Converting stereo tracks to mono

DanRxDrums · Post by **DanRxDrums** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:12 am

Hey everyone,
I've read that to get the greatest amount of output volume wise to your master track, it's good to have your kick drum and bass line on a mono track. Now this may sound very basic, but how the hell do you create a mono track? I have my kick drum pan and bass line pan set to center with equal outputs to both speakers (l & r). What am I missing here????

Thanks

matthews · Post by **matthews** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:35 am

It has nothing to do with output level, but it'll make your bass and kick punch more. It really depends on the track though tbh. Anyways, its under utility via audio effects.

DanRxDrums · Post by **DanRxDrums** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 4:50 am

Okay I've done that, added the mono effect under utility and really don't hear/see a difference. Do I want to set left or right in the sub menu even though the output is the exact same on both channels? Does simply applying this effect turn my kick drum track from a stereo to a mono track?

Thanks

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 5:01 pm

Suggests they were mono to begin with - job done!

BTW - they might sound better when the clip colour is set to a strong red.

DanRxDrums · Post by **DanRxDrums** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 5:24 pm

Can you elaborate please? Step by step?

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 5:44 pm

Right click on a clip and select brightest red - second down on left I think...

henke · Post by **henke** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:01 pm

Hi DanRxDrums,

Live only has stereo tracks and you do not need to bother about it at all.
Loudness of the bass: Even the shittiest DJ mixer has a fader somewhere. If you want it loud, raise the fader.

I am serious about this. I play 100% uncompressed "quiet" stuff over big systems and it sounds BIG.

The only problem with mono versus stereo is so called out-of-phase information in the low frequencies. This is not a problem in itself, if it sounds good it IS good, but unfortunately some PAs only have one single amp for the subs. In this case you do not want to have out of phase stuff going on, because it will cancel itself out.

If you put the Utility with the setting 'mono' in your master, and your track still sounds fine, bass wise, then it is fine. It implies that most of the info in the bass is "in phase" and that's what you want.

Robert

DanRxDrums · Post by **DanRxDrums** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:52 pm

Khazul you don't think lime green would work better??

Khazul · Post by **Khazul** » Tue Jul 12, 2011 6:59 pm

DanRxDrums wrote:Khazul you don't think lime green would work better??

Might do - add a bit of presense too

barstu · Post by **barstu** » Wed Jul 13, 2011 12:43 pm

Is there a way of mimicking what utility set to mono does in a wave editor such as cool edit?

Having learnt the value of making stuff mono, I now want to batch convert a bunch of loops. I'm thinking it would be better to do it at the file level as it means one less device I have to navigate past on stage in my insert chain.

When I tried converting to mono in cool edit and left the default setting (L50% R50%) it made all the wavs too loud and there was a lot of clipping. Is it just a case of lowering the mix (L25% R25%) say or is there something else going on?

Converting stereo tracks to mono

Converting stereo tracks to mono

Re: Mono vs Stereo

Re: Mono vs Stereo

Re: Converting stereo tracks to mono

Re: Converting stereo tracks to mono

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Re: Converting stereo tracks to mono

Re: Converting stereo tracks to mono