I agree entirely with icebear. The article is hogwash!
Like any good hog wash though, it contains a significant amount of truth. That truth [1] is combined with incorrect/ignorant statements [2] and what can only be deliberate lies [3], to arrive at erroneous conclusions (hog wash)!
1. It is true that "stereo" is effectively a manufactured illusion and that it's flawed.
2. But saying "From any given position in space, all sound sources are monophonic.", is incorrect. In fact it couldn't be more incorrect because: From any given position, NO sound source is ever monophonic! The only exception to this would be if the "given position in space" (of both the sound source and the listener) were an anechoic chamber.
3. And "Hearing is classically accepted as the most important of the senses.", is just a complete invention of the author, a deliberate lie. It is, and has been for many decades, "classically accepted" that sight is the most dominant/important of the senses. Generally, if sight and hearing conflict, the perception of hearing will be altered to agree with the sense of sight. Most narrative film and TV depends on this fact and the McGurk Effect is a particularly graphic/obvious example of this phenomena.
I've just given one example of each of the three types of statement made by the author but there are so many others, I can't list/explain them all in a reasonable amount of time. One other point worth mentioning, because it undermines the article, is that it's at the very least misleading to bring multi-tasking into this equation. Listening is one task, not multiple tasks. Certainly we can deliberately focus our concentration on specific aspects of what we're listening to, if we choose, but even then we are still aware of the other aspects, albeit less aware. If we were to take the author's assertion as true, some of the obvious basics of what we experience would not exist. For example, if we have a solo violin playing a melody and then half-way through an accompanying piano joins in, are we consciously unaware that a piano has joined in because we can only be consciously aware of the melody on the violin or, does the violin suddenly vanish because we are now consciously aware of the piano and therefore can't also be aware of the violin? Of course not, we hear both and in fact, even if we deliberately focus on the violin melody, the perception of that melody is influenced by what the piano is playing. This has been known and utilised by composers for 500 years or so and is the whole point of harmony and harmonic structure/progression. Also, it's entirely easy to hear both a violin playing and where it's playing at the same time, a violin playing in a toilet and the same violin playing in a cathedral sounds entirely different and entirely obvious. Play a recording of a violin in a toilet just once, to an untrained listener, without explaining what they should be listening for and they will have heard both the violin and have some rough idea of the acoustic space at the same time.
Also, talking about a mono sound source and an orchestra in the same terms is completely nonsensical, an orchestra is not a mono sound source, it's about 90 difference sound sources each positioned differently across a relatively large area. And again, composers have known and employed this fact for centuries. And of course, people don't only listen to classical music, by definition they listen to popular genres of music and these are almost always specifically designed for the stereo effect. Completely contrary to the author's assertions, the added complexity of stereo does not reduce dynamic range, either actually or perceptually, if anything it can enhance it because the decreased illusion of realism and/or intention with mono can greatly detract from the experience. And of course, musicality is a whole lot more than just dynamics!
In the early '80's it was more common to hear music/sound recordings in mono than it is today, so people were more accustomed to it and inevitably there were going to be Luddites against stereo and Luddites more than willing to use pseudo-science, misrepresentations and outright lies to support their Luddite opinions.
Although the OP is no longer a member, for anyone else; "Do you think that companies like Sony should invest more money into conceiving/implimenting a new method of sound recording/producing that would bring us closer to an original dynamic recording?" : - Stereo or mono makes little/no difference to an original dynamic recording and in most cases, an original dynamic recording is the very last thing we want to achieve, that's why we have mixing and mastering in the first place! If you are talking about ultimate accuracy (rather than just dynamics) then the first thing Sony (or anyone else) would need to do is replace microphones with some entirely new technology and do the same with speakers/headphones. The number of speakers and how they are positioned doesn't solve the problem, it only improves it somewhat, a full solution would need an infinite number of perfect speakers positioned in a sphere around the listener and an individual channel of audio (recorded with perfect mics) for each speaker, all of which is impossible of course, hence a completely new/different technology would be needed.
G
