe it or not. Or at least, there are increasing numbers of people today who will not consider these 'beaudacious' monophiles "off the grid", or fit to be committed to the nearest asylum. And this is not only an isolated phenomena. There are more and more companies in the world issuing new vinyl records, in 2012, in monophonic sound, using the original mono masters. More people are searching out mono records, and using mono cartridges to play them with. Mono cartridges (the tiny little needle that plays the groove on an LP) can cost up to around US$2000. That's about the price of an entire home theatre surround system including the TV. Are they certifiably mad? Or is there something they know which we dont?

If you are still with me up to this point, and feel intrigued to find out more, stay tuned.