Who we can hear
Local leaders sometimes convene to try to stop the violence in Chicago. But whose voices are at the table?
It is a well-known fact among audiophiles that the discography of one of the greatest bands of all time—the Beatles—includes some terrible-sounding albums. Not in terms of songs; the songs are great. But it was an age in which stereo mixing—the practice of creating finished audio with two different channels, left and right—was still nascent. Recording engineers wanted things to sound better and were experimenting with this new ability to mix in two channels instead of one. Ringo’s drums could now be in your left ear, while Paul’s bass and George’s seriously underrated guitar were on the right side.
But the engineers didn’t really know what they were doing yet with stereo, and mistakes were made. The vocals ended up on the left while the instruments were panned all the way to the right; certain parts that felt critical to the song were now nearly inaudible. The results were sometimes so bad that the mono versions of Beatles vinyl—the versions mixed the old way, with a single channel of sound—are now expensive collectible items.
Can you tell I’m a musician?
