ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the principles and practice of two-channel stereophonic recording and reproduction. Two-channel stereophonic reproduction is often called simply ‘stereo’ as it is the most common way of conveying some spatial content in sound recording and reproduction. The history of stereo could be characterized as being something of a compromise between the two, between the ideals of the psychophysicist and the pragmatics of the busy sound engineer. The so-called ‘summing localization’ model of stereo reproduction suggests that the best illusion of phantom sources between the loudspeakers will be created when the sound signals present at the two ears are as similar as possible to those perceived in natural listening, or at least that a number of natural localization cues that are non-contradictory are available. Binaural stereo tends to sound excessively narrow at low frequencies when replayed on loudspeakers as there is very little difference between the channels which has any effect at a listener’s ears.
