Stereophonic recording?, L/R balance Options

[HTS]

What does stereo recording achieve? I noticed that the left and right channels of some stereo samples don't sound the same, and loaded them into audacity. The program confirms my suspicion that the sounds vary greatly in characteristics. For a vibrato filled note, most often only one of the channels displays the wavy pattern induced by the vibrato. Is this what stereo recording is supposed to do? So the sounds mixed into your music will have certain instruments placed to the L/R side of the listener?

[Paulhoff]

What does stereo recording achieve? I noticed that the left and right channels of some stereo samples don't sound the same, and loaded them into audacity. The program confirms my suspicion that the sounds vary greatly in characteristics. For a vibrato filled note, most often only one of the channels displays the wavy pattern induced by the vibrato. Is this what stereo recording is supposed to do? So the sounds mixed into your music will have certain instruments placed to the L/R side of the listener?

Yes, you didn't know this? How you ever hear people in a group all sounding like they are in the same place when not using a sound system.


Paul

[HTS]

Yes, you didn't know this? How you ever hear people in a group all sounding like they are in the same place when not using a sound system.


Paul

Recordings aren't supposed to be like that. Foobar has the crossfeed feature precisely because of this characteristic of early digital recordings.

[dhromed]

Recordings aren't supposed to be like that. Foobar has the crossfeed feature precisely because of this characteristic of early digital recordings.

Recordings are indeed supposed to be like that, or otherwise everything would effectively be mono — unless I'm misunderstanding you.

Crossfeed is an effect to simulate speaker setup with only headphones, so that part of one channel is fed into the other ear, just as would happen in a two-speaker setup. A portion of listeners experience fatigue with the "hard" stereo effect of headphones, and crossfeed helps them listen for longer periods (I personally experience the exact opposite, btw, but that's why it's a preference).