Audiophile vs Artifact poll: FOREVER CHANGES! Original Mono Vinyl vs Simply Vinyl Stereo

wait, what about an original stereo copy? mine sounds great. i know the original mono copies are rarer and sound different, but are they better than the stereo version? i think its a fine album on vinyl no matter what copy you are playing. i have a 90's u.k. reissue and that sounds great too.

my elektra stereo is fine, don't need to upgrade.
i think the reissues are being done by sundazed now fwiw.

It's a 'grouping' thing if you like.

The 'mono' originals aren't that expensive, I got mine on e-bay, about £15 or so.

can someone explain to me what the advantages of mono are supposed to be? different/better mixes? better sound because of the way it's encoded on the record?

i went with 'actually, not bothered' obv

"can someone explain to me what the advantages of mono are supposed to be? different/better mixes?"

it's a case by case basis. with some records two completely dfferent mixes were used for mono and stereo. so, in some cases, you can have two radically different versions of the same album. and in some cases an album was only recorded in mono and the stereo versions were phoney stereo. which is why in a lot of cases with early rock and garage rock records you want the mono copy unless there was an actual true stereo mix made as well. the rarest mono mixes are the ones that went straight to radio as promos while 95% of store/stock copies would be stereo.

there are albums I love but can't stand listening to the stereo versions of them, like captain beefheart's safe as milk and pink floyd's piper at the gates of dawn

different mixes
makes sense. thx

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I was just browsing through my fathers old vinyls and as I put on "Forever Changes", the quality seemed not-that-great. I was wondering if it might be a bootleg copy? On the cover the band and album name are in black as opposed to red and blue you find in the pictures. The center of the vinyl is red and apparently printed in the UK by Elektra in 1971, K42015 so at least that part checks out. It is a stereo recording, but for example "a house is not a motel" seems to end prematurely just clipping out suddenly. And in the end of "The good humor man he sees everything like this" there seems to be some errors in the print (skipping playback without any scratches).

Actually, with some more googling, it would seem to match the german 1971 release. Black text as in the UK version, but no album code on the upper left corner of the cover. But still, the quality seems to be a bit questionable. Any information about the subject would be greatly appreciated.

Those 'skips' are on all versions.

.. except for the 'CD2 unreleased mix' on the 'deluxe' edition, which supposedly was on some Lp version somewhere, so not exactly 'unreleased'...

Okay, nice to know. Thanks!