Stereo to Mono Adapter

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Dude111

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Joined 2013
#1
Hello dues how are ya??

I have a pioneer cassette deck (double cassette) that plugs into my sony tuner..

I only have 1 speaker in use so it would not sound good IN STEREO! (I really prefer mono anyway)

Is there any such thing as an adapter that would accept both cables from the pioneer (for left and right channel) and convert it to a perfect merged mono signal i can listen to in my Sony tuner??

Thanx 🙂
 
#2
You can mix them resistively or better still, use a virtual earth (inverting) opamp mixer stage. Any off the shelf adapter lead will just be a passive resistive mixer, the active opamp approach is much better.
 
#3
Actually an off the shelf splitter lead will just short left and right together. Unless you have actually seen a lead marketed as a stereo to mono mixer?

If you put a 22k resistor on the output of each left and right, then join them together at the opposite end then feed that into your amp it should be ok.
 
#5
Actually stereo/mono switching options used to be quite common on amplifiers back in the 1970s but subsequently went out of fashion. Mono records and 78s just weren't too popular any more, and people with home stereos generally splurged on a whopping two speakers.

Stereo/mono switching for FM is nearly always included because (a) it costs nearly nothing to implement (usually you just have to pull down a pin on the stereo decoder IC) and (b) it's a simple way of making otherwise problematic reception a lot more bearable (the noise penalty for FM stereo is about 20 dB).

Depending on music, decent mono reproduction may be perfectly fine for casual listening, in fact I commonly use a nice-sounding mid-1970s portable radio. (And decent mono still is better than crappy stereo.) However, I'm a headphone guy and stuff like classical with big orchestra usually is deadly boring to me when recorded in mono. There's just so much missing.

BTW, your Sony "tuner" would actually seem to be a receiver (tuner + integrated amplifier). If it's as oldschool as I think it is, you could probably use the tape loop (tape monitor function) for your stereo-mono combining circuit, which would then be effective for any source.
 
#6
 

sgrossklass said:
Depending on music, decent mono reproduction may be perfectly fine for casual listening, in fact I commonly use a nice-sounding mid-1970s portable radio
Click to expand...
Very nice seeing this!

Someone else who realises how much better it sounds!!



I listen in Mono whenever possible...... I have always loved it 🙂

Yes Its a tuner with AM/FM with options for other audio inputs (Tape,CD,etc)


I have found some MONO cassette decks I could hook up but if I dont have to get one,i would prefer not!! (A true 'Y adapter' merges both channels into 1 I believe if i could find one! (2 males into 1 male))
 
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#8
If you combine 2 channels into one from a tape deck you WILL lose a lot of quality, higher frequencies in particular. The tape heads are never exactly perpendicular to the tape which leads to phase shift. The higher the frequency, the more the shift.
 
#9
alexf said:
If you combine 2 channels into one from a tape deck you WILL lose a lot of quality, higher frequencies in particular. The tape heads are never exactly perpendicular to the tape which leads to phase shift. The higher the frequency, the more the shift.
Click to expand...
Good point. OTOH, this very same effect can be used to tweak azimuth adjustment with a known-good tape. (I bet you could also run the tape into the PC's line in and look at the alignment of drum hits and such on left and right channel.)

The good ol' compact cassette is something that generally I'd only bother with if material is not to be obtained any other way. Otherwise if I wanted to play with good analog recording on the cheap, I'd look for a well-kept hi-fi VCR, maybe one of the better Panasonic or JVC S-VHS models. Dad splurged on a NV-HS1000EG back in the day, still works fine but tended to act up after a while last time we used it (bad solder joint on some voltage reg?). That said, VHS hi-fi has other quirks as well, like varying levels of head switching noise, and models without manual level controls are bound to have some form of ALC (compressor).
 
#11
Ya I would imagine splicing the wires together and left/right channels SHOULD ALLOW BOTH SIGNALS TO GO THRU ON ONE SIDE..... (How does the unit know the difference??? -- All it knows is what it hears))

Sounds like that works for you!!
 
#12
Hello from a fellow monoist. Just sounds purer to me.

Could I ask why there should be a resistor between the line level stereo outputs and the mixer?

I reckon an advantage of this arrangement is that one has 2 mono outputs from the amp/receiver. I have used these to bi-amp a multi-way speaker; and also tried a channel for each of the main drivers in an isobaric arrangement. Both seem to benefit.
 
#13
Some Stereo Tuners had a switch, or pot, to reduce noise.
These assumed that there was more noise in the Stereo Difference signal and less in the Mono summed signal.
They simply connected Left to Right to attenuate the difference signal and leave the Mono signal intact.

I had two that did this with a switch. They did reduce noise. They did make a Mono output.
 
#14
midrange said:
Could I ask why there should be a resistor between the line level stereo outputs and the mixer?
Click to expand...

Because without them, whenever there is any difference in signal between left and right, the "driven" output is effectively shorting into the "undriven" output.

In practice the output impedance will rise with frequency and it's usually with increasing frequency where the differences occur, but it's just not good design or practice to short left and right together.
 
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