I don't see where we disagree: tracks, channels, signals - they all carry the same data. I think you're just confusing tracks made at the recording session with tracks made at the editing/mixing session (post production).
I'll grant you that "track" has a separate, second meaning in the recording business. On a given piece of merchandise (record, tape, cassette, CD, eight-track) there are typically several "songs." "Would you please play the third track again? I love it!" Sometimes two separate "takes" of the same tune are "produced" and released on the same recording (merchandise), and these are sometimes called "first cut; second cut."
The way I'm using "track" is to describe a discrete set of data which has/have been preserved in some sort of media. I'm speaking of the preserved entity.
I would use "signal" to describe the stream of electrical impulses which result as that data is transmitted from one device to another. I'll grant you there are new transmission techniques for sending multiple discrete data sets simultaneously via the same signal in such a way that they may subsequently be separated. But I'm using it in the sense that two data sets being transmitted simultaneously constitute two signals.
I use "channel" to describe the way a particular piece of electronic equipment is set up to handle multiple data streams of discrete data sets simultaneously. An eight-track device may be reading from a tape which has eight discrete data sets, but only be capable of sending two "different" signals to two different speakers at the same time. This device would have two channels. If the "eight track" player is set up for quad, then it's capable of transmitting four separate signals at the same time. It has four channels. (Alas, we still have only two ears!)
The mixing/editing process ("post production") creates new data sets. The band may have recorded a dozen separate tracks at the session (simultaneous or otherwise - studio recording devices have multiple channel capabilities). The engineer(s) may mix that all into a single data set (track), which would have to be called "monaural." (The normal procedure would be to have two simultaneous tracks and call it "stereophonic.")
The point is that you cannot take the resulting monaural track/signal and "separate" it into a two-signal stereo recording.
As I said before, you could create a fake stereo effect by delaying one track, or by filtering out the high frequencies to make one stereo track and filtering out the lows to make the other.
To say that stereo is mono in which the signal has been separated into two signals, is absurd.
optilang“My understanding of stereo is a sound signal
that has been separated into two signals. It is not a question of how
many tracks have been mixed into each signal. Mono has only one signal,
irrespective of the number of tracks recorded.”
optilang “Yes, he could hear them both, at the same time.”
optilang “ My understanding of the original post is
that we have a guitarist in one room and the bass guitarist in another
room, both playing together - creating the stereo effect (two channels
- one from each room). ”
I never disagreed with this. But
this would also be true if they were both sitting in front of you, as I
originally said. The only caveat is that they must be playing
accoustically, or, if amplified, they must have separate speakers and
separate channels.
Since this is live, the question of "tracks" is irrelevant.
"Two channels, one from each room" is an analogy. That's my whole point.