I'm with your mate on this. Stereo is for people with two ears; in the 70s, we always used to say that Quadrophonic (remember?) was for people with four. By extension, modern multichannel home setups and - even worse ('cos you can't adjust the volume or any of the other settings) - their cinema equivalents must be designed for people with five ears. Or possibly seven. I blame Cinerama. Mind you, most movies released before the mid-1970s had wonderfully-mixed mono soundtracks, and that's how they should still be heard. After 1976, I blame Dolby Laboratories. Oh, and bloody Star Wars. 

Mick

I enjoy both stereo and mono mixes from the band. No comment on latter day remixes by Giles Martin as I haven't heard them and they are just not a priority for me to buy.

As others have said all over the place, in many cases the mono mixes of the Beatles 60s work sounds more cohesive because the stereo mixes are primitive and hard-panned. On headphones, some of the stereo mixes are almost unlistenable to me. I can really only enjoy them on speakers.

FWIW I think the EMI/UMG should cut the nonsense and keep the original stereo and mono mixes in print on all formats.

As far as Beatles recording goes, the early Beatles stereo recordings again was pretty bad.  Totally limiting one track from the other - with no leakage between, can hardly be considered to be "natural".  We don't hear a live performance that way.  We hear the entirety of what is being played, along with the ambiance of the venue, be it an arena, a concert hall, or a recording studio.  Mono recording CAN capture that in great part, because the emphasis on the recording is capturing the whole of the sound and does not attempt to capture each instrument or voice, by itself.  Stereo recordins use a mulitude of microphones specifically aimed at individual sources and then mixed together dependent upon the expertise of the mixer's expertise.  Mono recordings typically use a much more modest number of mics, and again geared to capturing the sound in the room - with some localization (of course) of the central performer.

I have not heard the Beatles in Mono LP set, but am planning on securing the Mono Masters album soon.  It will be interesting to hear what those tunes sound like from a "quality" mono mastering, on modern equipment and better quality vinyl.   

The thing that facinated me here was the "hidden" stuff that early quad matrixing was able to somehow isolate and gear toward the rear channels - basically the Columbia SQ approach a bit later on, but before such LPs were commericially so identified and sold.  To discover this sort of thing on unencoded LPs was amazing and offered a pioneering aspect to listening to records already in my possession.  I did not like the CD4 approach (requiring a different cartridge and demodulator device) of separating the recording into 4 distinct sound sources as the "gimickyness" I referenced previously was over the top.  Some of the CD4 (I believe it was Sansui primarily responsible for this approach) classical recordings sent the ambiance of the hall to the rear and that sounded pretty darn convincing.  Alas both approaches ultimately went the way of the Betamax and that was that... Until Surround sound came along...

An interesting pairing! The mono and stereo mixes of Revolver (my favourite Beatles LP, and I would guess that of many others) concluded, according to the encyclopaedic Mark Lewisohn, on 22nd June 1966* - with George Martin and all four Beatles apparently present on the final day for both sets of mixes, thus disproving my previous assertions about after-the-fact stereo mixes, al least as far as this LP is concerned.  Nevertheless, as Lewisohn also asserts apropos the Sgt. Pepper mixes, the Beatles "considered mono of paramount importance and so were always around for these, but were generally content to leave the stereos to George Martin and Geoff Emerick". Beatle involvement or not, I'd argue that the stereo pressings of Revolver vary from interestingly idiosyncratic to unsatisfyingly bifurcated on a track-by-track basis in comparison to the unified punchy/dreamy impact of both the original and AAA remastered mono pressings.

Abbey Road, on the other hand, seems to divide opinions on its stereo-only pressing. It was the view of the late lamented Ian MacDonald in Revolution in the Head that "Abbey Road is The Beatles' most technically accomplished album, its eight-track recordings filled with crystal-clear sounds, crisply EQ'd... The bass end which the group had been improving since 1966, is deep and rich" - certainly a view that me and my mates subscribed to in the 1970s, while also sharing MacDonald's subsequent judgement that the LP is uneven and often flatters to deceive compared to earlier efforts. The digital remastering for the first worldwide CD issue of 1987 - there had been some rare-as-hens'-teeth Japanese CD issues in 1983-84 - therefore sounded simultaneously both "too bright" and "too bassy" to these ears. Contrariwise, there's a large body of audiophiles who assert that original-through-1970s pressings of Abbey Road have been crucially lacking in the bass end ("weedy" is a judgement I often come across in this context) and favour instead any one or more of the following:

- the 1980 MFSL LP remaster ( https://www.discogs.com/release/728419-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road - https://www.discogs.com/release/728419-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road  - but see also this thread on Those Forums : https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/mastering-flaw-on-mobile-fidelity-beatle-box.36865/ - https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/mastering-flaw-on-mobile-fidelity-beatle-box.36865/ )

- the aforementioned 1987 CD version ( https://www.discogs.com/release/11961230-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road - https://www.discogs.com/release/11961230-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road )

- the 2009 Guy Massey/Steve Rooke digital remaster ( https://www.discogs.com/release/9215524-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road - https://www.discogs.com/release/9215524-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road )

- the 2012 Sean Mcgee-cut LP ( https://www.discogs.com/release/4037087-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road - https://www.discogs.com/release/4037087-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road ) derived from those 2009 remasters

- the 2019 'Anniversary Edition' ( https://www.discogs.com/release/14186441-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road - https://www.discogs.com/release/14186441-The-Beatles-Abbey-Road  remastered by Giles Martin and Sam OKell. 

Envoi: all options are available (albeit at a price in some cases). I'll stick with my early-70s UK vinyl pressing as reflecting those Beatles/George Martin mixing choices from 1969. Of course, the larger question begged by all this is how far current and future generations discovering the Fab Four - as they surely must? - will be hearing "remixed"/"remastered" versions rather than (as I'd argue) Original Intentions. And yes - they'll probably be listening to whatever version via their phones and some crappy earbuds rather than a well-set-up cart/arm/TT and lovely GS hardware - but that's another topic, right? 

* My 8th birthday, as it happens. Unfortunately, however, I can claim no credit for either the mono or stereo mix of Revolver, having been too busy being inept with a football up the local rec...

Just wanted to add a comment on this - I know exactly what you mean (cf. those hard-panned stereo mixes of early Beatles albums) - and yet - as I've got older, I've found myself growing ever fonder of those late-60s/early 70s LPs where "woozy" panning is an essential part of the musical/sonic picture. Cases in point: the first three Hendrix LPs (the mono versions of these are also great, but mess with your head - in a good way! - slightly less), much of the '68-'72 Floyd output, large amounts of early '70s German "head" music, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come and (a late outlier) Roxy's For Your Pleasure. My suspicion is that by 1973 the musical landscape was being shifted by the developing possibilities of hardware at both ends of the LP process (the proliferation of well-staffed 16- and 24-track studios + the boom in affordable Japanese stereo/hi-fi*), and that music "sounding good" (as in crisp/shiny EQ, full drum/bass/vocal mixes, fully integrated FX) on the average 2-speaker home setup became the priority. Hence the classic "demonstration" disc mentality of the 1970s: post-'72 Floyd, Steely Dan, Supertramp - and later Joan Armatrading and Rumours**. Of course, the (technical) crudity of much post-punk saw a revival of eccentric mixing/panning on the margins in the late 70s and early 80s (e.g. This Heat, Metal Box, The Flying Lizards)*** - but the commercial mainstream "sound" marched on, bolstered by digital recording and the rise of the CD. Impossible to imagine Dire Straits (or anybody else wanting to make a bestselling album in the 1980s or later) approaching Brothers In Arms with the sonic adventurousness of Hendrix on Axis: Bold As Love...

* I include both options as an acknowledgement that some will remain offended at the very idea that the mass-market Japanese products of the 1970s were ever "hi-fi". All I can say is that my first stereo (as opposed to mono "record player" - I had an old Hacker bought from my English teacher which I rather wish I'd kept) came from a shop with "hi-fi" in the name, and that the mix (Garrard/BSR turntable, Sony amp, Akai cassette deck, Wharfdale speakers) was probably not untypical for 1976. So: I called mine a stereo, but thought about it - particularly as I replaced various bits - as (a) "hi-fi"...

** Ironically, it was the mega-success (and subsequent cocaine-induced megalomania) of Rumours that enabled Lindsey Buckingham to go down precisely the pathways of "woozy"/eccentric mixing (and in newly-digital studios, yet!) alluded to above on at least parts of Tusk. Noticeably, they never ventured that way again...

*** Of course, the classic "marginal" music of the 70's and early 80's - and certainly the most innovative/"out there" in terms of mixing - was Reggae/Dub. Not coincidentally, a lot of this also had to do with a combination of sheer talent, primitive/homemade equipment and chemically-enhanced consciousness. IMLTHO, Hendrix might have felt a good deal more at home in Trenchtown than (as I've read posited by others of a more "hi-fi" persuasion) playing solos with Miles Davis or Steely Dan...