Way back when I got my first CD-ROM, I noticed I was unable to listen to Beatles’ CDs. Songs such as “A Day in the Life” sounded as if the instruments were in the room, but John and Paul were outside the door, down the hall and in the basement. I just assumed it was my sound card (I was able to play it normally if I connected the speakers to the CD-ROM headphone outlet). However, I noticed this happened to some classic radio stations regardless of I was listening to them in the car or some new flanged stereo system. One would assume that a radio station would play it correctly and if they didnt, they would correct it. However, it seems that several stations in California seems unable to play “A Day in the Life” correctly (as recently as tonight, which reminded me of all this). Is it just a bad copy or copies or is there something in the Beatles’ recordings to explain this or are the DJs just not using the equipemt right?
Perhaps you’re listening to the tracks with your speakers out of phase. This will result in the muting of any sounds not exclusive to the left or right channel. That is, if a song is mixed such that guitars are in the left speaker, drums are in the right speaker, and vocals are central (in both speakers), then playing the song out of phase would mute the vocals.
Having songs out of phase can result accidentally from improperly connecting your speakers, but it’s more often done deliberately in order to deconstruct and explore multi-track songs. Late-period Beatles songs are among the best to listen to out of phase because of the extensive production techniques used. There are instructions on how to configure your speakers to play out of phase at The Internet Beatles Album. The technique can also be performed in software; some media players have a “karaoke” or “remove vocals” filter which actually just plays the channels out of phase. For example, with MPlayer this is done with the “-af karaoke” command-line option.
The Beatles recorded a lot of songs with stereo separation - especially the voices which would often play only through one channel or the other. It sounds as though you might be only hearing a single channel - left or right I couldn’t tell you, but I think that I remember that the vocals were usually stronger on the right.
Something somewhere along the line might simply be playing one of the two tracks in mono. If the radio stations are on AM (which broadcasts in mono), someone might have set up the mixer such that if it receives a stereo feed it only plays one channel or the other. Generally you won’t notice, because the vast majority of singles play toward the centre of the sound stage.