Forgive me if I'm beating a dead horse, I searched for this topic on the forum and couldn't find anything. I enjoy beating dead horses, anyhow.
I've been doing a lot of experimenting with recording synths in stereo vs mono. Obviously, these are modern synths...I have a Prophet '08 and a Nord Lead 3.
With a no-sustain, fast decay pad sound, I've been doing comparisons of mono vs. un-panned stereo vs. slightly-panned stereo vs. un-panned dual mono vs. slightly-panned dual mono on my Prophet '08. I also tried recording each note of the pad separately in mono, each with a slightly differing amplitude envelope delay, and panning the signals hard left, hard right, and center. This, in particular, sounds very, very wide...far wider than panned stereo...but it seems to sound somewhat disconnected, at the same time.
A few questions:
--What types of synth sounds do you generally record in mono?
--What types of synth sounds do you generally record in stereo?
I was listening to the horn pad on "Satellite" off of A BROKEN FRAME today and comparing it with my Prophet '08 pad recordings. I noticed that the higher notes in the "Satellite" pad seem to be panned a bit to either side, while the lowest note is center. I doubt they recorded each note in mono and then panned the notes separately for the studio recording like I was experimenting with. They might have used an early stereo enhancer on, say, a Lexicon 480L or an early Harmonizer. Hard to say. I've always wondered how they made mono output synths sound so stereo in the early 80s...
Thanks,
EC