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1001realapes wrote: Anyone heard this ?
To answer both your question and Bov's at once, yes there is, and yes I have. I'm not particularly anal about mixes, but I do think the mono is superior (as with virtually everything recorded prior to mid-1967 or so). Early stereo mixes were often done very quickly as an afterthought by producers and engineers with little involvement from the bands themselves. As mono record-players were still the norm at the time, more time and effort was usually spent on the mono mixes, and this is no exception.
The music does sound tighter and more aggressive without unnecessarily extreme seperation. Most stereo mixes at this time adhered to a strict formula of having the rhythmn section in one channel, guitars and keyboards in the other, and vocals in the centre, without considering whether or not individual records benefitted from such treatment.
There are also mono mixes of "Strange Days" and "Waiting for the Sun", but a search of the archive at my workplace only produced the stereo versions.
Another album that sounds vastly - and noticeably - better in mono is the Stones "Their Satanic Majesties Request". With all the instruments piled up in the centre it sounds almost like a garage-punk album (albeit more expansive and recorded with ten times the budget that most garage- punk bands would have been allotted by btheir record labels.
I think "Safe as Milk" and "the Velvet Underground & Nico" both sound better in mono as well, although the differences aren't as major as they are with "TSMR".
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