Isn't Bob McCarthy anti-stereo?

If there's a left and right main, I call that Left/Right. A very small part of the audience fits in the 5ms window to hear in stereo. I design mains to overlap no more onto the walls than with each other in the center.
If the lead singer is going into left and right equally, I'm going to make your system work with correlated signal. But if you go to full multi-channel, you can play decorrelated.
A lot of times what you see in an LCR is that L and R are correlated and C is decorrelated.
-Bob McCarthy
Original Interview: www.sounddesig...
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I love to geek out about the physics of sound. This channel focuses on the growing opportunity for live sound engineers to improve their confidence and consistency through the understanding of the principles of sound system design and optimization. My goal is to make this channel upfront and honest about my success and failure, so you can learn from both.
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[@stavroshouiris]

I gonna have to watch that another 10 times to wrap my head around that but It's great stuff

[@nathanlively]

I highly recommend his book! :)

[@oleplanthafer7034]

In short: There is no stereo Club-Sound, only something completely different: binaural sound, a beast that's very hard to tackle... good luck! I'll stick with mono, with a wide range of analogue tube-based sound-alterations to choose from in my desk, and a simple but fool-proof speaker set up. 😃

[@chadmichael_]

Just because something technically can’t be true stereo doesn’t mean that it doesn’t objectively sound better still than mono. Mono sounds terrible live regardless of the shortcomings of stereo in a live setting. A live stereo mix still sounds infinitely better than a live mono mix.

[@oleplanthafer7034]

@chad: I beg to differ! Broadcast quality stereo-compatible cartridges in connection with a bridged mono output will improve everybody’s experience remarkably. Main reason: Phasing issues don’t wipe out entire chunks of the productions at a time. Then there is the virtually limitless headroom due to format (45’s are recorded twice as loud) and double to triple output from the amps due to double bridging, leaving a world of space for the music to express itself. Also, mono fills the entire room with engaging depth and detailed crispness, subcontiously making listeners create soundstages in their minds. The last bit sounds weird, but feel free to try it out with a good (!) mono system, an open mind and a few moments to get into it. Having evolved from playing mono (and stereo) 45’s with stereo cartridges at my different events ages ago to my current set-up, looking at the crowd tells me that I have struck gold and I have therefor adapted this into all of my events, not just 1968-1974 club classics, and this works fantastic with 99% of all music! Remember, even The Prodigy (and others) released some of their 90’s and 00’s music also in mono mixes. There were very good reasons then, as there are now…’ :-) I really do believe that you have simply been unlucky with the mono rigs that you’ve encountered at clubs so far…. All the best from Norway!

[@chadmichael_]

@@oleplanthafer7034 I very much appreciate your comment as it has got me thinking a little harder about this. But for example… I was at a concert the other day and both pairs of speakers hanging from the left side of the stage and the right side of the stage had to be in stereo because I was standing dead center of the venue on purpose, especially after I read your comment, to really try to pay attention and see if what I was hearing was in mono or not and it was definitely stereo. Either that or certain elements were in stereo and other elements of the mix were in mono. It was for Gary Numan’s tour with my dad. His love sound has tons of panned elements that fly around left and right and what I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t like it if I didn’t get that left right effect.
I am not a live sound expert with regards to venue audio as I mainly do broadcast audio and mixing in my own studio but maybe what you are saying is this… I have heard that those line array speakers can independent run in stereo or mono by themselves. Like the left hang can be stereo by itself. If that is the case, I would agree with you that that whole left hang should be made mono and so should the right one to run them in a way that treats them like stereo.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

[@oleplanthafer7034]

@chad: Thank you for your kind reply. See, you did mention the main weakness of stereo in your comment: you were standing dead right for the full experience. How many people could have had the same sensation with you? To compare with home stereo: that infamous triangle is for one or two or three listeners. Mono, on the other hand, is for crowds, where everybody gets to share the same experience.
Moreso: Mono and stereo have been compared to a clotheslin, where in stereo you see it from the side, neatly lined up where every piece of clothing has its specific place like instruments on a stage. Mono, however, is like seeing the same clothesline from the side, where every piece of clothing is still very much there, but they are in depth, one after another. With the right amount of headroom you can still focus on everything at a time in detail. And after a while, your mind starts spreading them out, creating an individual stage that is very personal and not at all "laid out" for you by the producer. Stereo, I find, is lacking that depth, the whole thing gets thinner as the instruments are pulled apart.
Obviously, for a roomy experience, one speaker won't do. Proper mono demands a number of them, interacting like a stereo set-up (but without any triangles, as described in the video above). Simple, but highly satisfying.
You say you do some producing yourself? I would highly recommend starting off with a mono-mix before moving on to the finished stereo-mix. Starting with stereo upon stereo upon stereo would create a world of issues that can be avoided by starting easy... ;-)
As for my experience, I have become very old-school over the years, with the late (analogue) 70's as a starting point. Nothing digital, and a few ideas revived and improved upon (flexible pentode/triode tube preamps, EQ-free rotary mixer with HPF and (!) LPF instead, powerful but "neutral" (well, almost) A/B power-amps, horn-speakers, etc.)
I often produce my own tracks at the very beginning of gigs, like the beats of "Boss Reggae" tracks up to, say 70 or 80 Hz, and from another record just birds chirping on top of that. Great fun, and a decent way to make the crowd settle in and fire up... :-D

[@chadmichael_]

@@oleplanthafer7034 My world is mainly metal and more modern styles of music where those elements that ping pong back and forth between a left and right channel are very important to hear and although one side of the audience isn't going to hear the other speaker as well, it still produces the intended effect.
The show I was at, I wasn't dead center, I was off center and for part of the show I was off to the side and those traveling elements in the mix were still audible but just not equal in volume for the obvious reason that one side was much farther away from my ears. But none the less, it would have sounded very strange to have those electronic elements in that particular show staying in one spot the whole time. And so I think it really depends upon the context of the music that you're mixing live.
I also come from the world of studio mixing and so there is no way I can hear a mono mix and think in my mind that that is better than stereo even if its live and the speakers are so far apart. Now I know things get more complicated once you start getting into arena territory but still I just prefer stereo in most cases.