However, unlike the almost immediate shift from 78s to LPs, sales of stereophonic records would not overtake monophonic for more than a decade.

Stereophonic records were now for sale, promising immersive sound and other auditory benefits. Nearly 10 years later, in 1957, another major change was slowly making its way into record shops. LPs showed the promise of advancements in vinyl technology and paved the way for more developments in the future. It was a monumental improvement for music listeners, and it changed the way music was created and released. The days of flipping noisy shellac records every five minutes were over. In 1948, LPs were introduced to the world. Let’s go back in time and view some of the major technological advances vinyl records went through for a better understanding of why this choice matters. In the 1960s and 1970s, many collectors had a different dilemma – whether to buy a mono or stereo version of an album. For modern releases, vinyl collectors might have to decide between a color, clear, or black release of a record. If you were a casual consumer of music and wanted to play an album at home, it was vinyl or practically nothing else. Stereo: Some Historyīack in the mid-20th century, there were no cassettes, no CDs, no MP3s.

To fully understand the differences between mono and stereo, we’ll dig into the history of vinyl records and the valuable insight of Larry Crane, editor and founder of Tape Op Magazine and the owner, engineer, producer, and mixer at Jackpot! Recording Studio in Portland, Ore. What’s the deal? Is one better than the other? Does it even matter? Maybe you’ve found yourself in a situation like this: Browsing one of the hundreds of vinyl releases of a popular 1960s rock album on Discogs, you see wild price differences between a mono and stereo version of a record.

Mono meaning