A real mono system - no compromise

[Birdwatcher]

Hello,
unfortunately I don’t see any real and consequent mono systems here.
Many of you mention the importance of mono vinyl playback with special mono cartridges and emphasize the unique power and directness of the mono sound (last read in the „best turntable under 50K“ thread…)

But why don’t you use it consequently in the whole system with just one channel, so one amplifier channel and one speaker in the middle in front of you?
Why deteriorate it with channel unbalance of amplifiers, with acoustical asymmetry of speakers and room acoustic?

I am not so deep in mono playback any more, but about ten years ago I used for some months a Lyra Helikon Mono with Sentec Mono phono stage with volume control directly into just one Neumann active monitor, that stood in the middle in between my two main speakers. The shortest and simplest mono chain and it was fantastic.

I can recommend to leave all the shortcomings and imperfectness of never equal two channels behind, and place just one speaker in the middle in front of you and listen. That should be mono, nothing more or less.

But maybe there are some systems here, please report about it!

 

[christensenleif@msn.com]

and now you´re watching birds instead?

 

[Birdwatcher]

Yes, with mono and binoculars ;-)
But I have no mono playback system any more.

 

[astrotoy]

I was a young teen (13) when the first stereo records were released. So we listened to mono records through a mono amp and mono speakers (built by my dad from Heathkits). Record players had sapphire cartridges and you would tape a dime or penny on top of the tone arm, over the cartridge if the record mistracked. When stereo started to become popular, my dad bought a second Heathkit speaker (and later added their subwoofer and supertweeter unit to extend the frequency response, one for each channel, built a second amp and bought an early stereo preamp, along with a new stereo record changer. We still played the mono records (a lot of multirecord opera sets - with sides 1-6, 2-5, 3-4 for a three record set, so they could be stacked on the changer to play three sides without having to flip over the record). We even had a collection of 78's which mostly were pop songs (one song per side).

Larry

 

[Yeti]

Mono would be a good solution for many domestic situations where the audio system has to share space with other family members. It’s far easier to site one speaker optimally than two where there are other priorities at play but fashion dictates at least two channels even if their setup is compromised and those family members will be the first to complain if offered mono.