ok, heres the deal... me and a mate were talking about stereo sound etc. basically there is now $$$ weighting in on the answer to this question.....

mono speakers do they exist and are they any difference to say you regular speaker. (car audio, home hifi i dont really care). if they exist and are different to your regular stereo speakers, how so?? Are they just poor quailty??? althought we agreed on the speaker build quailty generally plays a huge role in A++ sound reproduction, it is the equalize and what not that actually create "stereo sound"???
cheers craig

Ummm all speakers are mono... they only produce one channel of sound at any one time yeah?

I'm confused

oh yeah oh yeah, so me that sweet sweet $$$

Congrats on your win

How the hell did this question come about? That's got to be an interesting story!

Bye,
Mo

Err, guys, you all seem a little lost here.

The term 'mono' isn't really supposed to be applied in the way you have used it. In effect, mono stands for singular, and when applied to an audio reference it means when all audio information emanates from one source.

Now, a speaker is a simple device. It can only attempt to reproduce whatever you feed it. If this signal so happens to be a mono signal, then the resulting sound is mono. And yet you could have any number of speakers playing a mono signal simultaneous - like with a public address system for instance.

Also, if you have a regular two channel stereo system and simply disconnect one side - the other does not instantaneously get fed all the information from the disconnected side - does it? So just because one speaker is playing this does not make it a mono speaker, or mono output.

To achieve mono all signals must be converged, and from a discrete stereo source you would need to add left and right to achieve mono.

Cappish?

so if only one speaker is playing - how many sound sources are you listening to? I believe one - and to quote you "mono stands for singular" so infact you do have mono output

(but yes I get what you mean lol)

So we're not actually lost - just interpretting the menaing of mono differently

i can't believe u're mate could be so stupid lol

'sound sources'? I don't get what you mean. Playing back audio through a reproduction system, either done live or playing a recording, means at some stage you'll decide on how the source will be played and through however many speakers. If the source offers more than one discrete channel and you play it back mixed that way - it ain't mono. If all the sound from the recording or performance are combined into one channel, or are recorded onto one channel - that's mono. Ain't that hard to comprehend.

I don't think the question negates the need for a bet, any speaker whether it costs $1 or a million dollars can be made sound bad, me - no such thing as a mono "speaker" (unless you mean full range, one driver that covers the entire frequency range?)... I'm confused with the question sorry....

A speaker is not 'mono' OR 'stereo' a speaker is a piece of equipment that produces sound in what ever form it is recieved. IMO your question is wrong. Because all speakers (note the 's' ) can play either stereo or mono depending on what signal they are given. HOWEVER speaker can only play mono
Mick

Mono sound is that which is played back as one channel regardless of how many speakers (left, right, centre, rears, etc) are playing to give the sound.
It can be many channels "down-mixed" in the recording or playback process into one and played back without any difference, one speaker to the other i.e. all playing the same sound at the same time, at the same db level.

Anyway, hopefully you get what I mean.

the previous post has it right.
It's not the speaker that is mono, it is whatever the signal is.

if there's only 1 electrical signal then it is mono, regardless of how many speakers it comes out of.
stereo would be 2 separate signals through 2 separate speakers.