Silly stereo

[Deleted member 324432]

I rarely listen to music on headphones, so I was quite thrown off earlier when I noticed the stereo effect on Willy Colón's Ghane'E.

The way the conga pans from side to side on occasion is... quite something. Was that kind of thing common back then?

Aside from that, I rather like the separation of some instruments to either channel, at least for the purpose of listening analytically. Though sometimes it seems to have gone a bit wrong, e.g. Siga La Gente by Rene Grand Y Su Combo seems to put everything but the trumpet (left only) and bass (both channels) on the right channel, which makes for a rather unpleasant listen on headphones.

 

[groseron]

Yeah, it was common in recordings throughout the world for them to play around with stereo like that. Back then in the industry they were still transitioning from the common mono format to other ones like stereo and quad. So, mixing engineers mixing in stereo was still in its infant stages and as such when you listen to those older recordings mixed in stereo they sound weird and/or flat out bad. They just didn't know what they know now, so they experimented a lot! I recall that effect (panning certain instruments side to side every few seconds in a song) in several Hendrix productions too.