I have the Mayall/Clapton BEANO in both original mono & stereo-remix (original release, both on one CD):
Mono does sound twice as 'fat' or 'full' as the stereo remix.
It just has more BOOM. Do PLEASE PLEASE ME or WITH THE BEATLES have BOOM? YEP!
Stereo of mono is often lacking, partly because there's a lot of 'spill-over' (kinda 'narrow' stereo-sound without much panorama).
I could imagine that it is very hard technically, to divide the tracks meaningfully. Could be that instruments share similar frequencies, thereby producing a pleasing 'melted' sound in mono, while if ripped apart l/r I'd agree you get more details, but that might not always be desirable concerning the general sound of the mix as a whole: Originally, the tracks were EQ'ed for mono, and stereo remixing could mean having to re-EQ each single track, which will change the audible result (IMHO, you can hear this adverse effect listening to the Davis remixes of Genesis, when he just tried to broaden the panorama). The problem with re-EQ-ing older tracks is that you are limited in available fequencies (bandwidth) and dynamics tend to suffer by trying to digitally 'enhance' - it's hard to 'enhance' something that just isn't there...
and take a listen to the dynamic range & bandwidth of the early Beatles recordings -
Recently, I've only liked 2 folks' abilities to do the fragile job: George Martin did great on LOVE (the idea behind it is debatable, I'm only talking sound here!), and James Guthrie did quite well on ECHOES, although all that cross-fading is crap IMHO (Gilmour, do you read?).
So yeah, I mostly prefer mono, if it's mono.
