John Coltrane - Coltrane Plays The Blues flac mp3 download

Please indulge me … once upon a time, back when there was no such thing as stereo, there were a group of artists and engineers who knew how to setup a recording space that would bring forth the music as we actually heard it. It’s important to understand that while we can hear stereo effects, we do not hear in stereo. Of course, this topic has been debated at length, so you’re gonna have to decide which side of the fence you decide to live on. Me? I’m on the mono side, and to hear John Coltrane's album in any other fashion is to do yourself an injustice.The issue of how we perceive mono and stereo sound is straight forward enough. Our brains use information from our ears to build a picture of what objects are in our vicinity, their width and position and the acoustic environment in which they reside. This is known as auditory scene analysis, an early stage of this is spectral analysis which separates out sound components at different frequencies. These components are then regrouped according to whether they belong to the same sound source. One of the methods of determining this “belongingness” is by comparing the levels and times of arrival of various components between the two ears to determine whether they come from the same place. Such components have a stronger sense of belongingness, or homogeneity. Grouping sounds together in the same space, as is the case with mono, is one way of “glueing” them together, making them sound like they are an integral part of a larger whole. Of course from here I would suggest the essence of a single speaker.The Two ears, One Speaker Theory: When listening in mono there is something to bear in mind. When the same sound emanates from two loudspeakers, the two sound waves interfere with each other creating boosts of sound at some frequencies and reductions at the ears, leading to a subtle but undesirable change in the spectrum of sound. With just one speaker, there is just one wave and so there is no interference (assuming that we ignore the effects of reflections of that wave from walls and other surfaces in the room). So, by all means enjoy the different quality of sound in mono mixes, along with the different approaches taken in those mixes, but if you are going to have only one channel you really ought to have only one speaker as well.The music presented on this outing by John Coltrane was designed to wash over you, sonically equal on both speakers (though as I've suggested, a single center speaker might just be better), a full rich and deep sound, one where the instruments blend and ebb together as they would in a live setting. What you hear encompasses the full listening space … you don’t hear the drums on the right, or the horns on the left, and then have those horns fade into the drums as on a stereo pressing. Mono sound is a collective, and until you’ve experience it, you haven’t really heard or understood it. I could say the same for the Beatles music, all of which was recorded in mono. Stereo is an effect, a studio trick, a gimmick, as is surround sound, fun for a few minutes, but not nearly as satisfying as a brilliant mono mix. No, you can not achieve that mono mix by simply pushing the mono button on your amplifier, that in and of itself is a gimmick, only to be used when listening to mono recordings.Original pressings are not that expensive, and the new pressings from Rhino have been taken from the original lacquers, so they sound brilliant with the new and improved technology for cutting and pressing a record. Find a mono pressing just once and you’ll find that we’re neighbors on the same side of the fence.Review by Jenell Kesler