Another shot of Vinny Gallo: the article that created the Mono Mia! fame, from sound practices issue 1. It is the ‘tragic’ but colourful story of Vinny growing up in Buffalo, NY, leading the the, uhm, procurement of his first hi-fi system. And it wasn’t stereo… Next is a fit of the upgrade bug and the realisation that hi-fi is reproduction, not the live event. Then chance discovery that Vinny is still raving about: mono. The de-compliaction was just the thing he needed. Vinny says: ‘give mono a try.’
teaser quote: ‘My family moved next door into my Grandmother’s house when I was two, one month after my father was sent to jail. Don’t ask. Anyway, he got out when I was 15 and threw me out of the house a year later on my 16th birthday, Don’t ask. I remember my Grandma’s house. It was small and had a smell, not a good smell or a bad smell, just a certain smell, There was no TV, no radio—just this old wind up 78 machine with this big metal horn that had flowers painted on it.’
my take
‘Don’t take this article too literal (especially if you felt yourself somehow disagreeing with it).’
The point is not to get hung up about the mono vs. stereo argument. See it as an example of a hi-fi dogma that got sold to the world and has become a matter of course. Same deal for transistors, push-pull, negative feedback, ‘cd quality’, small speakers and ‘you need at least 50 Watts.’ Re-examining these and reaching your own conclusions can get you to the other side.
But talking about mono, there is of course a lot to be said for having a simple, elegant, mono system when the bulk of your record collection is from the mono era. Or from the early stereo era, when everything was stupidly mixed in ping-pong stereo for maximum separation/effect: drums on the left, bass on the right, etc. No, that is not only smoky 50s jazz, but also loads of blues, beat, pop, rock and soul music up to the end of the 60s—Sgt. Pepper was originally released in mono. I was happy that they released the recent Beatles box in original mono, so that I do not have to listen any longer to it in artificial stereo.
Another ‘mono moment’: Two years ago I came home from the ETF with a near-mint Philips A5X83A tuner. Beautiful for the living room, but mono, nagging mono. I immediately trawled the net for stereo conversions. Two weeks later I hooked it up (un-Swissed the power chord) and got it running (bigger output cap to get decent bass). The resulting sound was simply magnificent, engulfing. It really knocked me out. And with that, the whole issue of it’s-only-mono was settled.
Enough about mono, there are some nuggets of gold in Vinny’s article. First of all there are two cases of audio nervosa: Mr. Megadino’s and Vinny’s. A frustrated, constant buying and selling of pre-fab hi-fi boxes, with little in the way of musical satisfaction to show for it. We see how Vinny goes from owning high-end to owning classic hi-fi to owning classic WE theatre gear. Mr. Megadino wanted redemption and went back to the Dynacos.
A clear symptom of audio nervosa: Mr. Megadino’s demo disk. Contrast this to Vinny’s “WOW” experience when he ‘blasted all four sides of the Beatles’ White Album.’ Translation: he was now playing a recording that had potential to grab him on the highest musical level, on a system that did not get in the way of that. A fleeing moment of musical bliss. Btw: the White Album was the last Beatles album to be released in mono, but in the US it was stereo-only…
Between the lines there is also the contemporary phenomena of Japanese industry selling the western world hi-fi gear that simply pushed consumer buttons better than the western brands, starting the demise of the latter brands. Meanwhile a new class of Japanese connoisseurs was emerging that coveted classic US and Euro gear. That started a movement and here we are, reading this.
Final note: in Vinny’s fab studio I linked to two weeks ago, there seems to be a pair of monitors (click on nr.2).
Now go and read the article, see you next week.
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