Mono reproduction exaggerates recording-room coloration that stereo cancels

Evidence

A major disadvantage of monophonic reproduction is that the colouration caused by the recording room is exaggerated in the listening when compared to binaural listening of the recording venue. The reason for this is that the reproduced single sound signal gets filtered by the room, manifesting as a complex structure in the frequency response, as illustrated in Figure 2.23 on page 39. The sound reaching the two ears of a listener through the room has different magnitude and phase spectra, which results in binaural decolouration, as discussed in Section 12.6.2. The spectrum emanated by the single loudspeaker during monophonic reproduction is already coloured by the recording room response, but the binaural decolouration mechanisms can only try to compensate for the listening room acoustics, not the recording room acoustics. This emphasizes the acoustic effect of the recording room. When the recording is made with at least two microphones and reproduced over at least two loudspeakers, the recording room effect is different in the different loudspeaker signals, which enables at least partial decolouration of the recording room effect. — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1832

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the mechanism of binaural decolouration and why it fails to compensate the recording room in mono reproduction — a clear technical definition of the phenomenon.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Ville Pulkki, Matti Karjalainen, Communication Acoustics- An…, 1832
• XREF: connects to: First-arriving direct sound dominates localization and loudspeaker images are built from mono and double-mono; Stereo presentation masks audible differences between loudspeakers found in mono. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 443; Channel-count mismatch between studio and home prevents faithful reproduction (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Mono dominates because close-miked telephony sidesteps room coloration #corroborates (0.82)
• Multichannel spatial information masks loudspeaker coloration in playback #corroborates (0.78)
• Stereo reproduction injects room and speaker location cues unrelated to the recording #complicates (0.75)
• Diffuse reflections reduce comb-filtering that perturbs stereo imaging #corroborates (0.75) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 2309
• Non-environment rooms suppress all but direct sound for clearer audio detail and imaging #corroborates (0.72)