In stereo

Question

HelloThe guitarist was working on his guitar, which makes a beautiful haunting ghost of a guitar sound, and it was going on in one room while the bass chords were going on in another, and I heard them in stereo working together.Does "I heard them in stereo working together" mean that I heard them (guitarist, bassist) playing together at the same time in two different rooms?

Optilang · Accepted Answer

Hi

Yes, he could hear them both, at the same time.

Avangi · Answer

It seems strange. "Stereo" is usually applied to a recording, in which you recreate reality by playing the multiple tracks over separate speakers, corresponding to the separate mikes or pickups from which the recording was created.
If you're in a room with a bassist and a guitarist who are playing acoustically, what you hear is sterophonic, or natural. Your two ears hear two slightly different versions.

If you repeat this with the bassist in the next room, you have the same thing.

If the two instruments are electrically amplified, and fed to two separate speakers, you have stereo. If they're both fed into the same speaker, you have mono, or monaural (not stereo).

I don't know what he means by "bass chords." Double stops are rare on the bass. Of course, the bass supports the harmony, and the chords are implied by a good bass line.

Newguest · Answer

I thought it was a simple thing/question Avangi

Maybe these two instruments were electrically amplified and fed to two separate speakers. I don't know. It was all taking place in a studio.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

Hi Newguest:

If you were in a studio and heard both at the same time, I would say "in concert", not "in stereo".

"In stereo" also implies that you heard with both ears, so if you closed your eyes, your brain could figure out where they were in relation to each other. [8]

It is almost never simple!

Cheers,
A-

s

Avangi · Answer

Newguest Does "I heard them in stereo working together" mean that I heard them (guitarist, bassist) playing together at the same time in two different rooms?

Sorry. The simple answer is "yes, and no." It all depends on your understanding of "stereo." Before I was born, "stereo" was applied to a primitive form of 3-D. Modern stereo is 3-D for the ear.
A device called the "stereopticon" used two cameras to simultaneously shoot still pictures from slightly different vantages. The device then allowed each eye to see only it's own picture, creating the illusion of depth. In the early 50's this was modernized as the "Viewmaster."

Is it possible to have stereo or 3-D without some kind of recording?? Again, it depends on what you mean. I've heard people say that a dog doesn't see in 3-D. What does that mean?
I think your use of "stereo" is a similarly poetic use. But you can't understand that if you don't know what "stereo" means.

Your author has already said that he heard them playing together at the same time in two different rooms. So of course that's what your sentence means. But that's not what "stereo" means.

We don't know if the two guys were working on the same song, or if they were synchronized in any way. It would be extremely unlikely. What they were doing may have happened to fit together for a short while.

In my honest opinion, the reason he brought "stereo" into the picture is that the experience reminded him in a poetic way of how in modern recording, tracks may be recorded separately and then put together to produce a stereo effect. The stereo effect in this case was unintentional.

Newguest · Answer

AvangiIn my honest opinion, the reason he brought "stereo" into the picture is that the experience reminded him in a poetic way of how in modern recording, tracks may be recorded separately and then put together to produce a stereo effect. The stereo effect in this case was unintentional.

I think you're right here. Thanks.

Optilang · Answer

Hi

My understanding of stereo is a sound signal that has been separated into two signals. It is not a question of how many tracks have been mixed into each signal. Mono has only one signal, irrespective of the number of tracks recorded.

I used to have a Fostex 4 track cassette recorder. In fact I could record a lot more than 4 tracks by 'bouncing' the tracks (I believe Buddy Holly was the first to use such a technique). From the final tracks I could then mix down to either mono or stereo.

By the way, the technique of creating sounds so that they appear anywhere from the left to the right speaker is known as 'panning'.

As for 'bass chords' - any bass player will know that it is possible to play chords on a bass guitar.

Avangi · Answer

optilang My understanding of stereo is a sound signal that has been separated into two signals. It is not a question of how many tracks have been mixed into each signal. Mono has only one signal, irrespective of the number of tracks recorded. I agree almost 100%. You can mix an infinite number of tracks into one signal, which would then be on one track. (Why would you want the same signal on multiple tracks?) What you now have is monaural, regardless of how many speakers you feed with it.
It's impossible to split a single track/signal into two track/signals, unless you have access to the original multiple tracks and remix the whole thing. The only thing you might do is to slightly delay the second track, creating the illusion that one ear is hearing the music from a greater distance.
You could do your original mixing to a dozen or more tracks, as in the movie Surround Sound technique, sending them all to different speakers. However, you only have two ears, so your brain will interpret the result in the same way it would interpret two tracks/signals. You could achieve the same effect with the panning technique you describe.

As for 'bass chords' - any bass player will know that it is possible to play chords on a bass guitar. I didn't mean to imply that it's impossible. I said double stops are rare on the bass. This is especially true in popular music. You might find it in a jazz solo on a stand-up bass. To stop more than two strings in the lower register produces nothing but mud. It's not unusual to hear a whole concert in which the bass player never plays more than one note at a time.

Optilang · Answer

Hi

AvangiYou can mix an infinite number of tracks into one signal, which would then be on one track. (Why would you want the same signal on multiple tracks?)

- I think you are confusing signal/channel with track/tracks. As I wrote above, stereo is a signal which has been separated into 2 signals or channels. So we have the left signal/channel and right signal/channel.
There may be any number of tracks mixed into each channel.

My understanding of the original post is that we have a guitarist in one room and the bass guitarist in another room, both playing together - creating the stereo effect (two channels - one from each room).

Avangi · Answer

I don't see where we disagree: tracks, channels, signals - they all carry the same data. I think you're just confusing tracks made at the recording session with tracks made at the editing/mixing session (post production).

I'll grant you that "track" has a separate, second meaning in the recording business. On a given piece of merchandise (record, tape, cassette, CD, eight-track) there are typically several "songs." "Would you please play the third track again? I love it!" Sometimes two separate "takes" of the same tune are "produced" and released on the same recording (merchandise), and these are sometimes called "first cut; second cut."

The way I'm using "track" is to describe a discrete set of data which has/have been preserved in some sort of media. I'm speaking of the preserved entity.

I would use "signal" to describe the stream of electrical impulses which result as that data is transmitted from one device to another. I'll grant you there are new transmission techniques for sending multiple discrete data sets simultaneously via the same signal in such a way that they may subsequently be separated. But I'm using it in the sense that two data sets being transmitted simultaneously constitute two signals.

I use "channel" to describe the way a particular piece of electronic equipment is set up to handle multiple data streams of discrete data sets simultaneously. An eight-track device may be reading from a tape which has eight discrete data sets, but only be capable of sending two "different" signals to two different speakers at the same time. This device would have two channels. If the "eight track" player is set up for quad, then it's capable of transmitting four separate signals at the same time. It has four channels. (Alas, we still have only two ears!)

The mixing/editing process ("post production") creates new data sets. The band may have recorded a dozen separate tracks at the session (simultaneous or otherwise - studio recording devices have multiple channel capabilities). The engineer(s) may mix that all into a single data set (track), which would have to be called "monaural." (The normal procedure would be to have two simultaneous tracks and call it "stereophonic.")
The point is that you cannot take the resulting monaural track/signal and "separate" it into a two-signal stereo recording.
As I said before, you could create a fake stereo effect by delaying one track, or by filtering out the high frequencies to make one stereo track and filtering out the lows to make the other.
To say that stereo is mono in which the signal has been separated into two signals, is absurd.

optilangMy understanding of stereo is a sound signal that has been separated into two signals. It is not a question of how many tracks have been mixed into each signal. Mono has only one signal, irrespective of the number of tracks recorded.

optilangYes, he could hear them both, at the same time.

optilang My understanding of the original post is that we have a guitarist in one room and the bass guitarist in another room, both playing together - creating the stereo effect (two channels - one from each room).

I never disagreed with this. But this would also be true if they were both sitting in front of you, as I originally said. The only caveat is that they must be playing accoustically, or, if amplified, they must have separate speakers and separate channels.
Since this is live, the question of "tracks" is irrelevant.

"Two channels, one from each room" is an analogy. That's my whole point.

In stereo

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions