Mono Vs Stereo

[eggnchips]

I see that most claim that a good kick should be in Mono.
At the moment I'm using some four to the floor drum loops that just sound so flat and souless when switched to mono. They sound much more fuller and colourful in stereo. Why is it advised then that I switch them to mono?
Cheers me dears.

[Tone Deft]

the lower the frequency of a sound, the less directional it is. kicks are very low in frequency so it makes no sense to make them stereo. they'll probably be low pass filtered and sent to the mono subwoofer.

[BLynx]

Another popular story is that vinyl records would skip with a stereo low end.

You can experiment as you want. Hard panning sounds really cool with kicks... =]



(probably someone will come and say that you shouldn't hard pan and blah blah blah...)

[lunabass]

you mention drum loops. do these loops have other drums in them? (hats, snares etc)
if your switching a loop such as this then i'm not surprised that it sounds a little lifeless. all your drum panning is lost. all your spatial fx like reverb are stereo fx..leave a loop such as this in stereo...as it was intended.

on the other hand a straight up individual kick drum will sound just fine in mono

[rbmonosylabik]

you shouldn't hard pan blah blah blah blah...

[tylenol]

I see that most claim that a good kick should be in Mono.
At the moment I'm using some four to the floor drum loops that just sound so flat and souless when switched to mono. They sound much more fuller and colourful in stereo. Why is it advised then that I switch them to mono?
Cheers me dears.

Your sample probably contains stereo information, in that left channel != right channel. Mono/stereo can also refer to the difference between having one channel and two channels, but this is about the format and not the content. Conventional wisdom is that low frequency components (bass, kick) shouldn't be stereo in the first sense; how many actual channels there are doesn't matter as long as they are the same.

When you sum sample with stereo information into one channel, you can get phase cancellation problems, which typically leads to a "dull" sound (especially if there was some chorus or some other stereo widening effect). So it sounds like this is what's happening, and you either need to go with a stereo kick, or find a new kick sample that is actually mono. You can investigate this more with a phase correlation meter (e.g. phasescope in freesound).

edit: and yeah like lunabass says, if you are using drum loops that contain more than the kick, the kick is probably already mono and you are getting phase cancellation problems on the rest of the loop.

[laird]

Two good points brought up:
1. bass is hard to locate spatially
2. converting to mono may cause phase interferences, making kick drums sound less present.

Let me add one minor point:
3. The snappy part of a kick drum isn't all bass, so if you are using, say, an acoustic drum sample (versus, say, a really simple 808-pitch dropping sine wave), there may be some upper register stuff you will like better in stereo.

so dont feel too bad, trust your ears no matter what people say.
Still, if you want to play it safe, create a rack that splits your drum track into two frequency ranges using a HP and a LP filter... lets say >200 hz and <200 hz. Then, in the LP filter section of the rack, add your utility plugin to convert to mono, while leaving the upper freqs untouched.

Adjust that cutoff point to taste... adjust width to taste, maybe 100% mono is overkill.

[Ajbbklyn]

A "good" kick drum, recorded in mono vs. a stereo recording that has been combined into a mono signal:

Your sample may sound flat due to phase cancellation which can occur when you combine the left and right channels into a mono signal.

Edit note: Beaten to the punch by 19 minutes. This is what happens when old people don't wear their reading glasses.

[lunabass]

3. The snappy part of a kick drum isn't all bass, so if you are using, say, an acoustic drum sample (versus, say, a really simple 808-pitch dropping sine wave), there may be some upper register stuff you will like better in stereo.

remember though, that an acoustic kick drum was more than likely recorded as a mono sample (one microphone) so the upper register wont matter. it's only when some form of spatial stereo effect is added to the sample or stereo room mics are incorporated into the sample that lairds quote rings true.

so dont feel too bad, trust your ears no matter what people say.

which is the best bit of advice in this thread. 'rules' are made to be broken. your ears told you it was better in stereo and ultimately thats all you need to know