Coming up for a bit of air and thought I’d post some mostly useless but maybe interesting bits:
abbey road d enfer said:
Listening in mono on a single speaker is how it should be done. Neve (and many broadcast) mixers typically offer this possiblity.
That's the way I was taught to do it too, one speaker
In regard to your earlier comment that cited 'Revolver' as an example of stereo spread:
That album was only mixed for stereo after the fact, and done very quickly at that. The target audience over here (kids), mostly didn't own stereo equipment and so 'mono' was still king. If you listen, the mono mixes on several of their albums reveal much more work went into creating them. They (the mono mixes) were also the only mixes for which Beatles were present and participated in.
Also: the nature of the REDD.51 desk was such that the 4 tracks coming from the tape machine were 'normal-ed' into channels on the desk that didn't have pan-pots. The only control available on these (without a re-patch) was the 'spreader' which could reduce or expand the width somewhat. This was because the desks were designed for ’stereosonic’ use which was considered the ‘classical’ music format and it was envisioned that stereo classical would entail two stereo recordings on the 4 tracks (orchestra L & R and, say, soloist L & R) rather than 4 mono signals from which stereo was derived.
Pan-pots *were* available on the innermost channels (either side of the centre section), which were used for inserting spot mics into the stereo field for classical, and when the game was upped in ‘pop’ recording (Sgt. Pepper) and 2 X Studer J37 machines were used, you then see some panning which isn't so extreme in those mixes - an example would be Lennon's voice at the beginning of 'Day In A Life' which starts off at the extreme right and is slowly panned inwards.
Nevertheless, all pop recordings from that time were always monitored in mono, on one speaker. The mix for this being derived (after the desk faders) from a separate mono combining network with trim controls located underneath the front arm rest
Thus it endeth.