Why MONO bass?
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jessejames
- mnml mmbr
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There are some reasons for that.
1) As someone already pointed out, our brain does not take space cues from low frequencies. There are two diferent ways our brain interprets the direction one sound is coming from.
The first is interaural amplitude differences... in plain english, "if you hear it louder in your left ear the sound comes from the left". It would be confusing for the brain to extract this specific information from low freqs because lows do travel following a pattern that is not very directional... this means lows travel "as an explosion would do", in all directions.
The second way is called interaural time differences... this means "if your hear it first in your left ear the sound comes from the left". These time differences are also hard to spot for low frequencies, not only for their "ability" to travel in all directions but also because they have longer wavelenghts and the brain would need more time to differentiate the relative position of the sound... thus the information would need a longer integration time and be quite useless for real time analysis of the enviroment (this means... beast would eat us because we wouldn't react in time)
In fact, the shape of our ears (pinna) has biologically evolved to help us find the direction a sound is coming from... and I don't imagine they have a great impact blocking low frequencies...
2) There is another reason for that, and this one is not psychoacoustic but merely acoustic. If you have two sound sources emiting "in-phase" the sound coming from them couples in a way that makes it sound louder. If they are not "in-phase" thay might even cancel each other completely in some circumstances. Imagine two people trying to move a car by pushing from different sides and you get the picture.
3) The stereo codification in vynil uses vertical displacement to record the "S" signal. The "S" signal is whatever left and right channels DO NOT have in common. Given that low freqs usually use the bigger portion of the energy in the audible spectrum if you have different "bass" in your L and R channels, there is a chance that the stylus may jump. This is undesirable, of course, so it is usually avoided by the good mastering engineer.
4) The fourth reason is that... doesn't it sound better?
1) As someone already pointed out, our brain does not take space cues from low frequencies. There are two diferent ways our brain interprets the direction one sound is coming from.
The first is interaural amplitude differences... in plain english, "if you hear it louder in your left ear the sound comes from the left". It would be confusing for the brain to extract this specific information from low freqs because lows do travel following a pattern that is not very directional... this means lows travel "as an explosion would do", in all directions.
The second way is called interaural time differences... this means "if your hear it first in your left ear the sound comes from the left". These time differences are also hard to spot for low frequencies, not only for their "ability" to travel in all directions but also because they have longer wavelenghts and the brain would need more time to differentiate the relative position of the sound... thus the information would need a longer integration time and be quite useless for real time analysis of the enviroment (this means... beast would eat us because we wouldn't react in time)
In fact, the shape of our ears (pinna) has biologically evolved to help us find the direction a sound is coming from... and I don't imagine they have a great impact blocking low frequencies...
2) There is another reason for that, and this one is not psychoacoustic but merely acoustic. If you have two sound sources emiting "in-phase" the sound coming from them couples in a way that makes it sound louder. If they are not "in-phase" thay might even cancel each other completely in some circumstances. Imagine two people trying to move a car by pushing from different sides and you get the picture.
3) The stereo codification in vynil uses vertical displacement to record the "S" signal. The "S" signal is whatever left and right channels DO NOT have in common. Given that low freqs usually use the bigger portion of the energy in the audible spectrum if you have different "bass" in your L and R channels, there is a chance that the stylus may jump. This is undesirable, of course, so it is usually avoided by the good mastering engineer.
4) The fourth reason is that... doesn't it sound better?