I couldn't find the very old stereo recordings that you talked about (are you very old?) but I found "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys in stereo. It sounded awful when heard with only one ear. With two ears it sounded perfect.

I have two legs and I can run very fast. But people with only one leg cannot run anywhere near as fast as me. Same as you with only one ear. Sorry.

 

nothing to be sorry about...

nothing is wasted, our brains add to our visual cortex when our hearing is damaged (and to hearing if our eyes are damaged). you can search at PhysOrg as a paper proving it with some interesting work behind it.

as far as my age... i was born in 64, so this is music from my childhood, and before... and given that some of it is the most classic tracks in music history, they are played today, and they are part of pandora's library, etc.

some stuff you dont notice much of a problem
other stuff.... is HORRIBLE re-monoed.
..
ack, what at term... but technically i am going from a mono to duotone and then back to mono again, which in a headset is a very different experience than in a room (using the room as my aural filter)

if you try the same trick with other more modern music, you will find the mixes are much more complicated and so, they actually sum to a mono better...

as i said... in a room, under normal listening conditions not piped directly to your ears, its all great.

as i said, i only am missing distance information, and to tell you the truth, compared to the great music, thats just gimmicky. a way to evoke a feeling of a more natural playback in a room, but its not an actual more natural playback

i hear incredible details and things and distance doesnt hide anything for me. HOWEVER, the high resolution in that way means that i cant separate sound... so while i can listen and hear very fine detail in the music, i cant filter out someone talking, or noise from outside the apartment... its a part of it (though i have learned to ignore it by quality not location to a great degree).

an audiophile rig still sounds incredible
i can just be more careless with speaker placement

 

I have two perfect ears. When I first heard stereo I thought "Wow, it sounds real".
Stereo sounds alive, has depth and ambiance. Mono is dead, flat and dull.

I don't like ping-pong stereo (one channel then the other channel) and I don't like "surround sound" (because I don't have five and a half ears).

My eyes were failing with cataracts but my hearing was not better than perfect. The cataracts operations replaced the faulty lenses in my eyes and wow, now everything looks wonderful. I had only one repaired eye for a month and didn't like it. But both repaired eyes are great.

 

Well..since u put it that way...summing is out of the question.
U might need some serious piece of hardware to do what u are trying to do.

 

if you want a good example of ick...

For What It's Worth
by crosby stills nash and young

it came up on pandora at work today. ack, ick, augh!!!