mono Radio Edits from 1976 Onward [OT]

If an engineer was stuck with stereo equipment, I could see him pulling one channel of a stereo cart rather than summing both channels. The reason would be to avoid phasing issues.

However, if the source material wasn't summed to mono when the cart was originally created, you'd have all kinds of problems, especially from stereo 60s recordings where vocals would all be in one channel and instruments all in the other.

Regarding original in mono / re-edit to stereo: I am a stickler for being accurate to what was played on the air BUT I have made two exceptions in my 1980s single library.

One is the above-mentioned Asia - Heat Of The Moment edit, and the other is Melt With You by Modern English which bafflingly was released ONLY in mono in 1982. (The album version was stereo but not the correct mix.)

My reason for this is that the stereo re-creations of these mixes fold down to mono to exactly match the original mono single so I'm not changing the balance only the location in a stereo field.

Additionally, when I listened to music on AM I always assumed it was in mono as a limitation of the station, not a limitation of the recording... in other words I "heard" it in stereo in my head, even though it was only coming out of one speaker. I always assumed the original recording was stereo. The idea that the mixer would have wanted all the sounds coming out of both speakers equally (because I was always listening ON a stereo) just never crossed my mind. Why would they want something that lame? ;-)

At the risk of taking this off into another tangent, I will say that I wouldn't mind stereo versions of 60s hits that were originally mixed to mono for airplay IF the stereo mixes actually folded down properly into the original mono mix. Usually, the 60s stereo mixes are a mess and may resemble the mono single version in performance only: no reverb or added reverb, levels between instruments radically different, or worst of all missing overdubs entirely.

If a stereo mix "unfolds" the mono mix and that's ALL it does, I am for it. If it changes the levels, ambiance, content, compression, eq, etc. then I am against it.